Mike/Apple Support,
You didn’t answer her question, at all. She asked how to block a specific app from being downloaded by way of some modifications to the Apple Family content settings on the child’s device.
When a customer asks for assistance the company’s support staff have one goal and one thing required of them in order to succeed at their job: they need to find a way to get the customer the exact, EXACT result they are seeking. It can be via a direct method or indirect sequence of steps, doesn’t matter as long as you achieve that one goal.
If the company does not have either approach available, they need to state that to the customer FIRST. Then you would be considered successful in your job because you answered her question.
If the only solution available to the support staff is something more general in nature, then that’s perfectly acceptable to offer up like you did. But it doesn’t mean you answered the question. It means either:
A) Staff training encourages you to avoid using negative connotations when responding, i.e. they tell you to avoid the word “no”, or “I’m sorry you CAN’T do that”, etc. (This is a well known training fact inside Apple.) or…
B) Staff is not receiving adequate training and missed the day of class that was titled “”Common Sense”.
Probably both. Not your fault Mike, but you still owe the lady an answer to her question. Here, I’ll give you a freebie to cut and paste and call it your own:
”unfortunately the current settings do not provide a method that would allow a parent to select a SPECIFIC APPLICATION TO BLOCK. We are aware of the bugs that allow a child account to bypass the content restrictions on their device in various manners, such as downloading apps that were previously downloaded by the parent account before the child was born; and the ability for a child to bypass restrictions or downtime for messaging by utilizing any app’s content sharing features in order to send messages while blocked.
We are aware of these issues but our biggest 3rd party app developers prevent us from offering anything meaningful to protect your children. I mean, can you imagine how many people would block YouTube or TikTok on their children’s devices? How would those companies influence your children then if Apple doesn’t provide that ability? Thank you for understanding.
Sincerely,
Apple Support (Twitter Verified! Really!)
There you go Mike, no need to thank me!