Parental controls aren't for parents

https://beasthacker.com/til/parental-controls-arent-for-parents.html

by beasthacker • 7 months ago

451 446 7 months ago

GaryBluto7• 7 months ago

It says, on the Gabb app directory the author linked, "Communication with Strangers" in a warning bubble directly below the "GroupMe" listing title. Not to forget the giant box saying "However, some apps allow user-shared content or access to mature material. Apps enabling contact with strangers also pose risks. Families should discuss app usage regularly." right below the app search bar.

Regarding the games console, his problem seems to mainly be the two conflicting account systems offered by two separate vendors, not the parental controls themselves (although I agree the situation in that circumstance is unfortunate). A quick Google search also directed me to an easy step by step guide to doing many of the things (such as the restriction of purchases and free downloads on the Nintendo game store) that he claimed to be impossible.[2]

This is written in a very dramatic manner*, especially with the whole "You're supposed to be so beaten down, so utterly depleted of will, that you just cave. You sign up for Nintendo Online. You disable a bunch of parental controls you don't really understand. You let your kid play his damn game. You become the ideal customer." paragraph, that it feels almost like it's purely written to goad legislation.

[1] https://gabb.com/app-guide/

[2] https://industrywired.com/gaming/how-to-set-up-parental-cont...

* I do empathize with his situation, but much of it seems to be brought upon by his own ignorance and unwillingness to research.

whythough12345• 7 months ago

Beasthacker is a hilarious identity to assume for someone so keen on using tech that does the parenting for them.

rolymath2• 7 months ago

Hardly a comment worth singing up to HN to post.

zaphar4• 7 months ago

I don't know if this works for anyone other than our family but when we were raising our kids we solved this by the simple of expedient that gaming and computer use was done with us as parents present. Full stop.

It was not a solo activity for our kids. We could directly view everything they were doing online the entire time.

GuestFAUniverse2• 7 months ago

Congratulations that you had that luxury.

Sounds barely realistic, when school are using iPads, education is one URL away from entertainment crack and parental controls on iOS are a joke.

zaphar4• 7 months ago

I'm sorry you feel like it's out of reach of so many. We definitely had to sacrifice a number of things to make it happen. It's not like it was necessarily easy. Unless you are in the unfortunate position of being an only parent this can be an area where you have choice. You can:

1. Ask your school to change their policies. Coordinate with other parents. Make it clear to the school that if they don't start to enforce these policies then you will hold the school directly responsible for any harm that comes to your child in the environment they create.

2. Pick different schools. (Home School, Private school) if you can afford it. Charter schools may be an option.

Both of these require sacrifice on your part and neither are easy. But no one should ever think parenting is easy.

miroljub• 7 months ago

And then, we pretend we are surprised why the majority of adults don't care about privacy.

Why would they? They grew up being 100% controlled with 0 privacy. They don't even know it doesn't have to be like that. Then, it was their parents violating their privacy, now it's government and corporations.

zaphar4• 7 months ago

A five year old is not prepared to engage online with privacy. They have not had the necessary training yet. They will not get that training unless you are there to show them how to negotiate that world. They will not magically learn how to protect themselves if you just leave them to figure it out themselves.

nkrisc• 7 months ago

Privacy is a privilege granted relative to age and maturity.

Most 5-year olds should be allowed to close the bathroom door while doing their business, they should not be permitted to access the internet privately.

f1shy4• 7 months ago

I was never controlled in any way that may remotely violate my privacy. In fact, glad that nothing ever happened to me, because it could have. But for a long time I was not worried about my online visibility…

I do not agree at all with this conclusion.

sylens• 7 months ago

When I was a kid, my Sega Genesis was connected to the TV in my parents bedroom. It made it impossible to play without their knowledge or when they were asleep.

Aurornis4• 7 months ago

Advice like this only works for specific age ranges.

When I was a kid I had a friend whose parents, or mom rather, went to similar lengths to ensure all gaming was monitored closely by her. She would turn the game console off if she saw anything she decided was not to her liking.

This was all fair when we were 7-8, but she insisted on doing it well into his teenage years. This level of extreme control and micromanagement was not good for their relationship or his personal development, to put it mildly.

Every time I read HN comments from parents declaring their child will not have a phone until they turn 16 (another comment in this thread) or how they’ll lock their kids out of games and social media completely I think back to my friend whose mom was extremely controlling in the same way.

Young kids need tight controls, but this needs to be loosened as they age. Parenting discussions really need to come with age ranges because what’s appropriate changes so fast from year to year.

f1shy4• 7 months ago

I frankly would prefer just not gaming at all, than being ashamed in front of all my friends.

Also you have to consider the ramifications of such behavior if that gets public, I mean could possibly be the source of bullying and what not.

As a child we were de incentivized to playing games with the computer. The schema was:

A) computer you can have, because is useful beyond playing, consoles, no way. Forget it “that is stupidizing BS”

B) No money for games. Other SW would be bought, but rarely games.

That moved us to start spending time with other things in the computer, like programming our own games.

Of course today that is all difficult to impossible, by design, without ostracizing the kids.

zaphar4• 7 months ago

I agree, the point of making usage monitored early on is so that you can train your child in what to do when they encounter stuff online. As that training has occured then you can begin to loosen the restriction and give them more freedom. This is the job of parenting. You are teaching your child how to safely and productively engage with the world and the younger they are the more of your time and attention this requires. If you don't teach them someone else might and that lesson may haunt them for the rest of their life.

eYrKEC24• 7 months ago

That's essentially the rule in our house. No screens not visible to other members of the family.

In US, we restrict alcohol kids until they're 21. Pornography is poison.

johanvts• 7 months ago

So no smartphones?

GaryBluto7• 7 months ago

It's so bizarre to me that in "The Land of the Free", 18 year olds, who are considered old enough to go to war, are not allowed to drink. Especially because this isn't some archaic law from the 18th or 19th centuries but instead from 1984 and only came about after the federal government withheld funds to force the states' hands over a period of 4 years.

axus• 7 months ago

Encourage voice chat, so you can hear what they are saying too :)

adeelk93• 7 months ago

Your son is talking to his friends in this book chat, and playing Minecraft with them. How do other parents go about governing this?

Sounds like either they’ve figured out these parental controls, and might have some tips for you. Or they trust their kids with fewer controls.

whythough12345• 7 months ago

You’re getting downvoted but I agree that this person has a communication problem with their child. And it isn’t because the kid figured out how to use the device.

epiccoleman5• 7 months ago

Do you have kids? I'm guessing you don't, because the answer is pretty obvious to those of us who do - the vast majority of parents seem to give not one single fuck about what their kids do with technology. I've known families who have a cell phone - a dedicated device - for their four year old.

My armchair diagnosis is that parents who are just a little bit older than me (I'm 34) and especially parents who didn't grow up as nerds just don't see the problem. Among the class of people who spend their time on Substack or Hacker News the horror of the modern net and its affect on childhood are well understood at this point. Among "normal people" you will definitely get weird looks if you suggest that this stuff is terrible for your kids.

lotsofpulp2• 7 months ago

My kids (4 and 6) have a "dedictated" iPhone, a iPad with the pencil, and a MacBook Air. But they were just hand me downs. They don't get to use them unless we let them, but we mostly use them to learn how to type, write, draw, play learning games, Khan Academy, and to mess around in general.

They also call or text aunts/uncles/cousins/grandparents. I feel like it has helped them with reading and just the exercise of trial and error to figure out how it works is beneficial.

Haven’t needed to delve into parental controls yet though.

PaulHoule3• 7 months ago

There is enough general public concern about minors having access to online pornography that jurisdictions all over the world are passing age restrictions but I think the HN discussion is one sided.

That is, HN users see the costs, the difficulty, the privacy concerns, etc. But they're also dismissive of the harm, which in terms of the young Gen Z men that I know personally is real. I can't attribute online pornography 100% but the damage includes criminal convictions, falling victim to "blackpill" ideology and other false answers to gendered problems and frequently people giving up on work and love.

I collect ero images and restrictions would personally be a hassle for me, I can't say I am against pornography in general, but I've got some concerns about pornography today. I think advocates are stuck in the 1970s when it was tamer and much less prevalent than it is today -- it's entirely different for a teen to have a few issues of Penthouse or Hustler than it is today.

I think the story of how it relates to relationship satisfaction is nuanced. Personally I think OnlyFans is a cancer. I want to feel special in a fantasy, and not as the biggest simp in a room full of hundreds of simps. (And this is healthy narcissism [1], not pathological narcissism. In good sex or sex with love, somebody thinks you are special)

I'm not sure what the answer is but I can see it both ways and that seems rare on HN.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthy_narcissism

GuestFAUniverse2• 7 months ago

People who decide to implement such bad tech are probably childless, or so much into their company, instead of their family, that they barely see their own children.

The same people who joke about the uselessness of "moral".

whythough12345• 7 months ago

You might be right they are distracted (mostly by capital). It’s a chicken and egg problem. You have to build the platform to stop the abuse on the platform.

The otherside is hands off parenting. I think after about 2 children, parents tend to get tired of being so restrictive there for the youngest gets what they want and other stereotypes.

In the end it’s probably not about the tightness so much as remaining involved and honest and open with your child.

zpeti2• 7 months ago

Last time I checked disney plus doesn't have any option to hide specific shows. None. You either let your child watch everything, or nothing.

At least netflix allows me to hide certain shows...

GaryBluto7• 7 months ago

You can block by age rating quite easily it seems.

https://help.disneyplus.com/en-GB/article/disneyplus-parenta...

If you don't want your child watching specific shows despite an appropriate age rating, have you considered only letting them watch it while you're with them?

juliangoldsmith• 7 months ago

Blocking by age rating takes out the majority of the classic Disney movies and shows. They only consider the newer CGI stuff "child-friendly".

zpeti2• 7 months ago

age rating is not how I would categorise shows.

It’s also extremely hard saying no to certain shows to my kids, and it would be much easier to just not have them there.

I’m pretty sure the politically oriented people at Disney want this to your kids watch as much of the content as possible, and especially the new ones.

fenwick67• 7 months ago

Allow me to give my anecdotal experience.

When my child was three, he really liked to watch 'spidey and his amazing friends'. But unfortunately, when he watched it he would emulate some of the bad behaviors from the show, pretend to be one of the bad guys and act out. Easy solution right, we just won't watch the show anymore, we don't leave him alone to watch TV by himself anyways.

Well, on Disney plus, you can't simply hide the show. Even if you remove it from your "recently watched" or whatever, it will show up in preview cards and search results and I'm categories. It became a big friction point, whatever he would see it he would want to watch it. And when Grandma would come over and babysit him, he would ask for it and she'd put it on for him despite our wishes.

So, since then, I've spun up a jellyfin server and ditched Disney plus. If we don't like a show we just remove it, and then it's simply not an option.

fnordlord• 7 months ago

It's even worse if your subscription is packaged with Hulu. Then all the Hulu kids stuff gets pulled in automatically, which includes all kinds of garbage that I very much do not want my daughter watching. All the YouTube-based influencer kid shows with little kids who show off new toys and extravagant vacations each episode. My only solution was to unsubscribe from Hulu, which stinks because they do have some good stuff. It really is the epitome of enshitification considering how easy it would be to implement a block button at the very least.

jameskilton• 7 months ago

My daughter will not get a phone at all until she's at least 16 and probably finally actually needs one.

