Parental controls on children’s tech devices are out of touch with child’s play (theconversation.com)
from otters_raft@lemmy.ca to technology@lemmy.ml on 26 Aug 22:00
https://lemmy.ca/post/50493951

The “protection of children” has been the cited reason for a lot of controversial laws and measures recently. A common response is that parents should use parental controls to manage that on their own instead of relying on the government to do it to everyone. I found this article interesting since it touched on how the existing tools aren’t that good, and addressing that problem might be a better thing to focus on

Authors:

  • Sara M. Grimes | Wolfe Chair in Scientific and Technological Literacy and Professor, McGill University

  • Riley McNair | PhD Student in Information Studies, University of Toronto

#technology

threaded - newest

scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech on 26 Aug 23:30 next collapse

A perfect example I get shot down on here a lot is to make browser-level protections. It seems so obvious to me that the browser, an app that is local to the PC, could verify your age (via ID, credit card, something) for no one specific website. That then would authorize you to access mature areas of the internet, and there could be a checkable library within the browser that websites could use to validate this.

Us being linux nerds here know that there would be ways to circumvent this, but it would be a hell of a great jumping off point vs the current which is “give your ID to each website they totally won’t hand it over to the gov”. The fact that none of those options were seriously considered and they went right for censorship shows exactly what their true motivations are.

[deleted] on 27 Aug 05:34 collapse

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sylver_dragon@lemmy.world on 27 Aug 11:55 next collapse

force binary choices that don’t align with household rules or with children’s maturity levels.

This has been my main experience with “parental controls”. As soon as they are turned on, I lose any ability to manage the experiences available to my children. So, in areas where I see them as mature enough to handle something, the only way I can allow them access to that experience is to completely bypass the controls. In many ecosystems, if I judge that one of my children could handle a game and the online risks associated with it, I can’t simply allow that game. Instead, I need to maintain a full adult account for them to use. You also run into a lot of situations where the reason a game is banned from children is unclear or done in an obvious “better safe than sorry” knee-jerk reaction. Ultimately, parental controls end up being far more frustrating than empowering. I’d rather just have something that just says, “this game/movie/etc your kid is asking for is restricted based on reasons X, Y and Z. Do you want to allow it?” Log my response and go with it. Like damned near any choice in software settings, quit trying to out-think me on what I want, give me a choice and respect that choice.

bathing_in_bismuth@sh.itjust.works on 27 Aug 13:25 collapse

How about not letting children near screens? Yeah, let’s be looked at as the Amish kid that got transfered, but this genuinely feels like the right choice. Maybe allow something like Wikipedia/encyclopedia in someway.