13 year old able to disable Screen time with his own passcode on Apple Watch.

I set up new parental controls in iOS27 for my family. My 13 year old son has an iPad and a watch. When he is in his watch, he can go to screen time settings, and enter his own 4 digit watch pin to disable screen time, and it turns it all off across the devices entirely. This is not the same code I have set for screen time (he does not know it). I asked him to show me how does he keep turning them off without me knowing and he showed me how easy this is. Why is his watch allowing this? All software is up to date across all the devices. And on the iPad, he can't disable it. its just the watch that allows it! very frustrating.

I also reset the screen time passcode so its unique. His Watch pin is the same he always uses to unlock it when putting it on.

Posted on Oct 20, 2026 8:32 AM

2 replies

MrHoffman

Level 10 (169,253 points)

Oct 20, 2026 8:35 AM in response to Owen Starr

Is the Screen Time passcode possibly set the same as the Watch passcode?

Is the Screen Time passcode or your Apple Account password compromised?

Owen Starr Author

Level 1 (75 points)

Oct 20, 2026 8:40 AM in response to MrHoffman

I reset the screen time passcode so it's unique and he definitely does not know it. But his own code to unlock the watch works to disable screen time regardless.