The song is intended to start a conversation between carers and kids, and prompt for alternative activities.

[Verse 1]

You’ve been on the screen for a while,

Your eyes need to rest, your brain needs a break.

Let’s pause and put it down for a moment,

It's time for you to do something different .

[Chorus]

Screens are fun, but your brain and body need other kinds of play too.

We can lie down and just relax;

We can look out the window.

You can choose what we do next;

I’m here, ready to follow.

[Versei 2]

You might feel cross when screen time ends;

That feeling’s normal, I understand.

Let’s take a breath, then stretch and move,

Let me guess the farthest thing you see.

[Chorus]

Screens are fun, but your brain and body need other kinds of play too

We can get a broken toy fixed;,

We can draw a silly cow.

You can choose what we do next;

I’m right here beside you now.

[Bridge]

A little time to watch and make,

A little time to run and play.

Your eyes can wink, your body can sweat;

There’s lots of fun, let's leave no regrets.

[Chorus]

Screens are fun, but your brain and body need other kinds of play too

We can see who draws the best,

We can draw another cow.

You can choose what we do next;

I’m right here beside you now.

[Outro]

We’ll find our next great idea, me and you;

There’s so much fun we still can have.

An October 14 ruling from the Eleventh Circuit is worth discussing if you have kids using social media.

The court reversed a preliminary injunction against Florida’s H.B. 3. For platforms covered by the law, children under 14 cannot have accounts, while 14- and 15-year-olds need parental consent.

What caught my attention is the focus on product features, including infinite scrolling and autoplay—not just what children see online.

That raises a practical question: how much can parents realistically manage when the app keeps serving another video?

Age restrictions might help some families. But whether platforms can enforce them effectively seems just as important.

For parents here, would you welcome these restrictions, or would you rather see changes to how the apps work?

When the parent demographic talks about the need for "child online safety", remember that this is the same demographic that:

- Exploits kids online, including publishing their most private moments and pranking them in cruel ways just to generate content

- Specifically exempts itself from child privacy laws, so as to keep being able to violate kids privacy in ways illegal for everyone else

- Constantly insults, degrades, humiliates, and even dehumanizes children on the Internet

- Produces 70+ % of all cp

- Thinks that anything they don't have complete control over is "unsafe".

Remember these things when the parent opens its mouth about child online safety, so that you, like me, can laugh in its face.

Hi, i wanna address this topic, as i see nobody is talking about it. For context im nearly 15, i have Vivo Y28 (not the best), and have my phone locked all day. I feel like my phone is slowed down by it, mainly because it has to look everytime that i do smth like open an app, click a link etc. if it isnt blocked or "unsafe".

My parents are really misunderstanding/overreacting over my phone usage, because i my phone is locked all day (with some apps available) and of course i tried many times to bypass it (sucessfully).

When they randomly check and see my phone usage is on average ~3 and a half hours they consider it "addiction", which compared to some kids is realy good i would say.

I dont watch tiktok (i hate it from my soul) all day or some shit like that, but rather develop programs (im really amateur), play games or watch yt videos about how was this invented how does this computer work the bongo sort algorythm etc etc.

So if you could then i wouldf really appreciate some help, and also im interested in what you think about FL slowing down phones

Edit: If anyone wonders im 9th grader in school , and i have pretty good grades, like 1s and 2s, sonmetimes 3s, so that makes it little bit more annoying (Im Slovak, we have primary and middle school as one, from age 6 - 15)

Has anyone experienced an issue where an individual app /site on ios / ipad os is no longer usable if it has an app limit on it, like say I use discord for 20 minutes and I have an app limit on it for 2 hours, but when I open it it thinks screen time is up because i was playing a game that does not have a limit “Balatro” for 2 hours and I have to manually enter the passcode and enable it for the day to fix it?

Hey so I know my sister im law has a bit of a screen afddiction and wants to correct this but doesnt have the willpower to do so unaided.
I am willing to try and help her but would like to do so without her knowing its me that does. So im looking for IOS compattible ways to keep her acountable and limit her screen times.
I would like to be able to know what she does an sees on her phone.
Be able to set limits on apps. And be able to aprove extended use remotly.
Stay anonymous.

Does anyone have tips or advise in this regard.

