Did you know that you can’t stop strangers on Roblox from sending your kid friend requests? And you can’t delete them from your child’s account. Just block them entirely.
On PlayStation you can’t approve communication features with just friends. If you have it turned on so they can chat in game with their cousin, then strangers can send unsolicited voice calls to them.
Children should not be on internet connected devices unless you are willing to monitor their usage 100% of the time or are willing to hope and pray you’ve taught them enough about the danger and risks (and even if you have, they aren’t developed enough to understand them anyway)
There’s certainly more to it than just a gimmick. One of the most important things is web filtering for content, which is a useful parental control because children should not be exposed to porn, graphic violence, and other types of mentally harmful content. Controls may not be able to stop everything but they can definitely hinder and slow down the process at least.
I’m really tired of people letting perfect behaviour the enemy of good in every single online discussion.
I’m very well aware that parental controls aren’t a 100% foolproof protection for my daughters, but that certainly doesn’t make them useless.
Based on that mentality we may as well not ban murder, because some people break the law anyway. We may as well not have vaccines, because no vaccine is 100% effective for all people. It’s so brain-dead.
To be more clear, I mean when parental controls are added to an app they are almost always half baked and inserted as a marketing gimmick.
As a whole parental controls are definitely important for parents to utilize to the best of their abilities, it’s just hard to actually implement them on the application level as opposed to the network or device level.
Executing them effectively is extraordinarily difficult though. They are a gimmick in the sens most of the time they give a false sense of security. Trying to get the working in a way that allows kids to use devices effectively but blocks what you want them to block is a very hard line to walk. When you finally feel like you are close there’s a new app or something changes and it’s like you are starting all over again. Apple perhaps has the most usable and consistent ecosystem for this, but it’s still not all that good and the cost of the relative simplicity is a lack of granular control when you want it.
I’m not claiming to have the answer, but I can understand why people are scared and frustrated with the current state of parental controls.
My policy is all child devices are blocked from internet access in the firewall except during specific times when I unblock it and am actively looking over their shoulder. Otherwise, it’s curated content on Jellyfin, including a library of downloaded videos from YouTube as well as other self-hosted stuff.
If a game or app requires internet access, too bad. I won’t even play games on my own devices that require a connection for that matter.
I have considered setting up a proxy server for my older child with specific domains allowlisted.
Parental Controls are a marketing gimmick.
Did you know that you can’t stop strangers on Roblox from sending your kid friend requests? And you can’t delete them from your child’s account. Just block them entirely.
On PlayStation you can’t approve communication features with just friends. If you have it turned on so they can chat in game with their cousin, then strangers can send unsolicited voice calls to them.
Children should not be on internet connected devices unless you are willing to monitor their usage 100% of the time or are willing to hope and pray you’ve taught them enough about the danger and risks (and even if you have, they aren’t developed enough to understand them anyway)
There’s certainly more to it than just a gimmick. One of the most important things is web filtering for content, which is a useful parental control because children should not be exposed to porn, graphic violence, and other types of mentally harmful content. Controls may not be able to stop everything but they can definitely hinder and slow down the process at least.
This.
I’m really tired of people letting perfect behaviour the enemy of good in every single online discussion.
I’m very well aware that parental controls aren’t a 100% foolproof protection for my daughters, but that certainly doesn’t make them useless.
Based on that mentality we may as well not ban murder, because some people break the law anyway. We may as well not have vaccines, because no vaccine is 100% effective for all people. It’s so brain-dead.
To be more clear, I mean when parental controls are added to an app they are almost always half baked and inserted as a marketing gimmick.
As a whole parental controls are definitely important for parents to utilize to the best of their abilities, it’s just hard to actually implement them on the application level as opposed to the network or device level.
Executing them effectively is extraordinarily difficult though. They are a gimmick in the sens most of the time they give a false sense of security. Trying to get the working in a way that allows kids to use devices effectively but blocks what you want them to block is a very hard line to walk. When you finally feel like you are close there’s a new app or something changes and it’s like you are starting all over again. Apple perhaps has the most usable and consistent ecosystem for this, but it’s still not all that good and the cost of the relative simplicity is a lack of granular control when you want it.
I’m not claiming to have the answer, but I can understand why people are scared and frustrated with the current state of parental controls.
My policy is all child devices are blocked from internet access in the firewall except during specific times when I unblock it and am actively looking over their shoulder. Otherwise, it’s curated content on Jellyfin, including a library of downloaded videos from YouTube as well as other self-hosted stuff.
If a game or app requires internet access, too bad. I won’t even play games on my own devices that require a connection for that matter.
I have considered setting up a proxy server for my older child with specific domains allowlisted.