Apple’s Parental Controls Are Broken
wsj.com
wsj.com
In general as an android user I couldn't believe how many issues I encountered just setting them up. I also made the wrong assumption I could set it up in my name and add a kids account - but that's more user error assuming the world's most popular kids tablet could support multiple users.
I wanted to give my kids access to a computer with just a few allowed websites, but it turns out that is almost impossible. Apps like Spotify are randomly blocked by web site whitelists, and sometimes they are unaffected... it's clear that no-one who actually has kids is working on parental controls.
(No before everyone chimes in telling me I shouldn't filter my kids internet: if I don't they'll use the computer exclusively for watching the dumbest YouTube videos ever made. I want to give them access to a computer for doing productive things, not just another device for watching video)
Sadly, there's a lot of competition for this title. Apple's documentation is pretty terrible.
I never liked the Microsoft Windows model or APIs but I felt their documentation was so good my opinion was well supported by facts :-).
Time is better spent writing apps for the web, android, Linux, and Windows. You'll at least be productive and have access to resources and tools that work.
This seems really simple. Times up should mean times up.
This isn’t actually true. Apple default apps are generally available. For example, Files.
My child worked around the limits by downloading everything she wanted to use and open them on Files.
She’s also good at wasting time on Maps.
Downtime should mean downtime, and the documentation shouldn’t contain falsehoods.
You knew that, though. Apple is the market leader in mobile devices in the USA. Heavy lies the crown.
Only to realize there’s a built in browser that you can bring up if the book embeds a link.
It’s a safari browser but under the rules of the Libby app.
Settings on Apple and then separate profile with nextdns too
So... let these controls be broken. We all know this battle boils down to kids listening to Spotify over their emergency dialer to a Twilio lambda server, so let's not let it go there.
I’m sorry, it’s my personal insecurity that I don’t want my 8-year-old to potentially see anal sex online?
Do you follow them to school and listen to them on the playground? Do you check their friend's phones to make sure they are sufficiently controlled too? Do you take away their Chromebooks when they visit each other for a playdate? Did you remember to block Brazzers on your DirecTV account?
When I was in elementary school, I went to my friend's house after class so we could watch Mario explode into red paint and gore on Newgrounds for hours on-end. Your child will inevitably do something similar.
If it was at the library, I can sue the library for not implementing the legally mandatory internet filters.
If it was another adult, I can slap him with a misdemeanor, at a minimum, for exposing pornography to children.
If it was a childhood friend, I can stop allowing my child to visit that friend.
But it’s my own “personal insecurity” if I don’t do something about my own home. By that logic what is the point of Speed Limits on Highways? “Unless a law is 100% effective it is pointless” is not a stance you would apply anywhere else.
Yes.
You could address this healthily. You could sit down and talk to your child about the scary websites and give them a primer on stranger danger and the like. My parents did the same thing before I turned 10. Instead you're prolonging the last vestiges of their innocence and making them less-aware as a result. By making unknown things a reward for them, how do you think they will react in the future?
It's your choice, at the end of the day. Maybe I was just raised wrong or something, but I think you're doing more harm than good.
My parents had parental controls on everything as I grew up. We played on Nintendo systems since they're mostly family friendly. We had "dumb" phones until I was able to buy my own smart phone.
My "innocence" wasn't prolonged as a result and I also wasn't a "less aware" child. Instead, I went outside and played with friends in the real world. I'm very appreciative that my parents limited screen time and blocked pornography on all our devices. It didn't work 100% effectively, but the 99% effectiveness definitely impacted how I grew up in a positive way.
If you weren't raised this way, maybe it's not a great idea to assume this method causes more harm than good? My experience is definitely anecdotal, but I'm sure that it's not an isolated experience.
To provide a service that doesn’t work is poor engineering.
Many parents do make sure to get to know the parents of their kids' friends, and the household rules. If kids are showing each other explicit stuff in school there are usually policies and even laws to address that.
All that said, Apple markets their solutions as things that "just work". So it's fair to criticize them for gaps that can be reasonably addressed, especially when they have such a huge war chest.
the point of progress is to make active efforts towards making these things happen less and less in the future
pretending like it was ok just because they happened to you is how cycles of abuse continue to perpetuate through the generations
it's hard but we have to be stronger than that
Online you can drop a link on a forum just to shock people but try that in a park and you'll be arrested.
If your kid is old enough to want to poke around and explore the internet on their own, I really doubt they're going to be traumatized by seeing porn.
Several years of behavioral therapy fixed the night terrors and ticks (he is a spectrum child tbh) but the anxiety attacks in certain situations hasn’t. Neither has my ability to unblock YouTube on our DNS because the recommendation engine is clearly predatory.
My child is old enough now to circumvent arbitrary restrictions. Whether it’s friends, VPN, or coding up some clever solution. But that effort comes from maturity and reasoning. Not some corp serving ads and clicks.
FWIW, we've used it for years with many devices and never saw an issue like this.
The boring reality is that bug-free software at scale is impossible, and millions of Screen Time users experience bugs that no QA group, regardless of resources, could have tested.
While it's impossible for software to be bug free, we can expect that a company with significant resources should be able to make a feature like this work reliably in basic operation.
It's also funny that when something works fine for 99.9% of users, it's actually more infuriating to the people it affects than if it were broken for everybody. It sucks that you haven't been able to use it.