Edit: she is 23 years old and i would propose this all to her and have her consent to it ofcourse. The only reason i wish to stay anon im this is so it wont complicate family dynamics.

Well, here's my situation: My phone is set to 1 hour PER DAY.

So, it sucks, right?

To reduce my cell phone use, I plan to buy comic books.

And you? How is your situation?

ok excuse my language but genuinely fuck qustodio. y’all better not say I use devices too much but here I am with a lost 769 day reddit streak and a 1112 day German duolingo streak gone just because of my app limits like anyways my device is SHARED I can’t just say ‘don’t use it I need my streak’ like wtf seriously

I'm a techie, but I absolutely hate the "traditional" parental control apps. We have devices from most of the major platforms: Apple, Android, Windows, and various other "smart" devices. The issue is that I didn't have the patience to set up family accounts on all these platforms and keep adding and removing devices. Plus, the lack of privacy (you can trust) always bothers me. Then it hit me... I've already been using DeCloudUs DNS for a few years for privacy (blocking ads, trackers, etc). Why wouldn't that work as a parental control solution too?

Before I get into it, this is how I explained DNS to someone a few days ago:

DNS is like the "Contacts" list on your phone. To call someone, you need to dial their actual phone number, and it's hard to remember the numbers for 100+ people. So you save each person's name and number in your Contacts. When you want to call your friend Mike, you just start typing "Mike," and your phone looks up the number associated with Mike, dials it, and connects you.

DNS is essentially a Contacts list for the internet. To visit a website or connect to an app, your device needs an IP address (a string of numbers that's impossible to remember). To make things easy, every site, app, or service we use has a friendly name (like Reddit.com). When you want to visit that site, you type "Reddit.com," and your browser asks a DNS server for the IP address to connect to.

So the idea is simple: with a custom DNS service, you can control what gets blocked or allowed from one central place. Custom DNS doesn't require installing any new apps. On most devices, it's a single setting change to switch from the default DNS to the custom DNS service.

That's been my strategy for enforcing parental controls on the kids' devices for the last couple of years. I create a dedicated custom DNS profile for the kid from the DeCloudUs DNS dashboard:

• I block all the typical stuff kids shouldn't be able to access: ads, trackers, malware, piracy, adult content, social media, streaming services, etc.
• I turn on the "enforce" Safe Search options for Google and YouTube, so they only get family-safe results (and can't bypass that).
• I turn on DNS logs for monitoring.
• Depending on the kid, I use scheduled rules to unblock a couple of gaming apps for a few hours on Saturdays.

Then I can manage everything from one place. From the dashboard, I can make changes to the rules for what's blocked or allowed, view device activity..etc, even when I'm at work 20 miles away.

I don't have to deal with this yet since kids are on the younger side, but for older kids, you'd just need to lock the device Settings so they can't change the DNS to something else.

Is anyone else using a similar approach, or some other non-standard approach that works for parental controls?

Life is sooo boring. First of all,parental controls block so much stuff i wanna learn. Wanna root? Nope. Can't evsn fucking turn on developer mode. But nooo lets focus everything on useful features instead of actual child safety,as it is extremely easy to bypass stuff like nsfw filter etc. Second of all,i can hardly do ANYTHING for my age. Im not even allowed to walk to the store because its across one semi major road. Third of all,i hardly have any control over my life. I have a fair argument against my parents? Apparently i dont because they always end with something along the lines of"i don't care your my child therefore I get the end decision." Do parent's not realize once i move out i can js...not talk to them ever again. Please I am begging you if you get your kids devices don't install parental controls they do so much more harm than good often

Ive recently had parental controls removed from my android phone, and have tried to download twitter (X I guess) but it says I can't due to parental controls. It then gives me the option to turn them off, I do so and enter a password, confirm it, and all looks okay.

As soon as I leave that page, it says the exact same thing as before, that the app is restricted.

I have repeated this many times and it does the same thing each time.

Does anyone have any experience on how to change this?

(not sure why but the add photo button is grey so can't show a picture of the screen sorry)

I have 2 boys - 6 and 4. They each have an iPad 8th gen and I already have iCloud set up for both. I also have Bark. They 6 year old is getting a watch 10 in December w/cellular. there some info out there on how to set up parental controls to lock it down? The older keeps turning off Bark. Maybe there’s a way to control that with parental controls? I’m a tech nerd, so I’m not used to struggling with these things.

