Disney Partners with Circle for Family Internet Management

Circle with Disney gives parents control of online access for their kids.

Managed through a companion iOS app, Circle with Disney is a tool that helps parents stay informed about their kids’ online activities and limit screen time on every device in the home, including smart phones, tablets, computers, and gaming consoles.

“One of the decisions we made really early on was not to be the router”, Jelani Memory, founder of Circle Media, told Wired. For starters, it will hook up to the home Wi-Fi network so that parents have the power and authority to filter through all content, as well as initiate a bedtime for devices – or even have the power to pause the Internet, now how about that for an exercise in veto power in the home?

Using your iPhone, you can set time limits on each device. After that, you can create profiles for all family members, each with their own separate rules.

Circle with Disney can watch over your family’s online habits with granular controls over just how much Facebook, Minecraft, or YouTube they get to access in a day. Retailing at $99, Circle with Disney could provide an easy and affordable solution to the problem.

And when parents are away, the app should let them know when time limits are reached by their kids with a simple notification. Circle with Disney has four preset age-levels and allows for further customization by platform, app, website, and content category. Users can find the family-friendly content in MyCircle. “Circle with Disney” allows families to see a member’s total time spent online and the sites visited. You can pause the Internet for specific devices, individual people or everyone in the house.

There’s also a BedTime mode, which can be tailored to individual family members for different sleep times. Built-in parental control on existing devices are already being used by parents that are concerned by what their kids do on the internet, but the systems in place have limitations and tech-savvy children can often times figure out ways to by-pass them altogether.

That is not all, because children and families can also enjoy quality Disney entertainment time via Circle Media’s licensing partnership with Disney.

You can apply a family’s home settings to any visiting device that joins the wireless network, so you can be sure the neighborhood kids are doing their homework instead of marathoning Netflix shows. In addition, ‘Circle with Disney, ‘ can even limit internet access on devices connected to the network that belong to family guests.