Parental controls on children’s tech devices are out of touch with child’s play
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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:
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Sara M. Grimes | Wolfe Chair in Scientific and Technological Literacy and Professor, McGill University
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Riley McNair | PhD Student in Information Studies, University of Toronto
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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:
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Sara M. Grimes | Wolfe Chair in Scientific and Technological Literacy and Professor, McGill University
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Riley McNair | PhD Student in Information Studies, University of Toronto
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.
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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.
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)
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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.
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.
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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.
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.
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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.
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.
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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.
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
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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.
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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:
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Sara M. Grimes | Wolfe Chair in Scientific and Technological Literacy and Professor, McGill University
-
Riley McNair | PhD Student in Information Studies, University of Toronto
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.
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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.
That's a good idea. It won't last for long though because many devices are trending toward secure dns lookups.
