That’s why in our school almost all parents share or got convinced into the same view so we can impose heavy restrictions on this kind of tech in all families and at school.
But that being said… do you know a field-proven path to block all was of watching youtube on a smartphone or laptop? For laptop, I think Pi-hole with URL filtering would be the way, with admin user preventing connection to any other WLAN. On smartphone, there are similar solutions but it seems that unless one uses an MDM solution in the deepest way possible (Supervised iPhone or Device Owner on Android, or even Kiosk mode).
Personally, I don’t. I’m not too techy when it comes to this. However, I once heard a friend say that he does it on the ROUTER level. His kids have a separate wifi Router for their devices & he’s about to block/restrict websites there. So, if they are supposed to be doing homework, they can’t access YT, social media, or anything else he blocks.
That will work as long as they won’t become capable of connecting to other WiFi or getting their own SIM card. That’s why I’m going to let my kids have a smartphone when they’re too old for me to tell them what to do.
After lots of brainstorming in the last days, and googling/AI-ing, I think there is few paths that may work in all scenarios but they always are accompanied by some caveats.
Someone told me he blocks YT by IPs - won’t work well, you’d have to block entire ranges of IPs and with that all other Google services will stop working; plus, it all starts with a DNS query for scalability across all geo sites.
I thought YouTube could be blocked with static DNS entries on the device, like in the hosts file link I shown on this forum before. Now this part is fuzzy to me. Blocking youtube.com alone might not work, it might be using googlevideo.com, and I hope to test it because eventually, CDN hostnames are something crazy like r1---sn-ab5l6n7s.googlevideo.com - can’t use wildcards in hosts file so if plain youtube/googlevideo block won’t help, hosts won’t be a good way either.
So, URL Filtering comes into play, that feature on a router or a smartphone app can do wildcards.
Now here’s the thing: hosts file, and probably URL filtering too, requires root.
But then, you still need to prevent phone user from fiddling with those setting or resetting the phone to factory.
That’s why IMO the most comprehensive solution would be a well-cooperating smartphone with an MDM system that could impose: iptables, hosts, URL filtering, as well as apps management and factory reset denial. Alternatively, one can remove all means of reaching youtube but WhatsApp has its builtin preview… hence I’d stick with URL filtering. Many MDMs also allow to induce kiosk mode, where only selected apps are available on the home screen and nothing else - not even apps menu or settings.
Drawback - that costs and sometimes MDMs only sell B2B.
In 2022, social[-]media companies made an estimated [US]$11 billion advertising to minors in the USA.
95% of teenagers in the US use social media.
One in three teens uses social media almost constantly.
Internal emails show Snap was aware of dealers selling illegal drugs on its platform as early as 2019.
From 2019 to 2020, the teen overdose rate in the US almost doubled.
Many of those deaths have been linked to counterfeit pills laced with fentanyl bought from dealers on social media.
After Jordan DeMay’s story became public, Meta removed 70,000 accounts linked to sextortionists from its platforms.
Snap, Meta and TikTok declined to be interviewed for this documentary.
In written statements, Snap and Meta emphasized their commitment to keeping teens safe on their platforms.
Last year, Meta rolled out restrictive safety settings for teen users, giving parents greater control over their children’s activities.
Snap also made updates to safeguard teen users on its platforms.
In September 2024, two men were sentenced to 17 years in prison for a sextortion scam that killed Jordan DeMay and targeted more than 100 others.
Jordan’s parents, John and Jenn, have filed suit against Meta.
As of January 2025, the Social Media Victims Law Center represents more than 4,000 families fighting to hold social[-]media companies accountable.
If you or your child needs more information about social[-]media use, visit: cantlookawayfilm.com
Just rambling here-- Honestly, I do not think anything will change until adults/parents themselves look hard at their own habits and how they use their smartphones. It is obvious to everyone by now the harms and dangers, and yet, change is at a snail’s pace. Parents that do not want their children on these things have an uphill battle with everyone else’s children on and the parents are not willing to do things differently, most often due to immense social pressure. When faced with risking your relationship with your child or giving in to letting them have devices/social media, I do not know anybody choosing the latter. I also do not know any parent giving up/adjusting their own smartphone/social media use.
It is a bit humorous to me that many who were excited to escape the walled gardens of CompuServe, AOL, and Yahoo! happily re-created those experiences in Facebook, Instagram, et al.
A smartphone is a portal into an Internet become synonymous with social media, which can only exist due to a broad special liability exemption in American law.
No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.
— 47 USC 230(c), paragraph one, also known as Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act and “the twenty-six words that created the Internet”
If a letter to the editor published in a magazine constitutes libel, or some other legally prohibited content, the magazine can be held liable. This is not the case for Internet publishers, like YouTube or Facebook.
The result is general platform type publishers, with pre-publication screening being minimal and automated. Most common are social media platforms, where a child can rapidly, and at first unintentionally, encounter dark and destructive content.
Until this legal framework changes, and online publishers are held liable in the same way all other publishers are, we will need to keep our children from it by every means for as long as we can while they form a robust identity and secure moral belief system. Many, of course, will fail, and the rate is too high to continue abiding this broken system.
