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Parental controls aren't for parents

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Re: Parental controls aren't for parents

#81

Post by awakeasleep »

alasdairking wrote: post #32
datajanko wrote: post #23

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. Goog…

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.

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

Re: Parental controls aren't for parents

#82

Post by mothballed »

mjg2 wrote: post #75
Aurornis wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 n…

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.

It's the parents obligation to educate their child.

It's the child's obligation to use that education wisely.

There were no trackers on cars when I started driving at 15 so my parents drove with me for a few months and after that I was on my own. There were no gun laws against kids having guns when I was 7 so my dad showed me how to use one safely and after that I was set loose upon the countryside armed on my own. There were no ridiculous negligent standards/laws on the book when I was young about it being wrong for a kid to spend all day going up/down a creek so my dad showed me what all the venomous snakes looked like and how to use a compass and after that I was on my own.

I find disagreement with this new standard on parents. No, it's not the parents obligation to keep their child from ever making a horrible mistake. It's their obligation to educate them well and then set them loose with very few safeguards so they can actually slowly learn to be an adult. I am very much for showing kids how to use the internet responsibly, but I'm not of the opinion that parental controls are particularly desirable beyond an initial learning period.

Re: Parental controls aren't for parents

#83

Post by TimTheTinker »

alembic_fumes wrote: post #69

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 connect…

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

Re: Parental controls aren't for parents

#85

Post by unloader6118 »

toss1 wrote: post #72
dosman33 wrote: post #29

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.

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 k…

> 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?"

Re: Parental controls aren't for parents

#86

Post by Macha »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #19

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 soluti…

> 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.

Re: Parental controls aren't for parents

#87

Post by GaryBluto »

eYrKEC2 wrote: post #39
zaphar wrote: post #4

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.

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.

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.

Re: Parental controls aren't for parents

#88

Post by ipython »

mothballed wrote: post #82
mjg2 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's the parents obligation to educate their child. It's the child's obligation to use that education wisely. There were no trackers on cars when I started driving at 15 so my parents drove with me for a few months and after that I was on my own. There were no gun laws against kids having guns when I was 7 so my dad showed me how to use one safely and after that I was set loose upon the countryside armed on my own. T…

Thank you. I couldn’t have said it better.

Re: Parental controls aren't for parents

#89

Post by Descon »

krosaen wrote: post #44

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 dur…

neil.fun is porn ads

neal.fun is what I think you meant to link

Re: Parental controls aren't for parents

#90

Post by hnlmorg »

squigz wrote: post #50
hnlmorg wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

Of course they do. You should be open and honest.

For us, it’s a system that’s worked well. So well, in fact, that our kids have felt comfortable coming to us when they see something concerning in a group chat rather than waiting for us to find it. And in return, we’ve learned to trust their judgement a lot more because they’ve demonstrated mature behaviour online.

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