As for the Switch and Nintendo Online, I didn't find it confusing or difficult at all to set up a child's account, make sure they can't buy anything without my permission, and then I make sure my daughter knows what she can and can't do, and I keep an eye on it to make sure she follows my rules. I don't trust parental controls to do everything for me.

Now that said, Minecraft on the Switch is one gawd-awful frankenstein amalgamation of permissions and accounts run by Nintendo and Microsoft. I got that working but it's by far the worst experience I've ever dealt with to play a game, even single player.

nicoburns3• 7 months ago

My parents did the no phone until 16 rule, and it was awful. Completely cut me off socially.

Someone12343• 7 months ago

The "socially" part is the problem though. A lot of bullying occurs via those social media platforms that teenagers are using.

mothballed4• 7 months ago

This is going to show how naive I am. Because I am middle aged, do not have a cell phone, and still to this day just show up at people's houses unannounced if I want a social experience.

This still is possible for me, surely it is possible for kids.

Angostura• 7 months ago

My daughter will not get a phone at all until she's at least 16 and probably finally actually needs one.

It’s all fine and dandy, until (i) you find that they’ve actually just saved up their pocket money and gifts for the last year and a half to buy the phone (age 11 in my daughter’s case) and that all the after school and weekend activities are being arranged on phones. Seeing your kids excluded from real-world activities is tough.

In our case, a combination of talking to the kids plus Apple parental controls offered a reasonable approach.

zoklet-enjoyer• 7 months ago

I had a cell phone before my parents. Paid cash for a TracFone when I was 16 or 17 and used that to sell weed. Where there's a will, there's a way.

adastra223• 7 months ago

My daughter is 14. Still no phone. You can make this work.

ecshafer• 7 months ago

My daughters are younger than that, but A lot of the neighbor girls in who are in that age range got apple watches before phones. Which kind of makes sense, because it allows them to text, but keeps them off of apps and such.

SkyPuncher3• 7 months ago

Yep. Even 20 years ago, phones were basically necessary to have a social life in high school. It’s where everything got planned.

alisonkisk• 7 months ago

HN as a population skews heavily away from "real-world peer-scheduled activities"

hnlmorg7• 7 months ago

16 is too late. You can’t teach your kids good maturity with communication devices through abstinence. You just have to watch what they do online. Which means reading their WhatsApp et al messages after they’ve gone to bed.

Yes there will be some problems created from them having devices, but parenting isn’t supposed to be easy, it’s supposed to be educational and supportive for the children. Which forced abstinence is not.

squigz6• 7 months ago

Which means reading their WhatsApp et al messages after they’ve gone to bed.

Do they know you do this? Otherwise this seems like a very effective way to create trust issues in your kids.

adastra223• 7 months ago

Yeah I’m pretty sure invading your kids privacy like that is setting you up for worse trouble.

dwb• 7 months ago

I feel sorry for your daughter. 16 was very late to get one as far back as the late 90s - I was very glad to get one at 14 as it meant I wasn’t quite such a weirdo outcast.

whythough12345• 7 months ago

I didn’t have a cell phone until I was 17, but still used the house phone to call and talk to friends. A house phone a parent can always listen in to conversations but still respect the child’s privacy. The child also knows that they can be listened in on and that their privacy is restricted.

The child may also learn about making social effort to keep in touch rather than relying on a beacon to ping them about social events.

iso16313• 7 months ago

Then you are a terrible parent and your kids will get their social activities through detention as they can't do homework.

kotaKat• 7 months ago

...It also unlocks access to the Nintendo eShop, which I cannot disable. I can set his eShop spending limit to zero, sure. But I can't block free downloads. So to let my son play online Minecraft with his friends, I have to open him up to an unrelated store full of content I can't possibly evaluate. That's the deal. Take it or leave it.

Hoooooboy you're in for a treat once you see the deals on all the weird "hentai" and "ecchi" softcore games on eShop that Nintendo let past the lotcheck process.

yunnpp• 7 months ago

And remember that this is the brand historically known for curating its game library.

losthobbies• 7 months ago

The Roblox ones are a bit of a minefield too.

I age restrict, block chat with everyone and monitor friend requests weekly. They are not allowed to play in their rooms.

Education is the biggest thing. They come to me if someone asks to be their friend. They don’t accept gifts from strangers and I explain that it’s the same as real world.

It’s a constant process that is always changing. Same as any other parenting job I suppose

AdamN• 7 months ago

Roblox is hostile to these controls - best not to even enter the ecosystem.

f1shy4• 7 months ago

Ideally (in the broad sense, meaning not realistic) is to not enter any “ecosystem”.

But yeah… easier said than done.

hackable_sand3• 7 months ago

It is strange to deny children this reality and then expect them to participate in capitalism.

Wowfunhappy2• 7 months ago

The issues with the Nintendo Switch are, I think, just Nintendo being perennially bad at anything involving the internet. Remember Friend Codes?

They've definitely gotten better, but they're still kind of living in 2008. I'm not sure why a company full of software engineers can't figure this out.

I do find it odd there's no option to outright disable the internet (except for software updates). Perhaps the best solution is to not give your child the wifi password? Or for a more technical solution, block the Switch's MAC address in the router.

Macha• 7 months ago

I'm not sure why a company full of hardware and software engineers still can't figure this out.

Seeing other Japanese companies account systems (Square Enix and Rakuten, for example), the only conclusion I can draw is that the Japanese dev industry does not consider clear account management to be important.

floundy3• 7 months ago

Nintendo really has no incentive to improve. They make money hand over fist selling half-baked titles to their combined market of actual undiscerning children, and rabid fanboy manchildren who will praise any first party Nintendo title as a 10/10 every single time.

Wowfunhappy2• 7 months ago

...I mean. I would argue the reason they make money hand over fist is because (most!) of their games aren't half baked, at all.

datajanko2• 7 months ago

I'm stuck with my son not able to play minecraft from his nintendo account anymore though it used to work. I'm just getting an unhelpful error message and all permissions should be enough. Parental control is a joke. Deezer has kids accounts but you can just switch to another account. Spotify kids was a joke when I used it, poor discoverability, poor cataloge specifically if you care about childrens audio books.

Google family link is also kinda weird. As a parent I don't want to restrict the time per app or total usage time. I want to limit usage of a group of apps. E.g. i don't want to limit spotify but I want to limit the total play time of certain games.

So I agree with the sentiment of the post. But maybe I should consider the route from my child hood: unrestricted access. At least I know, in contrast to my parents, what is out there.

alasdairking• 7 months ago

Try the XBox app on your phone, I managed to find settings there once that unlocked Minecraft.

I'd like a flag for messaging apps called "turn off images and video". Sure, my kid might get called nasty names in plain text, but would not get beheading or bestiality videos or underage schoolmate pics.

awakeasleep2• 7 months ago

God that would be sweet. Especially if it was controlled at the OS level.

datajanko2• 7 months ago

Thanks for the hint, but wasn't able to make it work yet.

spicyusername2• 7 months ago

This is such a sore spot for me.

Technology is amazing and I want to raise my children in such a way that they learn to use it to improve and enrich their lives.

Video games are amazing. Art has never been easier to create. Being able to spend time with your friends when they are not physically present is incredible. There are so many great podcasts for children.

But silicon valley seems directly opposed to enabling the best technology uses without also requiring exposure to the worst.

Please, can I just let my son listen to music when he goes to bed without also being forced to expose him to some off-brand tiktok hamfisted haphazardly into the app with no way to disable.

Can I let him watch great YouTube channels without the feed automatically funneling him towards absolute garbage.

Something as simple as per app time limits are seemingly impossible for Google or Apple to implement.

It's exhausting to navigate when you don't want to be draconian and just ban everything out right, as if that's even realistic.

veonik• 7 months ago

Not sure about Google but Apple has per-app time limits, per-app type time limits, overall screen time limits, time of day limits, parental review before app install, parental review before purchases can be made, etc. I've found it to be quite robust in managing my kids' access to the internet.

spicyusername2• 7 months ago

I'll have to look into that, thanks

junto• 7 months ago

I’m continually impressed by my 12 year old son’s ability to get around those restrictions. He recently got around his time limit with Brawl Stars by having his friends sending him Brawl Stars view links via WhatsApp. This opens links using Safari’s underlying engine (SFSafariViewController), which does not get considered by the safari app time block.

jopsen• 7 months ago

As a kid I always hated it when parents/schools locked things down. Getting free of the parental controls becomes a game.

So I've never imagined myself wanting to do parental controls. But I might change my mind when my kid is old enough to play with screens.

hnlmorg7• 7 months ago

I really want to sympathise with the author but this feels more like a one-sided rant piece than a constructive article.

For example, in one paragraph they complain that “I don’t want my son to get online” then literally the following paragraph they complain that they need a Switch Online membership to get their son online. If you want your Nintendo Switch to “behave like a Gameboy” then don’t get the online membership. It’s really that simple. But don’t complain that one is required to do this other thing than you literally just said you didn’t want to do.

I do agree that managing parental controls are painful. But the author clearly wrote their blog in a moment of rage and as a result of that, any useful messaging that could have been shared was lost.

Aurornis4• 7 months ago

I agree. As a parent it feels hard to sympathize with someone who outsourced their child’s app usage selection to another company and didn’t even bother to check what apps were allowed first. I visited the Gabb site they linked to and “Communication with strangers” is clearly listed as one of the tags they put on apps allowed on the phone. You’re supposed to review them as a parent, not just assume that 100% of the nearly 1000 apps they allow are exactly to your preferences.

mjg25• 7 months ago

I agree. Parents in the 21st century need to realize the call is coming from inside the house: it's their obligation to protect their child. Unsupervised usage without full due-diligence will lead to incidents like what the blog author describes.

The dilemma of online protection is a false crisis because parents would rather let their children play with fire than nurture their babies.

JeremyNT• 7 months ago

My daughter has always used a normal low end Android phone with the default parental controls. She only installs what I whitelist. It's really not that much effort.

Honestly, maybe the Gabb Phone marketing is lulling users into a false sense of security. If you still have to do the same legwork as the default Android experience, what's the point of their devices?

vorpalhex2• 7 months ago

The issue is that the kid wants to play a game with his friends.

So that is "online" in the sense that it uses the internet.. but it isn't the same as a web browser, or an open store of every online app.

I run game servers for my nephew. I know he only adds his friends and I can keep a loose eye on them. I don't care if his friends talk about boobs or make penis jokes (they're 14), I only care that there aren't any predators.

This is a clear and meaningful distinction and it doesn't sound supported.

Ukv• 7 months ago

The issue is that the kid wants to play a game with his friends [...] This is a clear and meaningful distinction and it doesn't sound supported.

Clear how it could restrict to friends-only when connecting directly to another Nintendo Switch user, but a bit murky how it'd make that determination in cases like Minecraft where the client is connecting to a cross-platform user-hosted game server that is not associated with any Nintendo/Microsoft account.

Could work if you have the parents manually whitelist specific server IPs, as they could with router/firewall, though not sure if "could you whitelist 209.216.230.207 please?" would present a meaningful choice in most cases.

beasthacker• 7 months ago

Yes, this is exactly the distinction I was struggling to articulate.

