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Parental controls aren't for parents

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Re: Parental controls aren't for parents

#291

Post by eikenberry »

Yossarrian22 wrote: post #244
eikenberry wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, we've always had effective societal gatekeeping on what kids can access. Isn't there still a very simple one, hardware access. If the child doesn't have a smart phone of their own or computer in their bedroom then they cannot use them to get online unsupervised. This is about as simple on/off as you can get and very easy to moderate.

Until the school assigns online homework, homework that takes 3 hours a night

I didn't say no computer/internet access. They could do their homework on a computer in a common room.

Re: Parental controls aren't for parents

#292

Post by lovich »

selectively wrote: post #278
lovich wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple has an engineering base that includes people who were recently children. What? I didn’t realize Apple with in the habit of hiring people straight out of high school instead of after going through enough university education that ends up with candidates in their early to mid 20s

Yep. They hire talent. University grads will work alongside red team folks that are maybe 22 years old and have been at Apple for two years. It's a thing. I personally know more than one person who has a background along those lines.

I was more pointing out that 22+ year olds aren’t people who were “recently children” unless we’re continuing the trend of infantilizing adults farther into their 20s.

I was also under the impression that the faangs hired a larger % of post docs into their first industry job than most companies, so you’re also getting 27+ year olds as entry level engineers and scientists

Re: Parental controls aren't for parents

#293

Post by Lammy »

chaps wrote: post #261
BeetleB wrote: post #172

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 w…

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

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

Re: Parental controls aren't for parents

#294

Post by ceayo »

artyom wrote: post #186

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 peopl…

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

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

Re: Parental controls aren't for parents

#295

Post by selectively »

lovich wrote: post #292
selectively wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. They hire talent. University grads will work alongside red team folks that are maybe 22 years old and have been at Apple for two years. It's a thing. I personally know more than one person who has a background along those lines.

I was more pointing out that 22+ year olds aren’t people who were “recently children” unless we’re continuing the trend of infantilizing adults farther into their 20s. I was also under the impression that the faangs hired a larger % of post docs into their first industry job than most companies, so you’re also getting 27+ year olds as entry level engineers and scientists

I think someone who is 22 was 17 in the not that distant past.

Apple hires talent, they don't care about anything else. Again, I am speaking to things I know from my actual life and people I know in the physical world.

Re: Parental controls aren't for parents

#296

Post by trinix912 »

fpauser wrote: post #289
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…

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 t…

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.

Re: Parental controls aren't for parents

#297

Post by philips »

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

Re: Parental controls aren't for parents

#298

Post by a_shoeboy »

ceayo wrote: post #286

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…

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.

Re: Parental controls aren't for parents

#299

Post by knallfrosch »

artyom wrote: post #186

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 peopl…

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)

Re: Parental controls aren't for parents

#300

Post by crusty »

sojsurf wrote: post #238
BeetleB wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but do you understand that it's perfectly reasonable to be able to buy a toy gun and not have to explain gun safety to them? Or would you recommend that all toy guns have the ability to be dangerous and all parents should train them because of the prevalence of guns in society?

A few thoughts: - Perhaps we have different ideas of the appropriate age to wean kids off of toys and teach them to use real (and sometimes dangerous) things. Today's discussion is about guns, but the same could be said for boats, motorcycles, woodworking equipment, etc. I would like my children to be well rounded and well equipped when they become adults. However, I acknowledge that this may not be normal anymore: M…

How big are your feet? Because the shoe horn you just used to squeeze your barely veiled disdain for parentting "choices" that aren't like yours into this thread about user-adversarial parental settings by major game system manufacturers was massive.
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