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