“Online” has collapsed into a single bucket that includes friends-only play, strangers, stores, chat, downloads, etc. What I want (and what you’re describing with running servers) is a way to scope online access: friends-only communication, no discovery, no stores, no strangers.

The frustrating part is that many platforms either (a) force these things to come as a bundle, so saying “yes” to playing with friends implicitly says “yes” to a much larger surface area; or (b) make the unbundling process so complex that well-meaning parents fail and exhausted parents give up.

jonathaneunice put the incentives behind this more sharply than I did here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46465547

floundy3• 7 months ago

I’m assuming the author was thinking Minecraft with the kid’s friends would be Peer2Peer or something. I doubt Switch has the power to host a Minecraft server, but I might be wrong.

See Smash, which is entirely Peer2Peer for the main gameplay, but requires a Switch Online membership to play for… what exactly? Hosting a database of player ratings and using it for matchmaking? There’s probably one server rack on each continent running the entirety of Smash online.

xg153• 7 months ago

Not a child, but I have a Switch myself and I held off for a long time getting a membership. Of course you can do it, but the Switch will put up lots of passive aggressive roadblocks where it will let you know that you could use this additional feature in the game now if you just had a membership.

There are also unreasonable restrictions, like not being able to play user-created maps in Mario Maker unless you have a membership.

natnatenathan• 7 months ago

Part of the point is that you cannot use it without it being online. This is a big difference between the Switch and Switch 2.

exitb• 7 months ago

In what sense? I have a Switch 2 without NSO and it does not allow online play. It also, in the default configuration, needs to authenticate before even entering the online shop. In that scope, it doesn’t even need to have any parental controls.

PaulHoule3• 7 months ago

Generally I worry about online gaming.

I played a lot of Titanfall back in the day and had a lot of reservations about talking with other people's kids. Nothing really bad happened, and I had a lot of fun, but it was creepy.

I kinda enjoy that the matchmaker rooms in Beat Saber only allow you to emote with large body gestures and not say anything or even make hand gestures. I enjoy acting like a cartoon character to honor and recognize the other players (like choosing the song that I really hate because another player has asked for it five times in a row) and not getting involved in the mean bullshit you get in games like League of Legends. (It's fun to be in a private room with 2 or more players too where you can chat but then you are talking with people you picked which in my case are nice people)

My son and his friend created a new game called "the kick game" inside a certain online game where the real game was to trick the other players into kicking out other players that they didn't like or wanted to bully -- frequently the victims didn't understand the rules of this game at all. On Roblox they would find racist games where you cut down thousands of Zulu, just awful stuff.

Not to say I haven't had a good time with serious League players who communicate on Discord and have a positive team but I think communication features and UGC are often a disaster in games.

iamnothere4• 7 months ago

Yes, this parent seems to assume that all parents want the same restrictions. The reason that managing this stuff is complicated is that you actually have to think about what restrictions you want (if any), understand the implications, and then set options to achieve those restrictions. A surprising number of people aren’t willing to do that! They would rather tell companies “parent my children correctly” and then sue as soon as the company’s vision of “safety” doesn’t line up with their own.

In a country where you have parents with wildly different ideas about what constitutes “safety”, I have no idea why anyone thinks it is possible to set a single standard for this.

VladVladikoff• 7 months ago

I appreciated it for the tone and rage. I’m not so concerned with the actual technology being discussed here, but rather the overwhelming exhaustion that we are all subjected to in managing our household devices. Not just parental controls, but privacy and ad blocking, or self hosting, etc. it all takes so much work and effort that we rarely have the time for i. Our already exhausting lives. I feel the rant perfectly captured that feeling. It was a worthy post.

dosman33• 7 months ago

It's not an accident that its so hard to get this stuff right, I've heard countless stories like this from friends who are parents.

If the market wanted parents to be able to figure this out it would be getting it right. It's obviously a dark pattern that benefits everyone but the parents and their children. If more people stopped to think deeper about this they would and should be very disturbed by what this means.

immibis2• 7 months ago

And yet whenever the idea of changing this stuff at a societal level comes up, HN is filled with thought-deleting cries of "parents just need to be more responsible"

squigz6• 7 months ago

Usually when those discussions come up, there are plenty of people recognizing both that 1) parents do need to be more responsible, but also that 2) we need sane parental control systems. What we don't need is more bandaids that make it appear as if something is being done.

throwway1203855• 7 months ago

Yeah -- alongside cries of "why isn't anyone having children anymore?"

toss15• 7 months ago

Exactly

>"Here's what I want: an off switch. A single setting that says "this child cannot go online, communicate with strangers, spend money, or download anything without my explicit permission." Instead I get a maze, complex enough that when something goes wrong, I'm at fault for a tooltip I didn't hover over, a blog post I didn't read, a submenu I didn't find. Maybe that's by design. Maybe it's neglect. I don't know. "

When it happens only a few times, it might be neglect. This is absolutely by design.

And think again if you think any large corporation (beyond a few isolated individuals who will not be employed there for long) has any actual concern for your safety, or to get anything right beyond an appearance of safety and plausible deniability for the inevitable harm caused by their dark patterns.

The only winning move is not to play. Don't play and write about how awful it is. Send them the only message that they will hear. Stop giving them your money.

unloader6118• 7 months ago

When it happens only a few times, it might be neglect. This is absolutely by design.

Not sure if I want to call it by design.

It is not a dark pattern, it is just "what is the minimum we can do to sell this without doing the curation work?"

baq4• 7 months ago

Send them the only message that they will hear. Stop giving them your money.

Second order effects of this solution are not great either - being outside of the smartphone world means you're... outside. Network effects quickly push you out of social groups without neither you nor the group doing anything mean, it's just group dynamics.

The real issue is the device and services come in a package which cannot be separated or compartmentalized. It's basically impossible to say 'this device cannot access youtube/pornhub/...' because there's a million ways to get around restrictions.

alex-moon• 7 months ago

I should guess it is about liability more than anything else. They want to advertise and sell to children, but they don't want to be taken to court about it. Makes a tonne of sense from a profit perspective, especially as people under ~25 years of age are more susceptible to impulsivity and addiction due to the developing prefrontal cortex. From a sales perspective, the younger the better (as any parent can confirm).

basket_horse• 7 months ago

I disagree. I think it is an “accident” that stems from organizations rather than anything sinister.

Companies generally want good parental controls, but let’s face it, it’s not the cash cow or particularly interesting.

This leads to understaffed teams of b-list developers with high churn, hence the overly confusing and half-baked features.

pavel_lishin• 7 months ago

I would easily believe that Apple, Google, Microsoft, etc., explicitly staff these teams with childless adults.

ToucanLoucan• 7 months ago

Parental controls and accessibility both suffer from the fact that they are good features to add but fundamentally do not drive revenue. They only exist in the average as much as is required by regulation.

No business would build wheelchair ramps unless they were made to, that's why we make them. There's no reason to not do the same for parental controls.

rafaelmn2• 7 months ago

It's nearly impossible to block YouTube on a smart TV without third party apps, even worse on non-android ones. And the app is not uninstallable. I don't think this is b-tier devs, feels like intentionall neglect.

hulitu• 7 months ago

Companies generally want good parental controls

Yeah, like Microsoft requesting that Firefox shall be (parentally) reviewed, while Edge happilly could connect to internet. Fixed by creating a local account.

fpauser2• 7 months ago

Companies generally want good parental controls

Nope, parental controls are fucked up since ages. And this is by design, and not because of some "b-list developers".

texuf• 7 months ago

I've seen this first hand and yes, it's not sinister, getting dozens of services coordinated and permissioned under a single, easy to use, system is too much cognitive load for the team that inevitably gets tasked to do these things. Think about Privileged Access Management or Active Directory, but an 8 year old has to get it to work with a stay at home mom's 5 year old android device, and the PM's working on it can't think through second order effects (or even first order effects sometimes). And of course anything that negatively affects metrics will get rolled back (that part might be sinister).

iamnothere4• 7 months ago

Maybe companies could set up comprehensive granular APIs for managing device/store permissions and outsource the parental control software that actually manages the settings. This way a vendor is getting paid to make those settings comprehensible and effective, so they have an incentive to do it well. This would also allow conservative/overly cautious parents to buy different software than more permissive parents. So everyone gets the permission model they want.

Jesus_piece• 7 months ago

It is sinister that this is overlooked by corporations by “accident”. What you are describing exactly what is sinister, that children’s safety controls and parents ability to decrease the risk comes last.

If more people stopped to think deeper about this they would and should be very disturbed by what this means.

x0x0• 7 months ago

Well, this is the company that builds Teams.

One axis is if they even want to make parental controls work, which they may well not want to but rather wish to just check some checkboxes.

But the company that builds Teams and Windows 11: I think it's entirely plausible they can't.

tempodox• 7 months ago

In the absence of consumer protection laws, this kind of abuse is to be expected.

epiccoleman5• 7 months ago

I identify with so much of what's in this article - especially the rage that has the author giving serious, coldblooded thought to just destroying the Switch.

The Minecraft stuff in particular reads like some kind of standup comedy bit where the joke is that the joke goes on way too long. It is genuinely insane what it takes to get a kid online these days, to the point where I honestly don't know how families without some poor technical sadsap can even manage to get it done.

I find it particularly infuriating that Nintendo - who are supposed to be the "family friendly" gaming company, and who lock down a lot of things in variously annoying ways, seems to offer no way to block or disable the Youtube app.

The way this stuff is handled in my house (and let me be clear that this is extremely imperfect) is that I block Youtube and various other sites at the network level. This is really not a total solution - there are many good reasons for the kids to get on Youtube and so I'm often asked to open the gates for a while. Threading the needle in a manner that allows my kids to get the benefits of the net without the huge number of downsides is virtually impossible.

krosaen2• 7 months ago

Assuming you go down the path of allowing online anything, seems like, after doing your best with parental controls, the most effective thing is time boxing screen usage. Only so much can happen in, say, 2-3 30 minute sessions throughout the day, and the chances of a kid deciding to blow their precious minutes responding to some random person seems much lower than if bored and checking messages idly. Being nearby during a healthy sample of sessions to have a pulse on what's going on helps too - usually pretty obvious what they are doing.

But I share the frustration of the author with how unreliable the controls are. Apple screen time controls routinely stop working - especially the one that only allows access to a finite list of websites. I need to check the browser history every week or so to confirm it is still working, and do some dance where I turn off controls, reboot, then turn back on every once in a while. The reason this particular control is important to me is that, even starting with something as pure as neil.fun, ads on that site have proven to be a few clicks away from semi-pornographic sites - it's terrible! And yet, turning off all internet access is such a coarse decision that limits access to things that are generally informational / fun / good (like neil.fun, or sports facts sites).

Descon• 7 months ago

neil.fun is porn ads

neal.fun is what I think you meant to link

antonymoose• 7 months ago

Well that’s a bit ironic in regards to the pro-Parental Controls argument. Pornography is just a typo away…

krosaen2• 7 months ago

Ha whoops. But yes, the ads on the neal site I meant to link to had the aforementioned problem

jonathaneunice• 7 months ago

The complexity and frustration are in no way accidental. A carefully designed, obfuscated, and Byzantined process designed for exactly this effect.

You're supposed to be so beaten down, so utterly depleted of will, that you just cave. [...] You disable a bunch of parental controls you don't really understand. You let your kid play his damn game. You become the ideal customer.

