Dad Locked Out Of iPad for 47 Years After Toddler Gets His Hands On It

Most parents can probably relate to giving their kids a phone or tablet to get a few precious minutes of peace and quiet.

But one dad, from Washington DC, found out the hard way that toddlers need constant supervision and essentially can't be trusted.

Journalist Evan Osnos gave his three-year-old son his iPad to play with, only for him to hand it back to him with a slight issue - it had been locked for 25 and a half million minutes.

For a bit of context, that is over 47 years. When his young son would be 50.

Apple's security locks phones in increasing amounts of time for each incorrect password entered; meaning in this case Evan's son must have been doing some serious keyboard bashing to get it to almost 48 years.

Obviously, as all good journalists do, he took to Twitter to seek advice on how to solve his tech issue.

And Twitter gave him some helpful advice.

One user said: "I would just wait it out", while another suggested: "Reboot your 3 y.o."

Another asked the valid question: "Did the 3yr old get his hands on the iPad just as the 12,000,000 minutes from the previous lock expired?"

Thankfully, there were also some actually useful replies. If you ever find yourself in a similar situation, Apple has guidelines to help you reset it, although if it's not been backed up you can say goodbye to any data you had on there.

Firstly, you connect your iPad or iPhone to your computer and open iTunes, then while it's connected, force restart it. A pop-up should appear asking you to Restore or Update - choose Restore, and iTunes will then download software for your device. Once this has finished, you can go on to set up and use your device again.

So for Evan it seems that his two main options were completely wipe all his data, buy a new iPad or simply just wait it out for half a century.

There are two main lessons to take from this. 1) always back up your devices, and 2) never trust a toddler. Ever.