I still have a lot of resentment for the internet restrictions my parents put on my devices. They didn't usually work, but made whatever i was doing significantly more annoying.
I still remember discovering a bug in the iphone parental controls where i could go to the amazon app, leave a comment for google.com, click it and open that in a webview, then open that into safari with restrictions disabled. How i discovered that, i have no idea. But there's always a way.
Later i just wasted my money on a crappy android phone and forced their hand.
Edit: please, please, parents do not do this to your child. Learn trust, have conversations, and let them explore. If you trust your child (truly trust them) and they know it (believe you, not just hear you say it) then they will mostly try to make good decisions. Controls will just be bad for your child in the long run, even if it makes parents job easier in short run. Once a child isn't in eg. middle school, you have to start letting them access tech on their own.
You do realize, that often times controls are put in place when the communications and trust has been violated right? Most people want to not give a shit, it's the kid forcing the response.
Beyond that, The internet for a boy, is much different than the internet for a girl - your experience isn't the same as everyone elses and neither are the filters.
We home school so some of the controls are just in place so they actually do some school and they're only in place because they choose NOT to do school.
The running joke in my country is that pastors’ children always round up to be delinquent in their teens. You won’t be able to completely control the environment of your child. The re will be a moment, when he/she will realize you do not know everything and your word, while important will be just a voice in many. It is very hard to resist temptation when you see people your age doing them without restrictions. I would say teach them values, not enforce them.
It's never been about complete control - or even control at all. It's about safety, health and wellbeing. As i mentioned to others - this isn't about blocking HBO max, youtube, twitch or steam. It's about safety against people praying on 13 year old girls and general computer safety blocking threats that nextdns blocks that every one should block.
The thing is, when kids grow up - they're gong to work at places that have blocks to ensure employee safety too and they're going to have to realize what they need to do to keep their kids safe
and the kids will hate it, as they have always hated it.
> controls are put in place when the communications and trust has been violated right?
Oh yes, i certainly broke trust of my parents, but mostly by bypassing controls they put. That deteriorated trust (and encouraged more trust-breaking) much faster than if the controls werent there.
So you're mad your parents blocked rape websites? Child Porn? Incest? Or are we talking about you're mad that they blocked youtube and twitch?? Which we don't? And i'm not talking about kids being interested in those, but sites where people try and perpetuate them and bait young girls with.
All blocks are not created equal here.
There are 10s of thousands of girls going through therapy, rehab, mental hospitals and such because of some of what is going around right now and much of the blocking is learning from parents who didn't and lost their kids to suicide or sex trade.
It all starts with a supposed nice 14 year old kid on discord who buys you a gift and turns out to be a grown ass man praying on girls who are susceptible to social issues - they're the ones boosting the servers and writing free advice and coming off as being helpful to teen issues but its all a big con... and that's just one channel of the absurdity. THe other is social pressures on tiktok and insta and their addictive properties - especially for young women. Unchecked/unbound you're asking for trouble for you and your kids.
So I haven't completely thought this through as my kids are still too young, but I'm leaning towards doing both.
Some level of controls feels like a way to encourage exploration and learning and the "hacker" mindset. If they escape the controls, great! We also have the conversations about what's out there, how to handle it, etc.
A quick thanks here for making me feel hideously old by mentioning your experience of parental controls being on an iPhone, a device that didn’t even exist until well after I’d moved away from home and was paying for my own internet connection.
I still remember discovering a bug in the iphone parental controls where i could go to the amazon app, leave a comment for google.com, click it and open that in a webview, then open that into safari with restrictions disabled. How i discovered that, i have no idea. But there's always a way.
Later i just wasted my money on a crappy android phone and forced their hand.
Edit: please, please, parents do not do this to your child. Learn trust, have conversations, and let them explore. If you trust your child (truly trust them) and they know it (believe you, not just hear you say it) then they will mostly try to make good decisions. Controls will just be bad for your child in the long run, even if it makes parents job easier in short run. Once a child isn't in eg. middle school, you have to start letting them access tech on their own.