511
‘It went nuts’: Thousands join UK parents calling for smartphone-free childhood
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 17 Feb 2024
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The elephant in the room is that parental controls development is a total wasteland, and has been for years. There's no money in it. FAMAG is actively hostile to it and phone OEMs haven't got a dog in the race and already contend with razor-thin margins. It's one dimension of a broader political problem of digitization that smarter legislators and politicians have surely noticed by now, which is that unlike human beings, users increasingly don't have any rights or agency worth a damn, and are treated with contempt.
I like that a grassroots movement has remembered that parenting should be at the heart of children's technology access, but I fear such groups' 'useful idiot' value to authoritarian elements up to the same old tricks.
True point.
My IT setup to get control of my daughter’s not-yet-rocketed-addiction is: screentime from Apple (that can be circumvented), seperated wifi for teens with on/off times (still they can use mobile network), blocked ip‘s for insta & tiktok at router level (still not all IPs in there), and a hacker-style tool called Firewalla to monitor and control their traffic with porn, youth filter-block ability (also in the router, but not sure how well this works at eg youtube)
For this setup you need some steps beyond standard IT knowhow. And still it’s only 95%. Some day they find how to get through the little holes.
Oh, this effort for 3-4 hrs screen time a day including podcasts and whatsapp.
Next step will be to separate devices. She wants a new phone for birthday. Then we put Spotify for the podcasts on the old phone and block everything else. The new phone for the rest with even more reduced screen time.
Wow, this sounds really dystopian. You monitor the porn that your daughters are watching? Then you're an absolute nut job and maybe you should be the one who should have their technology access regulated.
She is under 12! Start thinking before you shout.
And btw it’s not monitor porn but porn filter