[transreal]

As a technologist and parent myself, I find the biggest problem to be the lack of fine grained parental controls. Yes, technology in of itself is not the issue, it is the highly addictive nature of certain software, but on different devices, limiting what they can/can't do is very difficult.

When school started online, my 8 year old was initially really engaged, but then started getting a bit bored once she got into it, and would watch Youtube videos. I was fine with an hour after she finished her school work, but the time she spent watching slowly increased until she wasn't even doing her homework. She'd erase the history on her browser so I couldn't tell how long she was watching for (but fortunately I know the tricks, and was able to figure it out). This led me to blocking Youtube (and all other video sites) on the router. I looked into Youtube kids, but I can't limit it in the ways I want (certain times of day, certain videos), and so I just outright ban it. I also found Youtube too addictive with its short videos, and so now only allow Netflix Kids at certain times.

The best solution IMO would be that I could say something like "these apps/sites need my permission", and then every time she tried watching a video or opening that app, etc, I'd get a notification on my phone asking if I should allow it. That would really put the control in the parent's hands. Could apply to tik tok too - I may be OK with it if my kid has to get permission to post a video, and get permission after every 20 mins of use/watching 20 videos.

Until such controls are available, I just saying a blanket 'no' to some of these apps/sites. She can use them how she sees fit once she's emancipated.

[nikisweeting]

Learning to jailbreak and flash routers to get around these parental controls is what got me into programming.

I had managed to get myself unrestricted internet access from pretty much age 10 onwards using a "broken" laptop I had secretly fixed, and the "restricted" iPod Touch that I had unlocked by editing the Springboard.plist.

At age 14 they had a talk with me where they said they finally were going to give me some restricted internet access and I almost burst out laughing because I had been online hours per day for the last 4 years, but managed to keep it together.

Ten years later and it's a fun story we all laugh about. I wonder what I would be doing today if it wasn't for those parental controls motivating me to break systems.

[donmcronald]

I share this opinion. The parental controls are so bad it almost seems intentional. Look at the mishmash of trash you need to deal with between a Microsoft account and an XBox account (which are sort of the same thing). That's with a company that IMO is trying to make it work, but the experience still sucks.

Then add in the need for a parent account (or two) plus a child account (or two or three) for every service / app kids want to use and all of a sudden you're asking people to manage dozens of accounts. Throw in multiple platforms and you could literally be trying to manage two or three dozen sets of parental controls and it's not static. The apps / services are constantly churning.

It's easy to criticize the OP of this article, but I know the feeling. The intent to be a good moderator is there, but the tooling isn't and after a while you just give up, turn a 10 year old into an 18 year old, and moderate over their shoulder instead.

The distinction between apps is huge too. Things like Minecraft, Roblox, educational games, etc. are pretty harmless and somewhat creative. Apps like TikTok and Facebook are worthless and should be banned (by parents) IMO.

[presentation]

I also wonder what filters might have outsized effects on curtailing addictive behavior - for instance if you blanket silence all notifications what effect does that have? Though I’m not a parent so I don’t really know