this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2025

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Parental controls on children’s tech devices are out of touch with child’s play (theconversation.com)

submitted 2 weeks ago by otters_raft@lemmy.ca to c/parenting@lemmy.world

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The "protection of children" has been the cited reason for a lot of controversial laws and measures recently. A common response is that parents should use parental controls to manage that on their own instead of relying on the government to do it to everyone. I found this article interesting since it touched on how the existing tools aren't that good, and addressing that problem might be a better thing to focus on

Authors:

Sara M. Grimes | Wolfe Chair in Scientific and Technological Literacy and Professor, McGill University

Riley McNair | PhD Student in Information Studies, University of Toronto

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[–] wetbeardhairs@lemmy.dbzer0.com 19 points 2 weeks ago (6 children)

Yeah the controls offered are god awful. I want to prevent my kid from accessing youtube on the nintendo switch. Nope. I want to block him from accessing youtube on the xbox. Nope. I want to block him from accessing youtube on the ipad. Kinda.

I just want to keep him from getting access to user-created content because it is terribly moderated and often explicitly paid for by rightwing shittards that are trying to poison our culture. Too bad. Guess he doesn't get to use those devices anymore.

[–] mr_unfamous@lemmy.myserv.one 7 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Depending on your technical level and home network equipment, this can be accomplished. You can assign a static IP to those devices and block internet traffic to and from certain domains for those specific IPs.

I agree though, the default base level stuff is awful, but I'd bet that its terrible because it doesnt have a big enough financial return. Companies dont do things that dont make money. If they did, we wouldn't need regulations.

[–] AliasVortex@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago

I was just thinking that a PiHole might make for a pretty good parental control too. Slightly more advanced networking, but that way you could block YouTube (and anything else) on a per-device basis while still allowing software updates and the like though (at least until your kid figures out how to override the network provided DNS, but at that point they're hopefully either responsible enough for YouTube or well on their way to a promising career in tech). Plus it gives some observability into what sites are being visited if that's needed.

Very much agree though, it shouldn't take an IT degree/ hobby to do parental controls.

[–] wetbeardhairs@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 week ago

That's a good idea. It won't last for long though because many devices are trending toward secure dns lookups.

[–] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 5 points 2 weeks ago

I assume Microsoft and Google don't care much about parental controls because it doesn't make them more money, and even if something goes wrong and someone tries to bring a lawsuit it won't really hurt them. It's like that scene from fight club about when they do a recall. (That and they're probably cool with kids seeing right wing garbage, because these companies are largely right wing garbage themselves)

[–] Tot@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

We allow YouTube, but not without us present. We had a decent list of blocked channels, then went to edit it but that just cleared out the entire list. So much for usability.

[–] a4ng3l@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

I was having some success at that and then Spotify became YouTube and screwed a lot of it. Took me a while to catch as well :-/

[–] Tower@lemmy.zip 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

My kid watches a ton of educational content, so I don't even necessarily want to block all of YouTube. I just want to be able to block individual videos and channels.

[–] hitmyspot@aussie.zone 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Or whitelist a bunch of channels or videos I'm happy with.

[–] harmbugler@piefed.social 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

A YouTube whitelist would go a long way, but I think Google don't want you to do that. The ads are obviously another problem if you can't block them.

One option (if you are technical) is to use automation tools to subscribe to a whitelist of channels and pre-cache the videos locally.

[–] hitmyspot@aussie.zone 1 points 1 week ago

Lol, easier to just get long form media and jellyfin it instead.

I know some countries, ads on TV are not allowed for kids. Some outlaw certain types of ads, like junk food. We could quite easily regulate them so that it's more profitable to not show ads and have proper parental controls.

I'm in Australia which is banning social media for kids and many online we're berating it as unworkable for things like YouTube. Well, they had plenty of time to get their house in order and chose short term profits instead.

[–] hitmyspot@aussie.zone 2 points 2 weeks ago

The different controls on different devices is also a problem. You want to set a limit on one app or one device, they just switch to another. Have siblings? They'll just use that device instead.

In a world of single devices and one child, they are still useless as they are naggy for the parents and create friction rather than responsibility.

[–] undeffeined@lemmy.ml 8 points 1 week ago

The article does bring some valid points, the tools are not robust enough to foster communication between parents and children but if you think about it, its not in the companies best interest to make better tools for this since children, with their huge free time, are ideal consumers of their products.

A point not mentioned in the article is the fact that the vast majority of games for children contain gambling like mechanics while the game itself is marked appropriate for 3 year olds. This is utter bullshit and invalidates the age restriction setting in the App store. I do know that this is not entirely the companies faults but its worth mentioning.

[–] 93maddie94@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 week ago

Using parental controls and not using them can both be valid. But they are not set-it-and-forget-it and let the kid run wild with the device. Personally I’m in the camp of not using them but letting my kid use screens in age appropriate amounts with age appropriate content on devices that are family devices in common areas, plus keeping the conversation going about what she’s engaging with.

[–] jeena@piefed.jeena.net 1 points 1 week ago

Surprisingly good article.

We had parental controls on our daughters iPad but it basically never worked as intended. Either she couldn't access stuff which she needed at school or she figured out the password by asking mom to extend it and watching her puttin g the password in or the system clichéd and allowed websites and apps which were clearly in the blocked list.

Now that she is in middle school she has to use a Mac computer, there we removed the parental controls and I only block the websites she shouldn't use (it's a very short list) and I just use the /etc/hosts file to redirect to localhost. If she figures it out we will see her using rose sites on her computer but if she does I'll be very proud of her investigating and learning about computers. I'm afraid she can't figure it out without hints though.