Exactly so. Parental controls, privacy settings, permission to show ads and collect infinite tracking data… The machine is working exactly as intended. Maybe there are sentiments that "the parents should have some control" and maybe there are some laws about protecting children or protecting consumer privacy. But hey, what if actually using any of those mechanisms was mind-bendingly difficult and annoying? What if your control were only available downstairs, in the unlighted cellar, at the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying "Beware of the Leopard." We'd still be in compliance, right? Heh heh. Yeah. That's the ticket!

f1shy4• 7 months ago

Reminds me when Facebook added “privacy” controls, that were virtually impossible to find, difficult to understand, and confusing to give a false sense of security.

atoav2• 7 months ago

When I grew up my parents literally had no understanding of what the internet was, nor what I was doing on it. That wasn't a problem because all the rest of the upbringing they did prepared me well to handle every situation I encountered there. There approach was to let me and my brothers learn early how to judge situations and risk ourselves and trusted us to set those boundaries ourselves.

This meant while other kids were constantly insecure how to handle a specific situation, we knew quite well (in comparison) what was totally harmless and where you had to get careful. Thus we were the only kids who jumped into water from bridges, but also the only kids in my village who never broke any bone during our entire childhood.

If you want your kid to be safe, isn't the best way to do it to teach your kid how to make the decision what is safe themselves? Otherwise they have to always rely on a parents (or other figures of authority) to make that judgment for them. But the parents aren't always around and if they call everything unsafe, potentially nothing is.

weli• 7 months ago

I agree with you so much. Great parenting is education, not restriction. I don't want my kid to not talk to strangers because I told him its something bad that you shouldn't do. He won't talk to strangers because he understands the implications and what can happen.

A kid with no education and restricted access will just find a way to do whatever he wants to do. A kid with good education and unrestricted access will know to steer away from bad stuff and talk to adults when he finds something strange.

One of the proudest moments of my grandfather (in my household, he was the most tech savy) was when I found a way to "bypass" an restriction program around age 11. From then on he decided I "outgrew" this kind of limits and just gave me unlimited access to the family computer and the internet.

But years later he confessed, the "click" moment for him was not that I could bypass the restriction, but that I trusted him enough to show him and that I self-reported the situation. And this is pure education and has nothing to do with restrictions.

I read so many parents here that want to "educate" their children but want to offload that work to some service or program instead of putting the work in. You prefer spending 5 hours configuring your child's nintendo switch rather than sitting down with him for 1 hour to explain to him what he can encounter on the internet, how he should behave and react and building the bond needed for him to trust you enough to come to you when needed.

atoav2• 7 months ago

The thing many parents get wrong about education is to think that the kid learns what you tell it. You tell the kid X is dangerous, so now the kid learned X is dangerous. That is not how it works at all. What the kid learns is that it can't be trusted to judge danger itself, since always when it tries to do something itself found okay a panicked adult will tell it this was dangerous.

The lesson isn't the meaning of the words you say to your kids, the lesson is how what you say relates to them and what they observe you doing. And this isn't just about this example of traching them to make a sound judgement, this can be expanded to nearly every educational problem one could have with their kid.

E.g. extremely commonly you will find kids who develop bad behavior despite their parents "telling them not to" will not only witness the bad behavior by their parents, but will be ignored, ridiculed, disrespected or mistrusted whenever they do in fact behave well.

And it all boils down to the simple notion that you can't just tell your kid a thing and expect that to be the lesson.

kgwxd• 7 months ago

My 17 yo, and me, are still suffering for poor account choices I made when he was young. My 10 yo will only ever have to remember his birth year is the same as mine when asked in regards to any of his accounts created by me.

lucumo• 7 months ago

Family Link is kind of funny like that as well. As a parent you can limit which apps your child can use, and even how long they can use them. My child is above the age we can monitor their every move, but they're below the age where we can trust they won't spend all day playing games when they need to study. So that feature is nice.

Except you have to allow the Google app. And you have to allow it unrestricted time. That's not all that bad yet, though not great. The annoying thing is that Google loves their little easter eggs. So the child is procrastinating by playing Pacman, Snake, that stupid Dino run game, and what not. Courtesy of the makers of the parental controls.

mfld• 7 months ago

Similarly, the Play Store cannot be limited and so for a kid it's easy to spend time on promotional app videos there. So the app limits are mostly useless, since you have to fully lock the phone to disable this.

fn-mote• 7 months ago

Dear All,

As you post, please be clear what age range child you are discussing.

There are a lot of posts here advocating strategies that make sense for a 10 year old but are ridiculous for a 15 year old.

Remember: once the children have friends with unrestricted cell phones (essentially all 14+ year olds in the us), there are many many more options for them to go online.

Also, I got my start as a “hacker” gaming, cheating, and doing less legal stuff … nothing like getting level 99 equipment to incentivize learning how to read/edit a hex dump. Be aware of unintended consequences when you (try to) cut a child off from computer use.

Having been involved with a reasonable number of problems, I’d say in the teen years negotiating and enforcing some kind of no-device sleep schedule is the most critical.

If I had an answer to the rest of the addictive behavior, I wouldn’t be here making this post.

darkwater• 7 months ago

Also, I got my start as a “hacker” gaming, cheating, and doing less legal stuff … nothing like getting level 99 equipment to incentivize learning how to read/edit a hex dump. Be aware of unintended consequences when you (try to) cut a child off from computer use.

Yes, but no. I used to think the same, coming from the same background, and sometimes I still do but back in the day there was a big filter already (not everyone wanted or liked videogames or a PC), and we were not terminally online. Plus, for the average HNer there is a big survivorship bias on these topics because "I went earning 6 figures thanks to my experiences with computers back in the day".

Nowadays almost everyone has access to an Internet connected smartphone, owning it is not a feature in itself anymore and the vast majority are not entertained trying to hack it. So it becomes something just like any other thing relates to children/teenagers: use common sense, adapt to your kids behavior, strengths and weaknesses and don't stick to rigid rules proposed by someone else that doesn't know you, but keep those rules in mind as an inspiration.

sneak3• 7 months ago

Why would a 15 year old warrant a mobile phone, much less an unrestricted one?

LanceH3• 7 months ago

By high school there is definitely an expectation that everyone has a phone. They will literally miss out on a normal method of communication between friends and classmates.

They miss out on the social group and then fade away from it and just become "that one guy in our class."

The last time I mentioned this several people argued that, "true friends would stick together" or some such. Well, if you already have those friends. But if you're in high school and finding yourself, you probably haven't met all of them yet.

A lot of both communication and organizing of social events happen through the phone. Kids without a phone (or some online method) will just be forgotten. This is just the reality.

Unrestricted access? That depends on the kid. We had them charge in the living room (no overnight use), and their computers were actual desktops in a single office in the house.

We never used filtering or tracking software. The one exception was blocking youtube (through /etc/hosts) for my youngest during covid when it was too big a distraction.

theshrike79• 7 months ago

Not having a phone will most likely make your child a social pariah.

They MIGHT be one of the few hyper-social ones that thrives despite being left out of online circles but they are the exception.

watwut3• 7 months ago

Cause practically speaking, school requires that. They will pointificate about devices, but simultaneously create rules that make them necessary.

iamnothere4• 7 months ago

While I agree that being this age doesn’t automatically warrant having a smartphone, any kid who has an allowance can buy a bargain-basement Android phone to use over wifi. And smartphones are very concealable.

(IMHO, once a kid has figured out how to do this, they have earned the privilege. It’s part of growing up.)

A responsible and forward-thinking parent could provide a Graphene OS smartphone if the kid absolutely insists on having one, to limit the privacy damage.

patmorgan23• 7 months ago

You think a high school freshman shouldn't have a cell phone? Their friends a year older are driving and they may want to do activities with them, and it's a good idea they have a reliable means of communication to their parents in case they need to come pick them up.

mjg25• 7 months ago

With due respect, this comment conveys a position of privilege and surviver's bias. I, like you, eschewed online rules as a minor and I luckily benefitted from this time in my expertise. I was lucky. I didn't run into predators when using TF2, Runescape, or MySpace, but that doesn't mean the threat wasn't validated on with persons (children at the time) that fell through the cracks.

The story outlined, one of a child prodigy solo-navigating the gritty online world of pre-2000's, is old and tired. An active parent can support a child at all ages safely in these "hacker" moments that are described without giving them un-reined access to tools. A parent should be able to ask "how was your day today?" and get a truthful answer about online activity, just like the same question being asked at the end of the school day. It's out of curiosity and protection, and from a nurtured relationship.

michaelmrose• 7 months ago

If your kid lies you might not get a truthful answer to that question in person or online.

You are actually expecting a lot from devices that you never had in the real world in the first place in order to mitigate a risk that is very scary but less likely to kill them than drugs and alcohol, swimming, bad driving, biking, getting hit by a car whilst walking, getting shot, or suicide.

People are freaking out over stranger danger not because it is by the numbers prevalent but because they feel like they can control it then find out the controls suck.

What if I started Bikesafe an always online dash cam / coach for your rider where AI would identify unsafe behaviour and coach your kid and virtually eliminate bike deaths. Would you feel more safe?

What if you read again and again that it didn't work because of how many accidents are caused by drivers or momentary mistakes.

Would you feel only as unsafe as before or worse?

mystraline3• 7 months ago

In reality, the whole "stranger danger" is way overblown and always has been. Most of the time, sexual predators are going to be either family or friends.

https://rainn.org/facts-statistics-the-scope-of-the-problem/...

93% of victims under 18 know their abuser.

Sure there's 7% thats not, but a significant supermajority is family/friends. 59% were acquaintances, and 34% are family.

Edit: seriously, -1 cause I link to actual facts, rather than shitty emotional outbursts? Family and friends of family have always been the major list of suspects for child sex abuse. They're the ones who have time and access.

But somehow linking to cited facts is -1 central. Sigh.

PaulHoule3• 7 months ago

I was one of those kids. I got a 300 baud modem the year after Wargames came out. It was a whole different world.

My wife and I disagreed about letting my son have my old desktop replacement laptop at a young age. Of course I said yes, based on my own experience, but my wife turned out to be right in the end. He got into some pretty dark places and the toxic relationships he developed with other people his age were bad enough and the trouble he got into was real and not hypothetical.

He's turned it around and is getting the support to do well relative to his Gen Z peers, but it took some harrowing experiences to get there.

xg153• 7 months ago

Parent: All I want is an off switch!

HN: No no no let me stop you right there

hexbin010• 7 months ago

Why are you addressing HN like a headmaster addressing schoolchildren?

lo_zamoyski• 7 months ago

The main point of childhood is to develop a solid basic humanity with good habits and a good moral compass. That means moral, intellectual, spiritual, and physical development. Good parenting and a good social environment support these. As such, these goods should be prioritized.

We know that children and teenagers are vulnerable to all sorts of filth that the internet makes available very easily, and indeed even inflicts without consent onto users. Porn, for example, was something that was more difficult to encounter before the internet, and when you did encounter it, it was in smaller amounts. Today, you are a URL away from an unlimited sea of it, and the ubiquity of mobile devices means restricting access is difficult. This makes parenting more challenging. And that's a more pernicious even if common problem. Social media and SFV cause all sorts of developmental harm without suffering the same stigmas as pornography or violence, and so its use continue with the full approval of the social environment.

