this post was submitted on 07 Jan 2026
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145
TIL: Parental controls aren't for parents – Beast Hacker (beasthacker.com)
submitted 2 days ago by KarlHeinzSchwuke@feddit.org to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] TORFdot0@lemmy.world 36 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Parental Controls are a marketing gimmick.

Did you know that you can’t stop strangers on Roblox from sending your kid friend requests? And you can’t delete them from your child’s account. Just block them entirely.

On PlayStation you can’t approve communication features with just friends. If you have it turned on so they can chat in game with their cousin, then strangers can send unsolicited voice calls to them.

Children should not be on internet connected devices unless you are willing to monitor their usage 100% of the time or are willing to hope and pray you’ve taught them enough about the danger and risks (and even if you have, they aren’t developed enough to understand them anyway)

[–] RaoulDook@lemmy.world 9 points 2 days ago (3 children)

There's certainly more to it than just a gimmick. One of the most important things is web filtering for content, which is a useful parental control because children should not be exposed to porn, graphic violence, and other types of mentally harmful content. Controls may not be able to stop everything but they can definitely hinder and slow down the process at least.

[–] TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

This.

I'm really tired of people letting perfect behaviour the enemy of good in every single online discussion.

I'm very well aware that parental controls aren't a 100% foolproof protection for my daughters, but that certainly doesn't make them useless.

Based on that mentality we may as well not ban murder, because some people break the law anyway. We may as well not have vaccines, because no vaccine is 100% effective for all people. It's so brain-dead.

[–] TORFdot0@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

To be more clear, I mean when parental controls are added to an app they are almost always half baked and inserted as a marketing gimmick.

As a whole parental controls are definitely important for parents to utilize to the best of their abilities, it’s just hard to actually implement them on the application level as opposed to the network or device level.

[–] Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 day ago

Executing them effectively is extraordinarily difficult though. They are a gimmick in the sens most of the time they give a false sense of security. Trying to get the working in a way that allows kids to use devices effectively but blocks what you want them to block is a very hard line to walk. When you finally feel like you are close there's a new app or something changes and it's like you are starting all over again. Apple perhaps has the most usable and consistent ecosystem for this, but it's still not all that good and the cost of the relative simplicity is a lack of granular control when you want it.

I'm not claiming to have the answer, but I can understand why people are scared and frustrated with the current state of parental controls.

[–] melfie@lemy.lol 3 points 1 day ago

My policy is all child devices are blocked from internet access in the firewall except during specific times when I unblock it and am actively looking over their shoulder. Otherwise, it’s curated content on Jellyfin, including a library of downloaded videos from YouTube as well as other self-hosted stuff.

If a game or app requires internet access, too bad. I won’t even play games on my own devices that require a connection for that matter.

I have considered setting up a proxy server for my older child with specific domains allowlisted.

[–] sbv@sh.itjust.works 32 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Dude is right: parental controls suck. I suspect that's because they kind of take a back seat in most purchasing decisions. Of the various platforms I've enabled parental controls on (Apple, Nintendo, Android, Xbox, Epic, Roblox), I've found Epic's to be the most straightforward.

It'd be nice if there was a mandated API that any kid-platform had to support, and a nice simple app to control it.

[–] lepinkainen@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Fortnite is a massive cash cow, they’re protecting their investment with robust parental tools

[–] Railcar8095@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

"Do it well, get profit" sounds like a sound business strategy. In hope Microsoft/EA/Nestlé/Monsanto/Apple/Google/499 other F500.... Would follow that

[–] TORFdot0@lemmy.world 7 points 2 days ago

Epic’s is probably the best because it’s the only one that has an easy “block everything but online play” button and lets you whitelist experiences with a parental pin

[–] zipzoopaboop@lemmynsfw.com 2 points 2 days ago

Sony is a fucking nightmare

[–] sfxrlz@lemmy.dbzer0.com 30 points 2 days ago

Well there wouldn’t be reasons to constantly scream >what about the children< while trying to push surveillance if that shit worked correctly.

[–] jaselle@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 day ago

Parental Controls being hard/impossible to configure is something that needs to be resolved, lest we continue to get people advocating for website-side age-verification.

[–] pastermil@sh.itjust.works 12 points 2 days ago

Damn dude, what a shit show

[–] BroBot9000@lemmy.world 11 points 2 days ago (1 children)

They do this to obfuscate and to control people. They want you to not read the terms of service and to give them unfettered access to your personal information and that of your children by making it difficult to understand and make the appropriate choices.

[–] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 17 points 2 days ago (2 children)

It’s not even that.

There’s enough complexity around just one component to prevent what should be obvious.

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.

He can do both, just not at the same time. Or, bring back the LAN party. Those are the choices. Otherwise, yeah skeezy predators and nazi porn await. As if it wasn’t super obvious.

This guy, who is clearly more savvy than your average bear, is just discovering all the marketing hype about protecting children is bullshit. Wait til he finds out about protecting the earth.

[–] TORFdot0@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago (2 children)

It really shouldn’t be that hard to make a “block all” system. And then whitelist things you want to allow on a piece meal basis. The reason such a system doesn’t exist is because it would hurt engagement and monetization numbers and these corporations won’t stop until every man woman and child has been exploited

[–] AA5B@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

They do exist, and start with block all apps. I used one such on my kids iPhones. There were a few features of value but notably I cared more about preventing excessive use or staying up all night.

I do start with blocking by default but opened things up on demand. You could argue that feature wasn’t useful but at least it made me think about things before I allowed them.

Now that they’re young adults I obviously don’t have parental controls but it’s also worse in some ways. For both Amazon and apple I’m forced to have my credit card on file in order to use family sharing, but now that they’ve aged out of parental controls my reedit card is too easy to accidentally use

You can’t protect them from the internet, the best you can hope for is to ease them in with guidance and hope they’ve learned enough to protect themselves

[–] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

well, and this guy may do that, but I think he's calling out all the millions of parents who don't know how to do that. You're talking about a vast swath of the population that has literally no idea what any of their passwords are. Or what to do when they don't work.

[–] tormeh@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Yeah, the son wants to communicate with his friends and he wants his son to be offline? Does he read the stuff he writes??

[–] omcgo@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Because its contextual; he wants his son to communicate; theres nothing wrong with kids talking to adults online: my childhood was largely spent price gouging dumb adults on Puzzle Pirates when I was 8, 9 years old: learnt a tonne about micro economics.

There is however a big issue of bad actors abusing unvetted channels.

[–] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

I’m sure it’s crazy difficult to raise a son today anyway, but “if everybody jumped off a bridge” is always true.