Do I need to set up individual Apple IDs for all my kids' iPads?

Question

I will be giving my three children three iPads as their christmas presents. I am now currently using my iPhone 4 with my only one Apple ID for the App Store.

My question is if I set up their iPads using my Apple ID that I am currently using now, does that mean that if they download a game or anything from the App Store, will it appear on my iPhone 4 as well? And if I delete the app from my iPhone, will it delete on their iPad too? If that the case, should I set up a different Apple ID for them?

Answer 1

I strongly recommend you keep a separate ID for each person. When buying a song, for instance, you can share among 5 authorized devices. My computer, iPad, iPod, and iPhone make four. Now that my wife and daughter have iPhones, and daughter, a MacBook, I glad they have their own accounts. No crazy apps I don't know about clogging my devices. You want your own apple ID and iCloud. Really.

Edit - Using your Apple ID for Apple services will help clarify the iTunes vs iCloud ID usage.

Answer 2

Depends on how old the children are. If they are 15 and above, you may want them to maintain their own accounts and identity on the devices. Otherwise, you may want to be able to monitor what they put on their devices. It looks like a management problem, not a technical one.

You can set up your iDevices to either download purchases automatically or not. If you delete an app from one device, it has no effect on its presence on other devices.

The downside to using different apple IDs is that if there is an app you want on all of them, and you don't want to buy 4 copies of the same thing, then managing their installation and upgrades is a pain. You will have to sign out of their account, sign in with yours, download the app, sign out, and sing back in with original account. Repeat. Repeat.

If you set up all of them using your own apple ID, that means you will have to buy them any apps they want to put on their device. Unless you are comfortable giving them the password to your account on the iTMS and the credit card authorization that is attached to it. And you have to make sure not to set up iCloud sync, because then they will also get your reminders, calendar events, photo stream, and any iTunes music.

Answer 3

Separate accounts with individual gift cards pre-loaded on each account might help teach the kids how to budget.

Answer 4

I want to just answer the questions without making a recommendation since I can see many reasons that different people will want different account setups.

You can use one Apple ID for all the devices. If you want to turn off automatic download, you won't see the apps on your devices. If you delete the app from one device it does not delete it from the others. Even if you hide the purchase from your purchase history, the other devices can still re-download the app for free.

You only want to set up a second Apple ID if you want to let them control their purchases and budget (and not see their purchases in your purchase history). You can set restrictions to prevent age ratings and download blocks on a per-device limit and that is not tied to the Apple ID.

There is a limit where you will start having issues where more than 10 devices want to pull apps from one Apple ID, but even with 4 children devices, you still have 6 slots for yourself.

Answer 5

I have setup 25 iPads for a school before and Until we turned on the apple volume licenses, it did download to all devices because the option was set in Settings -> iTunes & App Stores.

On your phone if you turn off Automatically Download Apps from the above Settings area then you should be ok and it not automatically download apps after they purchase apps if you use the same Apple ID. You can also set Music and Books. Deleting from your phone will not affect their iPad.

For a lab I would recommend turning off the automatically download but for several kids I would recommend that you use one account.

For a group of small kids I would recommend one app, you don't have to buy the same app several times over. It might cause issues with GameCenter to only have one account for those games that keep data and records based on gamecenter. You can create multiple accounts there and solve that issue.

Keeping one account will also help with security and child management settings. You can view the amount left on the gift card and you will get email notifications when apps are purchased. Mine is tied to my paypal account, so I would get the emails if apps are purchased. You can set restrictions and manage parental controls on a mac to set age limits that you want the kids to be viewing for materials such as songs, videos, etc.

Have fun!

Answer 6

you can't give them an ID if they are under 13 :(

you can easily manage what apps turn up on your phone, the real problem for families is this: if I give them their own IDs do they can't share apps or music, can they? And we are still not dealing with the bigger issue: they aren't supposed to have appleIDs at their age.