(And age range here is not so important to discuss; pornography consumption and social media/SFV use is bad for everyone, including adults.)

Be aware of unintended consequences when you (try to) cut a child off from computer use.

A corollary of what I wrote about is that you have to understand what matters. Becoming a "hacker" isn't the priority of childhood, and it's odd to prioritize that. It isn't worth anything if you are left screwed up by consuming bad content. (Nor does most of the most fruitful experimentation require constant and unfettered internet access. Without maturity and discipline, the internet easily becomes an enabler of shallow and superficial engagement. Deeper exploration is often best facilitated by disconnecting.) It's also senseless to appeal to exceptions.

However, I do think that the most important factor isn't parental controls, but the family environment, what parents teach their children, and the social groups your family and your children move around in. If parents are relying on technology as a substitute for their job as parents, then children will easily fall prey to all sorts of trash. But if children have parents who communicate clearly what they should and should not be doing, maintain a healthy and active family life, and model good behavior by example while penalizing bad behavior, then children will generally stick to good behaviors.

I think law has an important role to play. The former should support the latter. And more fundamentally, this requires a certain backtracking from the anything goes/do what feels good ethos of the contemporary moral landscape. Moral confusion is the biggest factor. Law is effectively a determination of general moral principles within certain socially and culturally concrete circumstances. As the old expression goes, lex iniusta non est lex (an unjust law is not a law). The point of the law is to guard the common good (which is what makes a society) and help steer people away from the bad and toward the good. We all need these to live good lives, and we need to finally put to rest the pernicious notion that the law is not about moral guidance and that all it exists for is to secure our "rights" to whatever we want, where the understanding of rights entails a destructive do what thou wilt relativism. True freedom is not the ability to do whatever you damn well please. It is the ability to do what is good, and to be able to do the good, one must be virtuous - a proper formation - that enables you to be good. Vice cripples our ability to be. A legal system and a society that is supportive of virtue and the good is good for its individual members. One that embraces a bullshit "neutrality" is an easy target for predatory exploitation. There is a great deal of money to be made from vice and stupidity. We become morally defenseless in the face of the wolves. Might becomes right, and in a culture of moral relativism, we internalize this tyrannical false principle.

micromacrofoot2• 7 months ago

and I was groomed and raped at age 13 because I had unfettered access to AOL chat rooms

caution is necessary and kids can learn plenty without unrestricted access

I personally would have been better off without internet access, no knowledge of hex dumps would have been worth it. It's a little upsetting that you're using that as an example of why kids should have more permissive access.

DebugDruid3• 7 months ago

You blame unfettered access to AOL chat, I blame your parents for giving you internet access and not teaching you to never share your real name or real address online. Mine taught me that early on. Later, I learned about proxies so I could further hide my approximate IP location from danger.

Bluecobra3• 7 months ago

Be aware of unintended consequences when you (try to) cut a child off from computer use.

In the mid 90’s I got my first PC when I was 13 but my parents would not let me online. I ended up finding a way via nefarious means. I bought a 25’ telephone cord from Radio Shack and when my parents weren’t home I would unplug their bedroom phone. I discovered that if I ran the Prodigy installer it would connect to the Internet briefly to download the latest phone numbers in my area. I found that I could alt-tab out of the full screen installer and use the lnternet unfiltered for about 10 minutes or so before they kicked me off. This worked for about a year or so.

I then had to resort to stealing my parent’s credit card and signing up for free trials and cancelling them before the charges incurred. I eventually screwed up big time. I downloaded a “free porn” BBS dialer and it made an international call to South America and ran up the phone bill $300 or so. I lost my computer privileges for a couple of months. I guess the silver lining was when I turned 16, I immediately got a job and my drivers license so I could pay for my own phone line. I kept my grades up to maintain privileges and was a straight arrow since.

tolerance• 7 months ago

This was a tough read. On one end I want to hold this parent accountable...and he should be held accountable for any negligence on his part. As noted, Gabb does indicate that GroupMe facilitates communication with strangers. Because, well, it’s a messaging app like any other.

I don’t want to digress too far, but you know what I had when I was young and wanted to talk about books? Libraries. That’s beside the point but somewhere is a point to be made and I don’t want to pry into this man’s personal life beyond what he’s already shared about this ugly experience. But I imagine that few things can deter a predator like a swarm of librarians.

“I could almost hear the crack. Could almost see that OLED display splintering into a thousand pieces. The little Joy-Cons skittering across the floor. My son's face. My wife's face. The stunned silence.”

He should've broken the Switch. Anyone who’s ever destroyed electronics knows how cathartic it is. Men are only afforded so many opportunities to display healthy acts of aggression in front of their wives and children. Of course never towards them.

“What I did was announce, in a voice louder than necessary, that nobody was to ask me about anything Minecraft-related on the Nintendo Switch for a minimum of two weeks.”

I suppose that’ll do.

“Here's what I want: an off switch. A single setting that says "this child cannot go online, communicate with strangers, spend money, or download anything without my explicit permission." Instead I get a maze, complex enough that when something goes wrong, I'm at fault for a tooltip I didn't hover over, a blog post I didn't read, a submenu I didn't find. Maybe that's by design. Maybe it's neglect. I don't know.

What I know is this. My son just wants to play video games and talk to his friends. I just want to keep him safe. Somewhere between those two things, I'm supposed to become an expert in the convoluted parental control schemes of Gabb, Nintendo, Microsoft, and Xbox, while a stranger's Christmas morning texts sit in my son's phone history.”

Again. It’s easy for me to blame this dude because I live in a world where this sort of scenario is wholly unlikely and to a great degree his experience explains why that is the case for me. But this story was too well put together. I never thought that a curl one liner and a bash script could emote a form of anger that I empathize with so readily.

I hope this inspires him to question the extent to which he’s relegated parental controls in other areas, if it’s at all the case elsewhere. Either destroy them or set firmer boundaries and raise your expectations for yourself and whatever third parties he sees fit to be held responsible for his household and their affairs. It may take another 12 years or so...but your sons should thank you if you’re successful.

martin-t• 7 months ago

I don't mean to sound like the stereotypical "I did X and turned out fine" but...

I grew up with an internet access on my computer in my room without anybody watching over my back and without any restrictions and nothing bad really happened. Meanwhile these days some people around me with children around the 10-15 range seem think their children cannot be trusted and restrictions are absolutely essential.

Has the internet really changed that much in the last decade or two? Or are people and media just talking about the dangers more?

---

Also, what happens to these kids when they reach adulthood and the guard rails come off?

Has anybody tried an alternative like teaching children about the actual dangers, how to recognize manipulation, etc? I have a feeling many people (including children) don't really learn unless they get hurt so the best we can do it making sure they do get hurt but only a little.

E.g. let them get scammed in a game instead of real life. Or pretend to be a stranger and try to befriend them, seeing if they fall for it?

immibis2• 7 months ago

The internet has changed incredibly in the last two decades, and has almost nothing in common with the internet of two decades ago. Predators of all varieties are everywhere; many of them are billion-dollar companies. Scams are everywhere.

Getting scammed in RuneScape is probably a good learning experience, but is RuneScape still the only game that's like the old experience of RuneScape? That and Minecraft I suppose, but you can't really filter out servers in Minecraft.

eYrKEC24• 7 months ago

I think the difference is that the parents of today are _you_. _They_ grew up with unrestricted internet access, because their parents didn't.

I think that pornography is poison and my parents didn't know that I had access to it. "Not my kid!", they said. But my generation says, "It's every. single. kid."

Has anybody tried an alternative like teaching children about the actual dangers, how to recognize manipulation, etc?

Another poison is alcohol. Some people think that letting their kids access alcohol in their house is reasonable. I think it is better to wait until your brain is more developed before trying alcohol. First experiences with alcohol at a later age tends to enable people to have a less worse relationship with alcohol.

ball_of_lint3• 7 months ago

Yes, the internet has changed that much.

https://www.wired.com/story/youtube-for-kids-videos-problems...

Lots of people are in this thread saying "ah, just tell your children not to get groomed / not to watch disturbing content". They're kids. They are going to disobey their parents. There's no one here arguing we don't need to teach kids these things. But, like how when you're learning to drive you start in a parking lot with a crappy car, we need a way to make a relatively safe place for them to learn. Parental controls are currently failing to do that.

Furthermore, where you and I and median commenter on HN might be an engaged, attentive parent, there's lots of parents out there who are not. Having a good, easy-to-setup version of these controls that a less engaged parent will actually turn on would make a positive impact on those children who aren't receiving the teaching you suggest.

ball_of_lint3• 7 months ago

Or pretend to be a stranger and try to befriend them, seeing if they fall for it?

That seems like a great way to destroy any trust in you your child might have.

alembic_fumes• 7 months ago

This pervasive desire to block, protect, monitor, and control your children's online activities through nebulous supervision tools seems like a particularly American solution to a particularly American problem. Much like how little Timmy simply can't go out to play without a GPS anklet and an air tag behind each ear, so too can't he go online without a supervised account on a supervised device on a supervised connection.

Take an earnest interest in your child's activities, both online and offline. Guide them how to behave in strange, even weird and scary situations with strangers. Be the reliable adult in their life to whom they can tell when they encounter something unpleasant, online or offline. Under the guidance of a parent your children will be safer than behind any amount of protective layers that these so called child-safety apps provide, and they will also know how to help their friends to navigate risk and avoid danger.

Or put another way, if your child must eventually swim in the sea, would rather that they know how to swim, or strap a fifth flotation device onto their back?

TimTheTinker3• 7 months ago

Europeans have trouble understanding in part because social trust is still high in many parts of Europe due to regional monoculturalism.

carlosjobim• 7 months ago

"Horrific betrayal..."

Online grooming happens on a gigantic scale in Europe. It just doesn't get the headlines it should. And parents don't care to protect their children. They're busy.

amtamt• 7 months ago

While this is a sound theoritical advice, the real world has changed a lot. Parents and elder siblings are not the only people kids interact with. For every parent mindful of dangers of unsupervised internet access, there are many parents who give unrestricted access to tiktok (and rest of the internet) because everyone other person does that, and then kids share.

Businesses don't care for the careful minority when they know such advices will be shared, silencing those who really care.

Even the feature name "parental control" is chosen to induce guilt in parents.

Aurornis4• 7 months ago

to a particularly American problem

The Internet and mobile phones are not a particularly American problem. They’re literally everywhere.

armchairhacker• 7 months ago

Some kids only need the honor system, but others, especially younger ones, need hard restrictions. If the parent is reasonable and the kid grows up smart, they’ll be thankful later, which is why kids also get restricted offline.

Rough analogies:

- Not letting kids buy unlimited candy ~ not giving them unlimited screen time

- Preventing your kid from interacting with “bad” kids or going into unsafe neighborhoods ~ blocking “bad” websites

- Not letting your kid watch adult shows or go to adult places ~ automatically hiding NSWF content

On the last point: if you’re not careful and your kid is unlucky, they may find shocking and traumatizing content accidentally. This is true in real life but the internet moreso (vs safe neighborhoods), even today. e.g. I regularly hear reports about Instagram recommending gore seemingly out of nowhere, such as https://www.cbsnews.com/news/instagram-violence/ (Instagram seems particularly notorious for some reason).

senordevnyc3• 7 months ago

Why on earth would you let your kid use instagram??

danaris• 7 months ago

This is good advice.

