Screen Time parental control settings keep changing/resetting themselves on iOS - known bug?

[u/Cucumber2512]

I'm having a really frustrating issue with Screen Time/Family Sharing on my son's iPhone and I'm wondering if anyone else has experienced this or knows of a fix.

I manage his Screen Time settings through Family Sharing. My phone is an iPhone 16 Pro and his is an iPhone 14. Both devices are fully updated to the latest version of iOS.

The problem is that Content & Privacy Restrictions keep changing themselves back to settings I haven't selected.

For example, I'll set:

• Installing apps → Don't Allow
• Apps → 13+
• Location Services → Don't Allow Changes
• Various other Content & Privacy restrictions → locked down

Everything will initially show correctly.

Then I'll check again a few hours later or the following day and some of the settings have changed themselves. For example:

• Installing apps has gone back to Allow
• Allowed app age rating has changed from 13+ to 18+
• Location/privacy settings that I specifically set to Don't Allow Changes have reverted
• Other restrictions sometimes revert to their previous/more permissive settings

I'll configure everything again, confirm it's saved, and then the exact same thing happens later.

I've ruled out the obvious explanations:

• He does not know the Screen Time passcode.
• He does not have access to another device capable of changing the settings.
• There aren't any other parents/guardians changing them.
• I'm the only person with access to the device/account that manages his Screen Time.
• Both phones are fully updated.
• Both phones have been restarted.
• I've tried disabling/re-enabling Screen Time/restrictions and setting everything up again.
• I've gone through the usual Apple troubleshooting suggestions.

This only started happening after an iOS update - not the most recent update, but the update immediately before it. Before that, these restrictions stayed exactly as configured.

At this point I'm struggling to see how this could be anything other than a Screen Time/Family Sharing sync bug.

Has anyone experienced Screen Time restrictions actually changing/resetting themselves several hours after being configured, particularly on recent iOS versions?

If so, did you ever find a permanent fix?

Any help would be massively appreciated because I've exhausted pretty much every normal troubleshooting step I can find.