technology

I've never understood the need honestly. Why use software to control your kids actions? If i had a kid i wouldn't give them a typical smartphone and would give them a stripped down degoogled android phone that has basic functions like organic maps, phone, text, etc. If they want another app I'd tell them to figure out how to install f droid and aurora store and install them on their own. Until they can do that they don't get other apps. Once they've learned enough to do that they can download what they want. Same with a computer. Give them a linux laptop with a web browser, libre office suite, and other basic things and let them figure out how to do stuff like play games, and install other software on their own. Just set it up to do backups to your home network regularly so if they break their OS you can roll it back.

I think this would result in a kid that is much more technologically literate, and much more aware of the dangers of the internet. It's better to let them download a virus and do something dumb now to learn their lesson then to have them make that same mistake once they have their own checking account that can be drained.

You could even do little tests like let them know, "Hey at 5pm Wednesday I'm gonna block your mac address on the wifi. Do some research now, and figure out how to spoof it to get back on the wifi when I do." or buy them a 2nd RAM stick for the laptop and let them figure out how to install it on their own.

Also just have talks with them about like responsible social media use, and how companies collect their data and what they do with it.

Sounds like a good idea.

But also that's a type of app that's needed exclusively by people who don't currently have the time to do FOSS dev. So that's probably why nobody has done it.

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.

I must be wildly out of touch because I definitely would not give a child a mobile device until they were 13+

They get a linux VM and a pager, instead.

Parental control apps are fundamentally malware

GNOME Linux has a Parental Control app, called Parental Control. But it's for Linux. Nobody is going to bother developing anything like that for Windows.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZ5chQpxlQ0

Don't use parental controls? My parents had router-level parental controls and I simply used a VPN to get around it. Kids will do what they want to do. Most parental control blocks end up blocking important websites like sex education or LGBT content. Not to mention they block cool stuff kids should be doing like piracy.

Just have antivirus software installed and teach your kids how to not download malware, not get scammed, etc. The main threats to kids online are ones that will not be blocked by parental controls. Plenty of kids getting scammed on Roblox or whatever.

Im using timelimit (android), which is FOSS, to impose time limits on myself, that works well, and it's actually geared towards use for parents who want to control screen time. And I'm sure there's ad blockers that have lists to achieve blocking of adult content, but don't use those myself (I do use WG tunnel with pihole, which can do the same).

So, I think parental control should be quite easy to achieve?

The problem is kids want to play Nintendo, not some open source linux only game. You'll never be able to get api keys from Nintendo for any kind of access to that device's usage. Sure, they make an app. But it's utter horseshit. Same for... basically everything else. I want to keep my kid from installing youtube on the xbox. Nope can't be done with their parental controls app. Can I use a 3rd party tool to do that? Nope. Not possible.

I think you could use Mindful as a form of parental control, no?

Open Time Limit might be what you're looking for: https://f-droid.org/packages/io.timelimit.android.open/

yeah. They're pretty shit. I used apple's family thing and it worked for a while, but I eventually got tired of dealing with it, and my kids finally hit the age where they listen to me for more than they don't listen to me so I'm going with that.

When I was a kid my folks couldn't keep me away from a computer. I assume my kids will do something similar. My kids come from split households and at some point a phone for the kids became a requirement.

At this point my only rule is location data stays on, really. I talk to them on occasion about whom they text, talk to, etc. Same as Internet in general. If something gets bad enough I reserve the right to go through their phones but I've never done it. It's mostly just bullshit tho.

Again, I'm lucky that my kids listen to me more often than they ignore me so my mileage is different than others.

Do group policies, permissions, and other standard ways of locking a computer down not count?

You can use Adguard Home for this.