However, it doesn't work for families where both parents have to work 2-3 jobs just to keep food on the table and the heat on all winter.

And no; poor families neither do nor should "just keep the kids from getting cellphones" or something (not that you would necessarily make that argument, but I've seen its like too many times on HN...).

Poor parents can certainly still "take an earnest interest", but they're much less likely to be able to be there...and, frankly, due to the stresses and pressures of Living While Poor, they're less likely to have the emotional bandwidth to communicate clearly and productively about these things, too.

Now, what is the answer? ...hell if I know. Being poor sucks, and there aren't always good ways around that.

cameldrv• 7 months ago

You shouldn't constantly be hovering over your kids. Still, you don't want them to get in serious trouble. As a parent, you can curate the options they have without knowing exactly what they are doing. You can fill bookshelves with appropriate books, and if you see them reading on the couch, you don't need to know exactly what they're reading. Some people also are able to control where they live, what schools their kids go to, what friends you invite over to your house, etc.

One day your kid might have the friend over that you suspect might be trouble. You check in a little more often. Online is harder. You see them with the device, and without controls, what's going on could be almost anything.

BeetleB14• 7 months ago

Because I want a device for my kids to play games.

Not communicate.

Not buy stuff.

Just play (local) games.

Stuff like online communications will come at a later age. Absolutely no reason to start explaining that to a 5 year old.

And absolutely no reason to have all 3 bundled in one.

Take an earnest interest in your child's activities, both online and offline. Guide them how to behave in strange, even weird and scary situations with strangers. Be the reliable adult in their life to whom they can tell when they encounter something unpleasant, online or offline. Under the guidance of a parent your children will be safer than behind any amount of protective layers that these so called child-safety apps provide, and they will also know how to help their friends to navigate risk and avoid danger.

Everything you just said is true for gun ownership as well!

elros• 7 months ago

On a certain level, it’s also a question of different parenting philosophy.

Stuff like online communications will come at a later age. Absolutely no reason to start explaining that to a 5 year old.

I agree, but I also see absolutely no reason why 5 years old children would have access to a gaming device. Pretty much any other activity I can imagine is better for them.

squibonpig2• 7 months ago

Gun ownership isn't a terrible example honestly. I would have been probably 8 or so when I was allowed to traipse around in the woods near my dad's house with a BB gun, following extensive safety teaching of course. We would go out in the yard and shoot a shotgun and a rifle around that same age. People are probably not careful enough with guns right now in America given the stats, but it's not at all unreasonable in a rural context for a relatively young kid to be trusted with use of a firearm, even for short unsupervised periods. The real thing that a parent has to do (beyond still waiting until an appropriate age) is to extensively drill in the safety habits and proper use and know their kid well enough to determine whether they're ready for that responsibility.

chrismatheson• 7 months ago

90's Consoles are available on eBay or most video games shops :)

Turns out what was fun for you at age 5 will be fun for your kids at age 5. Just the same as The Cat In The Hat is still a beloved book.

I personally have found this to be the absolute winner of a solution.

Groxx• 7 months ago

Meanwhile in the EU: growing effort to simply outright ban social media for under-16s.

It's really not unique. America might be high on the list and a bit weird about it, but it is most definitely not alone.

ares623• 7 months ago

Because the situation is not symmetrical. The corporations and strangers have direct access to the child’s online presence and are constantly monitoring and hovering over them. If the corporations don’t want to lose that constant access then the parents react by being vigilant on their end. It _is_ the social contract set by the corporations.

guelo• 7 months ago

Particularly American? What does that mean? That parents in other countries are better than us? That they have more time, more know how, more wisdom? Sorry but that's stupid and insulting, which I suspect was your intent.

oytis• 7 months ago

Not necessarily better, just less controlling. E.g. in Germany there exists an imperative to give children freedom despite dangers. Parents don't expect from themselves to be able to shield their chidren from all possible dangers either. Not sure if it's better, but it's a different parenting culture for sure.

It mostly extends to interactions in the physical world though - restricting children's use of digital devices is socially acceptable and expected

nine_k2• 7 months ago

Honest question: are you a parent?

My daughter, when she was 6 or 7, was terrified by certain things she accidentally found on YouTube, and asked me to have them filtered out. At 13, she already didn't need that, of course, but the notion of "kids" includes "small kids", who definitely should not be exposed to everything the Internet has to offer, or let to go out unsupervised.

senordevnyc3• 7 months ago

Honest question (from a parent): why was your six year old using YouTube unrestricted and unsupervised?

locallost• 7 months ago

I'm a parent of a 12 and a 6 year old and agree with what was written completely. "I do not feel in control" is to me a strange thing to say. Running after kids trying to save them is a losing battle. Instead they need to be equipped to make decisions on their own. If they are not ready for something, they should not use it. I cannot prepare them to drive a car, so I will certainly not buy them a Tesla self driving car and then complain it's inadequate.

fpauser2• 7 months ago

Young kids exposed to overly attracting games cannot limit these activities by themselves. This has nothing to do with a lack of explanation, but rather with how the brains of young kids function. Thus, accessible parental controls with a simple mechanism that limits the access to games, blocks ads, disables marketplace access and sets a maximum gaming time per day are a much-needed tool that parents should have in their hands.

trinix912• 7 months ago

Young kids are usually also too young to get a phone or buy games themselves, so it's mostly the parents who let them play on their devices. By this I mean parents who hand their 3 year old a phone with YouTube at the dinner table.

It's also parents who get them their first phone and choose what kind of a phone to get them (it's not all that unusual to see kids with dumbphones anymore).

Of course there should be a way to limit things like transactions and screen time but it doesn't have to be this whole surveillance tech with GPS tracking, granular permissions, and revealing what the kid texted his friends on a given day.

americantrash• 7 months ago

I made the mistake of giving my child access to Roblox when he was 7, assuming that they did some sort of moderation. Luckily, the worst thing he found was a game that told him he was going to die that night. It scared the hell out of him. After doing a bit more research on Roblox, I decided to ban it from the household. I'm happy that I did, considering it seems that it's just a cesspool of predators.

It's fine and well to say the solution is to just be around more or take an interest in what they're doing, but that is hard to do with full time jobs, multiple kids, etc. Parental controls are supposed to exist to let the parents let their kids explore in a safe space. It's not about constant supervision or tracking, its more akin to hiring a babysitter rather than leave your children home alone.

expedition323• 7 months ago

Don't let people guilt trip you. It's not your job to patrol the streets for pedos. We as a society have created the police and a justice system for that.

It takes a village to raise a child. And it's about damn time that Silicon Valley takes some responsibility for this creature that they have created.

denkmoon• 7 months ago

Do you reject bicycle helmets and other safety apparatus because you take an interest in your child’s activities? They’re gonna have to learn to ride without falling off eventually anyway

ball_of_lint3• 7 months ago

Yes, people should be good parents.

But still, there's going to be many who are not. I would rather good parental controls existed to make it easier for people to be better parents. Yes, maybe parental controls don't make the difference from bad to good, but they do make a positive difference for many.

ip262• 7 months ago

You know where my child learned how to swim? A small pool, progressing from a hands-on adult to an arms-reach adult to lifeguards nearby. They may eventually swim in the sea, but they will have countless hours practice by then - most of them in a pool where they can stand up if they use their tiptoes.

I didn’t start by giving my kindergartener a lecture about the dangers of riptides and then let them navigate the risk of the ocean themselves as they learn to keep their head above water.

Granular parental controls are a way to create that kind of progression, allowing them gradually increasing autonomy within a managed environment.

alexpotato• 7 months ago

Of all of the uses for AI/LLMs, setting parental controls feels like it would be such a massive net win for everyone involved.

Instead, LLMs are being used to replace support people at the larger platforms (e.g. X Box) with the clear goal of "make it HARDER to get support" (or as patio11 would say "their goal is to get you off the phone as quickly as possible ")

knallfrosch4• 7 months ago

Hey Gemini, I don't want my kid to chat with strangers on the internet. He needs to be online to play Fortnite on his Switch. How do I do this?

Seems simple enough to me

voidUpdate• 7 months ago

" and no easy way to make this thing function like an old-school Game Boy and just let a kid have fun with a game cartridge"

Have you considered buying them an old-school gameboy?

singpolyma3• 7 months ago

Controls can never replace parenting, no matter how good they make them.

jdlyga• 7 months ago

If you don't want your kid to go online, don't buy them a Nintendo Switch Online membership. Or give them a handheld like a Miyoo Mini without WiFi.

sneak3• 7 months ago

This post makes it clear to me that you should not be giving devices such as the Switch to children.

1970-01-01• 7 months ago

The issue is, and always will be, 3rd party trust. You cannot assume your child is safe using XYZ until you thoroughly audit the app/game/device and enumerate all their loopholes, plug-ins, and rushed updates. The sensical method would be a device-wide deny all firewall rule, where no TCP connection is allowed in or out without explicit parental consent. E.g. Alice wants to chat with Bob via chatmonkey. Approve this one time connection? Good luck finding anything on the market that supports and enforces this very sane level of parental control.

eYrKEC24• 7 months ago

To concur, the principle with guarding your children is the same as the principle of guarding your software systems.

Defense in depth. Multiple layers. Calender reminders to audit devices, usage, and look at router logs. Check in with your kids.

petermcneeley4• 7 months ago

What was the punishment for the 12 year old? This will tell us everything we need to know about this story.

artyom7• 7 months ago

I'm kind of with you on this one. 12yo is old enough to understand the rules (assuming they were clearly set) and if he/she was willingly communicating with a stranger, that phone should get the hammer with no replacement whatsoever. I've seen this done, it works.

polotics• 7 months ago

Kids make mistakes. You do not want predators to use the threat of your punishment as a lever on your kid.

ceayo4• 7 months ago

What I believe the author did was instead of teaching their child that they may not talk to strangers, they believed there just is a magic button to have these strangers not exist.

GaryBluto7• 7 months ago

that phone should get the hammer with no replacement whatsoever.

Trying to scare children into following rules does not and will not end well.

I've seen this done, it works.

You think it works because the child has realized that they will need to be better at hiding their actions in the future.

mystraline3• 7 months ago

Or instead of turning parental controls on, instead teach your children how to identify bad stuff online. That way, they can catch people (peers OR adults) doing or asking really bad stuff. And teaching also has great benefits of lasting a lifetime.

Well, except for doing parental controls on your boomer parents TV, blocking Fox news. Thats a good usage of it. You're not going to defeat propaganda believability with boomers. So blocking is best bet.

knallfrosch4• 7 months ago

"I'm a cute girl of your age. Here are some nudes. Wanna send me some too?"

Bam, lost.

GaryBluto7• 7 months ago

Well, except for doing parental controls on your boomer parents TV, blocking Fox news. Thats a good usage of it. You're not going to defeat propaganda believability with boomers. So blocking is best bet.

What an odd viewpoint. "It's bad to use limit your children's access to the internet in any way, but trying to stop other adults from accessing things I deem to be wrong are good!"

bryan_w• 7 months ago

One thing you can do: glue the device into a dock, hook it up to the family TV then set the expectations that they can only use it when an adult is around (or take the power adaptor when you leave if you need to be strict about it).

