Parental controls.

[chroniclard]

I had in my head the discussion the parents on South Park had with their kids when they found the Backdoor 'ladies' 9 VHS and Butters watched it

My brother got an IPTV based app for his TV, was going on to me about all the stuff he could get on it, TV shows, movies etc and how the kids can watch anything they like. So I went on it to have a look, clicked movies -> all......first movie in the list 18 year old gets ass destroyed by..............I am like "yeah you probably want to pin code this or bin it".

 

[Haggisman]

As someone without kids I probably have a naïve view on the whole parental controls thing.
Apart from blocking websites that are 18+ for a reason, I don't see the point in restricting access. If your kid want's to get somewhere, they WILL get to it, there's plenty of easy work arounds for any parental controls you can apply. Same for games, doesn't matter what the suggested age is.

I'd only go as far as restricting device access to family rooms until they have proven they are responsible and no devices after a certain time. Once they can have devices in their room for a short time I'd keep an eye on whatever they are looking at without supervision remotely to see if they can be trusted.

Just pay attention to what they are doing and take an interest in what they are looking/watching, talk to them about stuff.

I don't think I would care if they came across something that I don' think is suitable (to a point) there's no point hiding them from the world as long as a suitable discussion is had about it.

I agree with this approach. Parental controls are great for stopping younger kids from accidentally stumbling across something, but there's no way in hell you're stopping a curious & horny teenage boy from accessing... well, we all know what curious & horny teenage boys will be accessing*

Discussing and educating (from a young age) is IMO far more important - but does involve doing some actual parenting rather than just expecting an electronic box to do that for you.


* I can back this up from personal experience, both as an ex curious & horny teenage boy, and from working on the IT infrastructure in a college - a constant battle of trying to block sites and apply filtering vs students trying to access things they shouldn't be

 

[Lmg80]

Easiest way to block all undersirable traffic, is route all dns via OpenDNS / only whitelist internet ports on your router i.e. http/https UDP/TCP only.

You can also block explicit bing/Google image searches by blacklisting the URLs on OpenDns.

Parental controls, unless software is installed is redundant if a VPN is used on wifi.

Hence VPN apps connect via non http/https ports hence won't work. With that said only really good on WiFi, mobile internet is a whole different set of controls.

A lot of it comes from parenting/understanding that deviation comes consequences. I like the idea of punishing history deletions too, albeit most routers you can pull logs/again OpenDns does this anyway, albeit IP level not devise level

 

[[FnG]magnolia]

Put your trust in your child to explore responsibly, not a parental control to needlessly limit them.

 

[Throrik]

I spent my childhood playing Mortal Kombat on the arcade, I didn't grow up trying to rip peoples spinal columns out, and rated 18 movies like The Terminator, Robocop and various other films of the same style were all super violent but marketed towards children, not allowing people to experience and grow with stuff and repressing them just makes them want to rebel in my opinion.

 

[RDM]

For us it is about trust and, one of the most important things in parenting, a united front! That and a little tech savvy.

For our daughter, she can watch anything that is age appropriate, if she wants to watch something that is older than that, she has to ask first. We will have a conversation about it and then come to a decision. She then has to respect that decision. If she doesn't then she will have access to the device or service removed. So far, we haven't had to do this.

Rules for her owning some tech. She needs to share the passwords so that we can access the device. Her tablet and phone are linked to my account and anything she downloads I get a copy of. She has her own NetFlix login, we can check on it to see what is on her watch list. Share location with us is on her phone at all times. Breaks the rules, she loses the tech for a while.

She isn't allowed Snapchat.

So far, it has worked well, though she is looking forward to when she is 15 so she can watch Deadpool.