Thank you Circle for providing me with your product to review. I think this product will provide families with the safety and structure they may feel is lacking with our current technology. Find out more below.
Product Description:
Circle was designed to manage all of your home’s connected devices. With Circle, parents can filter content, limit screen time and set a bedtime for every device in the home.
Cost: $99
Product Physical Features: The actual Circle device is a small cube, measuring 3.25 inches x 3.25 inches. It’s sleek and modern design help make it easy to have in your home, blending into your decorating decor.
Features:
- Time Limits-set limits for different family members
- Bedtime-plan it so specific devices can turn off at certain times
- Filter-filter out certain media content
- Pause-pause all devices right from the app on your phone!
- Insights-a review of who was on what platforms/websites and for how long!
- Devices-Picks up all devices in the home that are connected to Wi-Fi
My Review:
The product is small and simple. The directions for set up, using the app, were super simple. The more devices you have in a home, the trickier it can be, simply because sometimes the device shows up without a description (Maria’s iPhone for example). However, Circle has a FAQs area on their website that troubleshooted a solution for me on this one.
I set up time limits for myself. I gave myself 15 minutes to be on Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest in one day (15 minutes each) and sadly, I always hit the time limit early in the day. A nice eye opener that social media is a racket for me! I also set a bedtime for myself, meaning when I woke up early at 5:30 am and went to check the weather on my phone while laying in bed, it told me my device hadn’t woken up yet! I liked this because I think it can help family members set better technology habits in the home. I personally don’t like sleeping with my phone and turning it on as the first thing I do, this happened because my husband was out of town and I had my phone with me in case of an emergency.
I liked the safety filters. When my 2 year old was on the iPad, he was not able to access YouTube (we have kids YouTube now, a MUCH better choice!) One afternoon, for fun, I paused all the devices and you would have thought the world had stopped! Again, a nice feature for families.
My only suggestion for improvements on the product, is being able to have two people share a device. This is huge in our household. All three of our children use the same iPad. If I set a time limit, then it doesn’t recognize who is using the device and the time runs out. I think this would be a super important addition to the product for young families. I want to be able to track my children’s screen time (we only allow 1 hour per day) and this didn’t make it as simple as I would have hoped.