But the author is right, it should be easy to set appropriate limits out of the box.

mjg25• 7 months ago

This HN post fits into the category of "Pithy blog title with casually anecdotal content."

Software companies will never earnestly attempt to protect children because that action ("acknowledging children are in danger by using our product") acknowledges risk and introduces liability. (VCs hate that shit, especially Silicon Valley VCs.) In the United States, decades ago, laws were introduced to induce accountability of online platforms in regard to IP and child protection laws in the context of user generated content (forums, markets, chatrooms). Basically, these websites/corporations bulked at the weight of accountability ("how are we to monitor every user's action all the time?", "We'll be sued immediately by trolls.", etc.). The parties involved eventually came to a resolution that there's a "notice period" that organizations use to enforce this behavior on its communities.

If I were to write a blog titled "Parent Controls Aren't for Parents", my opening salvo would be "They are minimal-effort guardrails to protect corporations from being sued by negligent parents for post-incident harm."

knallfrosch4• 7 months ago

A GameBoy would have been cheaper, offline and worked without an account. Yet the author chose to spend his money on the Switch2.

What's the market to learn from this? You're saying one thing but voting with your wallet.

Rohansi2• 7 months ago

I agree with you but you can't just go out and buy a Gameboy anymore. And gaming is more of a social activity now where you'll need internet access.

hosh• 7 months ago

The author of article seems under the impression that parental controls allows parents to stop having to assess risk for themselves.

sjducb4• 7 months ago

The problem is that most parents are not competent to assess the risk. The environment is different to the one we grew up in.

shevy-java• 7 months ago

A single setting that says "this child cannot go online, communicate with strangers, spend money, or download anything without my explicit permission."

I understand the problem domain - some people try to exploit and take advantage of kids. That's a problem, I get it.

At the same time, I still think children should not be assumed to be idiots. I remember we oldschool people, when we were young, we played Quake at university campus (we could only play on holidays because one friend had the key to the room, it was a side room though; on saturday other students were not there, so we had a full room with about 30 computers in the 1990s era). We were about 15 years old, so granted, no more young kids. And the technology wasn't quite as advanced, so I am not saying this is 1:1 comparable. But young kids today often have smartphones. They have the internet non-stop. I don't think parental censorship works as a model here. Again, I get it that too young kids are too trusting, and there are creeps - but there is not really an alternative to having kids go through thought processes and understand the issues here. In warcraft 3, young gamers were quite competitive and good. So if they can learn to be better than older people, they will have no real difficulty understanding predators. (Again, it depends on the age; but if your kid is 6 years old, why can there only be games that are played online? Plus it is just chatting right? I remember playing games at the yahoo website, we chatted too. I don't think that was a problem per se. The website makes it sound as if everyone and everything has that problem. I don't think this is the case.)

Edit: Others pointed out the age range problem. I agree. So, which age range are we talking about? Is the age even mentioned on the website?

Edit2: Ah yes, 12 years old. Sorry but at 12 years old, I am having a hard time buying into the "predators exploit him every time". That seems to be ... strange. His son would probably object to the claim he made on the website here aka slandering - perhaps.

mrbluecoat• 7 months ago

I completely empathize with the author. I had that same reaction years ago when I discovered strangers were sending unsolicited pictures to my nine year old through DuoLingo! Made me sick.

BeetleB14• 7 months ago

Just recently did this with XBox.

I cannot prevent the kid from seeing the marketplace.

I cannot prevent the kid from seeing installed games that are rated Mature. It won't let them play it, but it lists all the games installed in the XBox.

I cannot prevent them from downloading free stuff.

It was frustrating and clear to me that this wasn't designed for the benefits of parents.

I just want it to act like a console with a fixed set of games installed and no marketplace access.

rsync• 7 months ago

These are not mistakes.

These are not implementation errors or miscommunication between different business units.

What you are witnessing is an intentional setting of a revenue dial to the maximum allowable setting that still permits the original sale.

BeetleB14• 7 months ago

Well, the sale was to me. The kid came later. :-)

like_any_other• 7 months ago

A console is a computer controlled by a corporation. No other result could be expected.

wojciii2• 7 months ago

These are not implementation errors or miscommunication between different business units.

I don't think the companies such as Google*, Microsoft, Valve or Nintendo** have a Child Safety business unit.

If they did, the software they produce would work and I would be able set some sane settings once when creating a group of users which contain children.

What I am experiencing is user hostility when trying to limit who can chat or influence my children. The UI is usually horrible and some devices have no way of limiting or whitelisting what games can be played by children.

* Fuck you for not requiring TVs to implement the features required to use child users on TVs.

** Fuck you for making the of doing anything on the switch related to child-profiles a horrible experience.

master_crab• 7 months ago

This is why you have government regulation. It’s not perfect, but at least a government is accountable to something other than a profit motive.

chaps2• 7 months ago

Question: why do you give the device access to the internet?

techjamie• 7 months ago

Based on another comment parent made, the Xbox was there before the kid, so presumably they don't want to handicap their own experience using it, just limit their kid's. Which should, by all respects, be a reasonable thing to want.

topikk• 7 months ago

Sounds like the parent(s) use it as well

I cannot prevent the kid from seeing installed games that are rated Mature.

BeetleB14• 7 months ago

Because I too use the XBox.

And because there are definitely benefits of Internet access. Saved games, for example.

But yeah, fair point. I should configure router to selectively enable/disable access to that device while the kid uses it to see how usable it is. It may just be good enough for his games

soulofmischief• 7 months ago

An increasing number of games are requiring always-online or online-on-boot validation, so this option is becoming less reasonable.

Lammy• 7 months ago

“Fortunately, we have a product for people who aren't able to stay connected; it's called Xbox 360” -- Don Mattrick

pixl974• 7 months ago

Don't worry, next gen devices will come with a 5G device embedded that will always allow access to the market place and online gambling store.

HumblyTossed• 7 months ago

And depending on the community you go to to ask questions, the likely response is, "just be a parent". Wanting seat belts made just for kids IS BEING A PARENT.

expedition323• 7 months ago

Children are quite literally the future of the human race.

A fact childless nerds have forgotten.

AlfeG• 7 months ago

Same goes for the Google Family Link. There is no way to prevent kid accessing Google Play Store and spam You with requests...

subscribed2• 7 months ago

At least with those requests you can disable notifications and nothing else happens.

scotty79• 7 months ago

marketplace access

The sole reason this devide exists is to put marketplace before your kid's eyes. They won't let you disable it.

lacoolj• 7 months ago

Reading this reminds me how much parenting must suck in 2026.

pwarner• 7 months ago

Leaving a link to Common Sense Media which has been helpful for me to understand some of these new fangled things I don't use...

https://www.commonsensemedia.org/

artyom7• 7 months ago

The comment section seems to be divided between "don't police your children" and "absolutely police everything your children do".

Parental controls are absolutely necessary, yet they won't be enough by themselves. Payment systems are really robust but there's still fraud. If there's prey, there will be predators.

Education and clear rules are absolutely necessary, yet they won't be enough by themselves. There's people that's very evil and also very clever. You can educate and trust your 12yo to understand 80% of it, yet for the remaining 20% you have to be there.

And, oh boy, the issue about parental controls being incredibly complicated is 100% by design. Simple and sensible parental controls would make exploitative business models like Roblox go bankrupt overnight.

ceayo4• 7 months ago

yet for the remaining 20% you have to be there.

Shouldn't you trust your children, to come to you in that 20%?

artyom7• 7 months ago

How they will identify that 20% if the previous comment was referring to them actually not being able (yet) to understand it?

knallfrosch4• 7 months ago

There's just no market for parental controls.

I want to limit time spent I want to limit money spent After 8 years it's an adult account anyway (10 -> 18)

artyom7• 7 months ago

That's correct. The current state of parental controls is compliance (the option exists somewhere, good luck finding it, maybe it even works), not usefulness.

badc0ffee• 7 months ago

I went through some of this myself.

Nintendo Switch Online (not really another account, mind you, but a membership) involves a recurring fee. It also unlocks access to the Nintendo eShop, which I cannot disable. I can set his eShop spending limit to zero, sure. But I can't block free downloads. So to let my son play online Minecraft with his friends, I have to open him up to an unrelated store full of content I can't possibly evaluate. That's the deal. Take it or leave it.

You don't need to pay for Nintendo Switch Online to get access to the eShop, you just need a Nintendo Account. I made one for myself and one for my son, and neither stays logged in. My wife and I have the passwords for both, and will not give him his password until he's older. Meaning one of us needs to be there for any purchases, free or otherwise.

He has access to the Minecraft marketplace, but can't add funds to it without us. We did not use our MS accounts, and didn't make one for him, so he can't play Minecraft online. But you know what, I'm totally ok with that. He can still invite a friend over and play together in person (which he does do).

maerF0x0• 7 months ago

Parental controls aren't a good substitution for awareness, deep meaningful connection with your child, giving them a rich and fulfilling offline life, teaching them how to navigate dangers rather than isolating them from reality.

Hold on to your kids[1] and instead of having to spy on them you will know them.

Yes, Parental controls could, in theory, provide many many more protections. But given the trajectory of tech, capitalism, and the USA at large (and the culture it exports), I do not see that pragmatically happening to a relevant degree by the time I have children.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Hold-Your-Kids-Parents-Matter/dp/0375...

selectively8• 7 months ago

The Gabb thing is the fault of the parent.

By buying a child a locked down device - a hostile device that few would have accepted for themselves as a child - they marked them as 'being a child' rather than blending in with the rest of the people on the Internet.

By marking them this way, they advertise the child to the predators of the world.

This is someone who is twelve. They aren't six. Life involves risk. Stop playing with account controls and let the person play Minecraft. This really isn't that hard.

Having thoughts about physically breaking a child's holiday gifts - of doing that in front of them - is suggestive of being a pretty awful person. You can't figure out something that the child does not want, so you want to break their stuff?

How much longer do you intend to keep this routine up? Is your objective for them to go no contact? What are you seeking here?

sowbug2• 7 months ago

It's easy to say "oh, this is just enterprise controls, and your family is an enterprise."

But then I remember every time I've had to delve into actual enterprise administration, and yeah that's its own full-time job.

Side rant: when will businesses acknowledge that an account might be owned by two people (spouses, for example) and allow separate logins for the same account? Their terms of service almost always prohibit sharing passwords, and because the lost password flow would require sharing an email address, you didn't want to do that anyway.

eddythompson80• 7 months ago

On the other hand it’s easy to say “just give me enterprise level controls but in an easy and intuitive interface”

I’m not saying that’s not possible, but if you have somehow figured the “right” abstractions and interface to achieve this in an incredible simple and sensible yet just as powerful and complete way that any parent can manage it, then you’d make a killing in enterprise sales. It’s not like enterprise IT admins love Group Policy or any random Joe can be a Linux sysadmin.

sowbug2• 7 months ago

I agree. There was a while when I, the sweet summer child that I am, hoped that the late 90s-early 00s crop of founders would start families of their own and naturally steer their companies toward the family-as-enterprise-but-actually-usable model. I'm still waiting.

squibonpig2• 7 months ago

My overall response with this stuff is to think about the lax parenting typical in the 80s or so and compare it. Kids much younger were allowed to run amok outside, and crime rates are much lower today. Are the same instincts that perhaps rightly perhaps wrongly compel people to keep a closer eye on their kids in the real world being applied to the digital one?

dizlexic• 7 months ago

It's almost like connected infrastructure is inherently unsafe. I stand by "your kid, your problem". I don't want any kid to be "unsafe", but commonsense went out the window when schools started to require the internet.