My children are still young, but I worry about the coming desire to be online, and I pray we will be successful in preparing for the time, and preparing them for the eventual exposure to the world of the Internet, and all the dangers thereon.
Watching Can’t Look Away made it even clearer to me that the owners of SnapChat, Facebook, and other social-media sites ARE publishers.
An attorney for SnapChat in the documentary tried to make the analogy that SnapChat acts in a manner that is similar to the American telephone company AT&T. This analogy is FALSE, given that SnapChat uses an algorithm to join users together (whereas AT&T has no such algorithm to join telephone-account-holders together).
One also cannot truly claim that Facebook acts like AT&T. Facebook sells advertising against conversations. Can you imagine a telephone company interjecting advertising during a telephone call … and based on the CONTENT of that telephone call?
The owners of SnapChat, Facebook, and other social-media sites are publishers.
I agree. My kids will get a smartphone if they earn money for it when they’re adults.
However, it’s still a matter of getting one that belongs to parents to “check something”. I’m probably going to get Kompakt for my wife too but most parents are looking for some mid ground and I’m currently trying to build some best practice around that.
I don’t know how screen time works, but I know kids workaround Family Link without much hassle. For many restrictions you’d have to make sure they cannot wipe the phone and get it blank and away from those apps, which MDMs allow to restrict on some brands’ smartphones.
I also heard that one of those apps let go when a child turns 13 so you better fake their date of birth.
BTW friend’s kid doesn’t have a phone at all and he had a bank account under father’s account. As soon as he turned 13, his account got extracted into a separate entity, but due to lack of own phone number neither he or his dad can get to the money… lol.
On Windows I’m not that worried. Hosts file is easily accessible to prevent a lot of stuff as a layer on top of trusted static DNS server IP, and making sure child account has no administrative rights helps preventing a lot of stuff from happening.
Next week I’m going to elaborate on this, probably on LinkedIn as I don’t have a blog yet.
I was on a couple of FB groups discussing these kids & tech use issues, and most posts were about kids figuring out how to get around parental controls. It seems for the parent that has allowed smartphones it is a losing battle. People will go out of their way to figure things out to feed an addiction.
Even if you withhold smartphones/devices and restrict the internet, your child may access inappropriate content on their friends’ devices/houses, or they spend all their time playing video games/scrolling instead of interacting with each other. And then there is the issue of kids’ friends coming over with their own smartphones.
I’d be interested in hearing how other parents navigate some of these, especially in the tween/teen ages.
Additionally, the bar of what constitutes teen or children’s content is getting lower and lower. More inappropriate things are becoming more accepted nowadays. I wouldn’t trust kids accounts at all. Thats like giving them a seat at a bar where everyone is drinking and drunk, but its okay because they can only order juice.
The best case scenario is when you make your kid meet kids whose parents are also against smartphones. Or are at least understanding and won’t make a problem if you ask them that their kid won’t use/bring his smartphone when meeting with your child. Otherwise good luck, take care, I’m out. But I wouldn’t be so strict right away. Unfortunately, most parents still don’t know much about the severity if they even know there is a problem, so it requires preceded efforts in letting them know. Many of them will change their mind after a friendly talk.
I agree the best is not to give a smartphone to a child in the first place. Even if you had great parental controls (which is possible, yet way more hassle), it might be a stretch for a kid to stay calm for the next few hours after using the phone for an hour. Even the saturated colorful screen alone makes up that addictive pull. People’s brains struggle to not get the phone even when they know it’s in their bag or they see it at their desk. Child age might be too early to believe they have solidified their delayed gratification mechanisms to be able to overcome this. Duh, I was having just video games as a kid and Internet as a teenager and I struggle myself!
Btw plenty of parental control applications like G’s Family Link or MS’ Family Safety, despite claiming it’s based on local regulations, assume when a child turns 13 yo they become self-sufficient. I heard a friend of mine had his kid’s phone lift all restrictions when the kid turned 13 lol.
13 is so young, it is wild to me that parents lift restrictions at that age, even though all around me I do not know a single parent that still monitors. Mine is turning 14 in a month, and still I request all internet searches be done on a computer in a public area in the house. I periodically check on the books she’s reading from school and the library, sometimes reading them myself to have some idea. The bar for youth content is indeed lower and lower and it is a little shocking to me what is out there. I am unsure how long this will go on for, but it currently works well for myself and my teen, I think she does not object because she feels protected. She has the freedom to text her school friends, as well as stream music and audiobooks-- all at home, no internet on the go-- and she doesn’t ask for more. I still have younger ones so think better not to loosen boundaries until I understand what it is. Recently she asked if she can put the email app on the smartphone she uses, and I said there is no need for that, it is too convenient and creates the habit of checking unnecessarily. I am still thinking about changing the smartphone she uses to preempt issues in the future.
I do not think children can delay gratification at all when it comes to screens. Adults can’t, why expect it from a child. From observing kids, it almost does not matter what the content is, the glow of the screen pulls them. They will fight just to check the weather and keep checking. This makes me think moderation is very difficult to impossible. I download all the audiobooks for my 10yo or use a CD player instead of streaming so she isn’t browsing on a device. Her freedom is no limits on listening time as long as other things are done. Her friends either have phones or a lot of screen time so it is becoming a topic of discussion with her and other parents.
