That's how my children's iPads are too. Permanent downtime, with a few always allowed apps, and the rest on demand. And indeed, the most frustrating part is when my daughter needs to do some research for school. I'd have to allow each and every website she visits, so I temporarily un-downtime her phone instead...

Edited to add: for some reason, time limits never worked for my kids (they could always override them with one click). That's why I had to opt for permanent downtime.

> That's how my children's iPads are too

Hah! Says something about my self control!

Yeah it's usually trouble once a week. I recently needed to pay for parking using a QR code had to finish it in the 1 minute I had. Another appointment asked me to fill some online form and their reaction when I said "my phone is blocked from the internet" was funny. Turns out they still have paper forms when needed.

> time limits never worked for my kids (they could always override them with one click).

Huh, that's weird. Seems to work ok for mine in limiting their iPad use. They can request more time and I can decide to grant it or not, I get choices of 15 minutes, 1 hour or all day.

You can block a lot of sites directly in router setup. It is password protected and almost impossible to override or hack.

In case your kids hack the router you know that they have Kevin Mitnick skills :)

pretty sure if you un-downtime a non-safari browser it applies to all websites.