this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2025
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Wdym by parental control? Most of the time you should just be having conversations with kids about tech usage and how to manage it.
Usually punitive digital measures can either be bypassed by the kid itself or just strain the relationship. It feels like something only controlling parents would do.
Apparently you sprang forth hale and hearty in the form we have before us, skipping the childhood/teenage instar.
Kids be kids sometimes.
I don't underestimate any of it, frankly. I have two.
Kids have an amazing ability to understand things.
They also have the ability to fuck things up with the best and worst of them. Kids are kids. Assuming that all kids have some innate ability to understand things typicallly beyond their grasp because you talked to them about something is not only a fools errand but liable to bite one in the ass too. It's case by case. As it should be.
I mean, my parents were immigrants who barely spoke English, so growing up in the US I didn't have anyone to actually talk to me and explain these things from a parental viewpoint.
I think having frank conversations with kids about how to manage screen time is good. I also see the point of setting digital restrictions as a means for safety. What I don't see the point of is spying on kids' screen activity and making them feel that their privacy isnt being respected.
My parents basically took the approach of all screen usage is bad and then left me unattended to navigate the 2010s internet all by myself as a kid. I didn't even have the option to talk to a parental figure about anything I was seeing/doing online.
Well yeah if the kids are at an age when you can have those kinds of conversations
Also it doesn't have to be one thing or the other, does it?
For now screen time and app installation. I ended up using android's Digital Wellbeing feature. Google's Family Link app seems to offer more but I'm not okay with using it.
Maybe I'm a big dumb dumb doodoo head but can't you limit the kid's screentime physically rather than digitally
It feels like involving software just complicates the situation
the research on this is pretty clear
The best amount of screen time at young ages is none at all. If a child must have screen time, then the best way to do it is to do it alongside them as a parent in order to demonstrate responsible device usage and keep the child engaged in media and not consuming it mindlessly. Children get better at coping as they get older but at no age does it become acceptable to just let them mainline digital content with no limitations or filters.
This seems like a leap to say "the research is clear" when the source you cited says itself that more research is needed.
Yes because I'm annoyed by this and booty's comment. I didn't open this discussion, and while I wouldn't mind some unsolicited advice, these interrogative questions are a bit annoying. Instead of asking about age, you could just differ to my judgement, and what I already said about screen time being completely passive.
Actually it seems by your unwillingness to contribute to the conversation that you are annoyed by it, which would be fine if you just said that. But what we're trying to do is help you solve a problem you have said you're facing. Our goals are aligned with yours.
In order to do that, since some of us are of the opinion that your approach is fundamentally flawed (restricting via software) we're trying to work with you to find out an alternate approach. The first one offered was to talk to the child. You have implied that is impossible because the child is too young.
So I suggested not handing the child a tablet or smartphone or whatever at all. I don't see any way in which any interaction with such a device could be beneficial to such a young child at all, except maybe communication with a physically distant family member or something. Certainly not unsupervised! Like, I'm understanding correctly that you have handed a child who is too young to discuss complex topics with a smart device and just walked off? Please tell me that's not correct.
And please explain at what point in all this we moved from "acceptable unsolicited advice" to "annoying." Is it the point at which you realized you might have been wrong about something?
I don't mind the criticism, but something that seems to be missing from this conversation is age, same with hello_hello's comment. Depending on age, screen time can indeed be entirely passive, and let's not forget that kids lack self discipline.
Hmm yes it is mysteriously missing from the conversation. Next time we'll have to remember to read your mind so we can figure out how old your kid is
Simply don't hand the tablet to a 3 year old, they do not need any interaction with that technology whatsoever.
Open Time Limit is what you're looking for: https://f-droid.org/packages/io.timelimit.android.open/
A child you can have that conversation with is when they're in school and exposed to using computers both for leisure and for work. If they're like 6 and under then they shouldn't be using screens in the first place or if they do its under direct supervision.
I'm not confident that parental control software is a solution to something thats ultimately a behavioral/self control issue and a societal one as well. Adults also deal with screen overuse.
Obviously you can still implement things like locking app installation behind your password or setting up a DNS level blocker on your home router (both of which can be done for the sake of safety online) but I don't think setting up control software is the best approach to take since the child is going to find out you've been limiting them once they see their peers who dont have parental control software placed on them.