The true "safe" option is not allowing any of this until your child is old enough to understand the risks... so 18? 25?

All I'm saying is there is no route to prevent all bad things (or even most) and people who say otherwise are generally selling you something.

swivelmaster• 7 months ago

Here's what I think is happening:

Market research says "Parents want control."

In the journey from CEO mandate "build a product that gives parents control" to developer implementation, "parents want control" somehow turns into "What parents want is extremely fine-grained controls," which isn't the same thing.

So a bunch of product managers brainstorm a huge list of ways that parents might want "control," hand that off to some developers, and voila: Everything becomes way too complicated for everybody and the company is able to say they offer "control" while abdicating their stated obligation of giving parents the "safe" product that the parents expect.

stackskipton3• 7 months ago

No, I think CEO mandate goes "Build parental controls" and PMs all shake their heads and go "No problem". It hits the developers, they go Too long to do it properly and PM goes "Nah, we just prefer MVP only so we can say we have it and move on". it's also never really touched again so as features get added on, Parental Controls is poorly thought about last minute implementation.

To fix this, it's going to have to be legislation so financial incentives are present.

Bratmon2• 7 months ago

And when I finally—finally—tried to test online play, Minecraft told me I would need to loosen the parental controls (it did not say which) and create a Nintendo Switch Online account for my son.

I'm a bit confused by this section. It seems to me that the author

1. Turned off online.

2. Bought a game that could be played in single-player or online

3. Got mad that online didn't work because it was turned off

4. Turned online back on

5. Got mad that online was turned on.

6. Dealt with this anger by yelling at his children

I actually don't understand what the author was trying to accomplish here

chaostheory• 7 months ago

Going on a tangent, didn’t realize until recently that Quora has publicly accessible porn aka adult content that anyone can view without an account.

hollow-moe• 7 months ago

When the fix is to buy a SteamDeck and emulate switch

kdkirsch• 7 months ago

Seems like a trusted non-profit should spearhead a working group to come up with clear requirements and recommendations. This parental control spec would be clear for developers to implement instead of each team guessing what should and should not be allowed. This could then be 3rd party verified and parents could rest a little easier. (All of the above has probably been tried in previous instantiations of the Matrix.)

Mathnerd314• 7 months ago

I'm wondering if a firewall is a solution here. Don't mess around with the stupid device settings. Just block the Xbox store, and then presumably Minecraft uses different server IPs, so you can let those through.

camhart• 7 months ago

The biggest trap parents fall into is they buy devices assuming there will be ways to enforce parental controls on them. The reality is it's impossible to do on many devices, and extremely difficult to get right on the remaining ones. Many of the platforms offering "parental controls" just do lip service and provide a false sense of security.

bmandale• 7 months ago

You could, I dunno, trust your son, communicate with him, and let him make decisions for himself? If instead of wasting all your time on scam products trying to isolate him from the world, you'd spent the same time teaching him to navigate the world, you wouldn't have had any problems, and he would be better prepared for adult life when he doesn't have someone breathing down his shoulder. Just my 2c.

rsanek• 7 months ago

I see folks saying no access to phones until 16, and others arguing how that will absolutely crush a kid's ability to do stuff socially. Why not just have a 'home' phone? you can use the phone in shared spaces at home, but cannot take it into your room or go to school with it.

pzo2• 7 months ago

unless you send your child to private school where all parents enforce such rule, your kid (that is 12+ year old) is going to be ostracize by majority of peers that have such phone. This is completely different environment comparing to times when we were growing up.

hackable_sand3• 7 months ago

It's the same environment

missizii• 7 months ago

We are a “low screen” homeschooling family. We have a babysitting phone for my daughters to take to babysitting jobs and a landline. At our local pool in the summer, my kids meet neighborhood kids, exchange numbers, but my kids say, “it’s a landline, no texting.” The response: “You just have a landline?!? You can’t text?!?” in a tone of disgust. Every time. Fortunately, we have a community of homeschooling & religious community friends who are raising their kids similarly. But every time a kid’s friend gets a cellphone, texting becomes the medium of socialization, and they drop us. My kids will be the 1% of their generation who can talk on the phone.

grugagag2• 7 months ago

I got my son a Miyoo mini, a cheap but decent emulator. I had zero headaches and was able to curate the game list as I thought fit. There’s no online (even thouh the device has wifi) for now and worked as expected, kid plays, gets bored and lets the device down. I will not let my kid play games online because that’s a too big of a risk to addiction or priming for this later. Minecraft has potential for addiction.

By the way, I got one miyoo mini for myself and enjoy pico-8 quite a bit that I started making games myself, together with my kid and chatgpt assistance. Call me old school but I know what’s good for my own kid.

philips2• 7 months ago

Me too! I used the "Five Game Handheld" setup. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2rMB5z9dQw

grugagag2• 7 months ago

Sounds good. I have about 250 favourite games though.

SOTGO• 7 months ago

Not to avoid the point of the article, but GroupMe is sometimes used for academic purposes. In the 2010s I used it in school for clubs, sports, and group activities, so that may be why it wasn't blocked.

ceayo4• 7 months ago

I am opposed to the whole concept of these "parental controls". Instead of a bond of trust, between a parent and their child, the surveillance economy has gave us the ability to experience the top of the surveillance pyramid ourselves. As Google and Meta spy on the world, we spy on little Timmy. In fact, you are a bad parent if you don't spy on little Timmy. I really can't wrap my head around how asking "how was your day" has evolved into "I saw on your GPS tracker you walked a different route to school today... Do you have something to tell me?" If you look at everyone who is now joining the work force and all, the coming generations, you'll see the thing they lack most is independence.

a_shoeboy• 7 months ago

You obviously don't have kids. You can't trust a child's judgement because they don't have the experience to exercise good judgement. Your job as a parent is to look out for them while helping them develop.

ceayo4• 7 months ago

You can't trust a child's judgement because they don't have the experience to exercise good judgement.

How can a child get any experience, if they are only ever exposed to perfect make-believe fairyland?

philips2• 7 months ago

I have been using (and contributing to) on an open source project called Zaparoo[1] that lets my kids (5-8) play retro games, watch videos, and listen to music using NFC cards. The whole thing runs on a Raspberry Pi running Batocera[2]. I program the cards using the mobile app and my kids like cutting and pasting the cover art on the cards.

All the media is local to my house- I am the librarian who curates the selection of media based on my kids interests, maturity, and my comfort. It feels like the only way forward.

That said I feel YouTube Kids does a pretty good job IF you change to curate only mode: https://abparenting.substack.com/p/effective-youtube-kids

[1] https://zaparoo.org [2]: https://batocera.org

sjducb4• 7 months ago

I’ve set up a gaming raspberry pi for mine too. I suspect it only works for little kids. Someday they’ll realise that supertux isn’t cool

MarkusWandel• 7 months ago

But profits!

alphazard• 7 months ago

It seems like the industry is going to be forced to rediscover and implement capability based security models and process isolation by consumer demand.

It is impossible for the average user to reason about a different security model for each app, the only way for anyone to be confident about what a program is not doing is to move to a world where apps don't work by default, and a list of boxes need to be checked which enable network or file access and cause features to work. Apple is the closest to the right answer here, but enabled-by-default and opt-out has to go away.

theoriginaldave• 7 months ago

I think it's an abdication of parental responsibility to let a child use Internet-connected devices without adult supervision.

Nothing connected to the Internet can protect children from seeing information they couldn't see (as determined by culture/familial mores), meeting potentially exploitative strangers, being exposed to a highly curated stream of marketing content and targeted AI messaging (including social media feeds).

I believe that Internet sites and apps should not have age controls.

I believe that physical Internet access (computer, phone, TV, etc) should require an adult ID to purchase (but not logged, like cigarettes, alcohol, etc) l and the the owner of the device is responsible for its use.

If they hand it over to a minor and they are harmed, then the original adult is liable (like alcohol).

This holds someone with material motive accountable. And it becomes jurisdiction-specific accountability (location of the device).

And in the case of parents, if they allow their kids to use one of the parent's devices then they are responsible for how the kid uses it. And directly responsible for how it's used, what's allowed and what's not.

You can't trust a mega+corp with protecting your kids.

Desafinado• 7 months ago

Welcome to parenthood in 2026. I can't walk into a Chapters or book fair with my kid without the tentacles of the game industry reaching him.

That academics are failing worldwide due to overexposure to screens is the least surprising thing I can imagine.

aidenn02• 7 months ago

Another issue is how many apps now seem to have "chat with strangers" features built in to them.

faitswulff• 7 months ago

While we're on the topic, our school-issued Chromebooks allow unfettered access to YouTube. Yes, some of it is educational, but the kids can just click on the next video until they get what they want. Very convenient for you, Google Ads.

Thorentis• 7 months ago

Im also coming to the conclusion that video game consoles (and smartphones, and ipads,...) are not for children.

PufPufPuf• 7 months ago

What if we teach children how to navigate the real world, instead of the digital equivalent of "baby proofing the house"? You don't lock away the kitchen knives from a 12 year old, you teach them how to use them safely.

vintermann• 7 months ago

Yes, parental controls are probably for corporations. So they can say they did something and it's not their fault.

I wonder if kids aren't safer in online spaces where there's very little expectation that the person on the other end is a child. Like here.

up-n-atom• 7 months ago

I have a wonderful collection of retro consoles and games that I let my nephews play when I babysit without much worry or trouble. Sure some of it is considered obscene, offensive, gory for today’s standard, but I can definitively say the internet and connected games are far worse but let the modern parent be fooled.

I prevented a lot of IRL fighting over the holidays. I tell them, if they want to fight each other that they can only do so in game (their preferred fighting game is primal rage) and it gets their aggression and hyperactive tendency out. Beyond fighting games they love to battle out in racing simulators like Daytona USA or controller swap Crash Bandicoot and Sonic. They have Switch 2 at home and can play it here as well but it’s not sick as Neo Geo, Sega Genesis/Saturn, NES, GameCube, PlayStation, Virtual Boy, and many others. 67

The biggest benefit of offline gaming is that friends interact IRL. You either get invited or invite friends and have real interaction, share snacks, etc. which often leads to outdoor activities when gaming is a bore or over. We need to bring that back. If the companies are unwilling it’s time to hack the offline switch or speak with our wallet.

mmmBacon• 7 months ago

Parental controls are all about illusion of control. In reality the kids all know how to get around them. Try just try to block Gmail. It’s impossible. Gmail is the gateway to kids getting on services they aren’t supposed to be on.

Gmail can circumvent almost any security feature even if you set up a profile on iPhone (which is not documented and good luck with that). This is definitely not an accident.

Don’t mean to pick on Google; Apple is also bad, iPhone parental controls are very leaky. My son found a way to jailbreak his phone to completely unlock screen time and disable all parental controls.

Any of the consoles are also bad, PS4, etc… although it is possible to block stuff that PS4 can do via a firewall.

chrisked• 7 months ago

No problem in giving a kid access to technology early. The trick is keep a ratio of 10:1 for produce/create vs consume.

Parental controls aren't for parents

Related Stories