I highly recommend Qustudio. It works on phone and PC, and allows you to customise exactly what is monitored or blocked so you can keep an eye on things in an age appropriate way.
We started monitoring after we found out our 12 year old daughter was catfishing a 19 year old boy. He had no idea and after we explained that she could literally ruin his life, and made her tell him her age he noped out of there. (Wisely.)
At first we had it set to monitor everything, report all searches, all app downloads, block porn, etc.
Yes she was able to get around certain features, like when she was young we had the phone locked past midnight… But it logs when it’s in use, so we then had a talk the next day and took away the phone or PC if needed.
As she got older we removed the block on all websites, and stopped monitoring any messages. We kept the software on to let us know when she was using her devices because she would often be up until 3am on her phone on a school night and we would then have a conversation about it.
I currently pay for qustodio. He can pown that thing in so many ways it isn’t funny. I have had multiple conversation with thier support, and usually the answer is that they can’t do anything about that because android doesn’t allow them to. For the pc it is windows of course, and they allow even less. Given the age of your kid now, there may not have been as many youtube videos back then explaining how to get around these parental controls. But there are now.
I have a technical background, so I can understand the things he is doing. Like I know what a vpn is, and how it can be used. So I can tell him that if he installs one there will be punishments. But most parents wouldn’t even know what it is, and if they got an alert about it, would probably believe whatever story thier kid told them about it.
And don’t get me started on the horrible parental controls on the switch. And roku effectively has none (they only work on the roku channel).
If a kid has any ambition, they can get around the vast majority of controls. And if the parent is not technical, they have no chance of really stopping a kid who wants to access something.
I highly recommend Qustudio. It works on phone and PC, and allows you to customise exactly what is monitored or blocked so you can keep an eye on things in an age appropriate way.
We started monitoring after we found out our 12 year old daughter was catfishing a 19 year old boy. He had no idea and after we explained that she could literally ruin his life, and made her tell him her age he noped out of there. (Wisely.)
At first we had it set to monitor everything, report all searches, all app downloads, block porn, etc.
Yes she was able to get around certain features, like when she was young we had the phone locked past midnight… But it logs when it’s in use, so we then had a talk the next day and took away the phone or PC if needed.
As she got older we removed the block on all websites, and stopped monitoring any messages. We kept the software on to let us know when she was using her devices because she would often be up until 3am on her phone on a school night and we would then have a conversation about it.
We removed it when she was 17 or 18.
I currently pay for qustodio. He can pown that thing in so many ways it isn’t funny. I have had multiple conversation with thier support, and usually the answer is that they can’t do anything about that because android doesn’t allow them to. For the pc it is windows of course, and they allow even less. Given the age of your kid now, there may not have been as many youtube videos back then explaining how to get around these parental controls. But there are now.
I have a technical background, so I can understand the things he is doing. Like I know what a vpn is, and how it can be used. So I can tell him that if he installs one there will be punishments. But most parents wouldn’t even know what it is, and if they got an alert about it, would probably believe whatever story thier kid told them about it.
And don’t get me started on the horrible parental controls on the switch. And roku effectively has none (they only work on the roku channel).
If a kid has any ambition, they can get around the vast majority of controls. And if the parent is not technical, they have no chance of really stopping a kid who wants to access something.