4 ms·

Been so frustrated by the plethora of controls, their various inability to do what I want and the constant need to check the settings to make sure they didn't f

Been so frustrated by the plethora of controls, their various inability to do what I want and the constant need to check the settings to make sure they didn't fail open or that I just forgot to lock something back down because my children needed access to do school and I was in a hurry and just disabled everything because it was simpler. Adding multiple devices of different types just exacerbates the problem and made me set everything to max lockdown and only unlock on demand. We have a switch. You can't lock it. You can set a minimum playtime of 15 minutes but then the kids sneak up to the attic and get their "free" 15 minutes of playtime in the middle of a school day. You can't set playtimes individually per kids account either. We have a family imac and our teens have android phones so now I've got three separate family account managers to use, family link (Google), screen time (apple) and Nintendo. No, make that 4, because I also have ubiquiti networking and have a separate WiFi network for kids devices so I can block the school provided chromebooks which I otherwise have no control over. You know what we've resorted to? Keeping devices in our bedroom and physically controlling them. Super simple, no passwords or random fail states.

jraby3 3y ago
On the switch parental controls if you choose to set limits by day then you can choose zero minutes. Our issue is that there is no cross platform parent control. Laptop, iPhone, switch, and let’s not forget about the TV. If I want to set a limit of screen time there is no way to just limit all time to 2 hours a day.
Joeri 3y ago
Enforcing screen time in any way other than physical device security is an exercise in frustration. With apple screen time is sometimes not counted, and sometimes counted when the screen is off. On mac especially it is basically useless. And in a multi-device scenario you cannot have the times add up across platforms, so unless you’re micromanaging they can have their full screen time allotment per platform. If you do go in for micromanaging you find that the syncing is unreliable, so the kids keep nagging to enable something that’s already enabled. There needs to be an interoperable standard for screen time and parental controls, with pluggable management apps that allow flexibility in the rule sets, and unified views across devices, accounts and platforms. This is on the tech companies to make it happen, because these platforms are so locked down that nobody else can do it.

jraby3 3y ago

On the switch parental controls if you choose to set limits by day then you can choose zero minutes. Our issue is that there is no cross platform parent control. Laptop, iPhone, switch, and let’s not forget about the TV. If I want to set a limit of screen time there is no way to just limit all time to 2 hours a day.

Joeri 3y ago

Enforcing screen time in any way other than physical device security is an exercise in frustration. With apple screen time is sometimes not counted, and sometimes counted when the screen is off. On mac especially it is basically useless. And in a multi-device scenario you cannot have the times add up across platforms, so unless you’re micromanaging they can have their full screen time allotment per platform. If you do go in for micromanaging you find that the syncing is unreliable, so the kids keep nagging to enable something that’s already enabled. There needs to be an interoperable standard for screen time and parental controls, with pluggable management apps that allow flexibility in the rule sets, and unified views across devices, accounts and platforms. This is on the tech companies to make it happen, because these platforms are so locked down that nobody else can do it.