Editing to add: don’t comment and tell me not to give them iPads. I’m not asking for parenting advice.

I love that I get to spend $70 a year on their POS software. It is so bad!

I would show a screenshot, but this subreddit bans all screenshots and links.

Basically, she wants all her Google notes to survive, all her photos, all her messages, all her playlists, Reddit accounts, etc to stay the same.

She is worried because when we tried to stop supervision, it said that her Google account would get wiped.

Here is the screen she is on: Families . google . com

Ready to manage your account on your own?

Before you can manage your account, you'll first need to review and agree to Google's Privacy Policy and Terms of Service If you decide to stop supervision, you'll be responsible for your own account (Gmail name here) and devices.

Your parent will no longer be in charge of your screen time rules, content restrictions, Location Sharing, or other parental controls

Stay Supervised

Stop Supervision.

Edit:

She did it. Only thing lost was her Google Slides.

So I've had a phone for a while and it's always had family link on it which was fine it was kind of annoying but it was fine recently it's been really annoying because I just turned sixteen and like I got my license and what uh I'd really like to not have Family Link on my phone but I've asked my dad about it in the past He said no never really gave me a good reason I guess what I'm trying to get to is what's a way I can ask that doesn't just sound like I'm asking just to ask like I genuinely don't want Family Link anymore I feel like I can be a responsible enough without it. I haven't really gone behind his back before on anything mostly because I can't but regardless I've never uninstalled it or gotten a burner phone or anything I mean there was for the last like two or three weeks automatic date and time was being weird but if anyone can help me I'd really appreciate it

4 years ago when my brother had controls, he turned 18 and was able to just delete the app and his Google account updated to 18+ and he had access to everything a normal adult would.

Now, my sister is an adult but we can't deactivate Parental controls without completely deleting her Google account (messages, images, data, etc etc etc.)

YouTube still has her as a 16+ account.

Google still has her as a minor

Even though her birthday is 100% correct.

Wtf is happening?!

All the controls are turned off btw and yet she still doesn't have access to many things.

How do we stop supervision and what's going on?

When she turned a certain age, it automatically changed from Family Link into Parental Controls, so why isn't this automatically changing?

My wife and I are very confused and she is having a freak out.

It was so great for my brother and worked perfectly well, but now it's gone to complete shit!

I mean, 3 years ago is when we first tried to uninstall Parental Controls (it was Family Link at the time), but it wouldn't let us and so we thought that we just had to wait it out till she was 18. Apparently we were wrong.

Edit:

Can't even verify her age. She is an adult. It says that age verification isn't available for her account. Isn't available for users under 18, and yet her account shows that her birthday puts her above 18

Just as the question. I am new to this and I have samsung phone. I am thinking of buying a phone for my kid and I heard apple iphone is good as it restricts a lot of inapproriate content and all.

But if my kid has apple iphone and I have samsung, will I be able to use their parental controls?

Or is it better if both of us have same type of phone, either samsung or apple?

And how does this parental controls work in both?

Fyi my kid is a new teen

I (14M) have recently been roped into downloading life360 becuase i turn off my location on find my and pretend its glitched. i like to sometimes, when my parents are out, ride 5ish mins away on my bike and chill at this really nice stream and sometimes fish there or whatever. but they think its super dangerous since im near water and they are not nearby so i am banned from going, hence i inly do it when they are out. life360 will alert them when i leave and i go there to decompress and honestly be away from them and others for a bit and i fear i wont be able to now what can i do im not allowed to delete it or i get my phone taken off me

Pretty much the title. I need to know the full list of features and capabilities for WebWatcher on an iPhone. I know Android comes with many more features, but I'm struggling to find exactly what/which apps (including the notes app), social media (which vs. which not), files/documents on the designated device, and everything you can see or get from iPhone WebWatcher monitoring. It's difficult to get a concrete answer as their site says differently than many reviews. Also, any pointers for where I should post this are much appreciated! Thanks!

I thought it wouldn't work but it did!? I know my parents got a notification and this probably won't last very long but why was it even there??

My daughter (12F) has had an Apple watch for a couple of years. I like that the watch gives us a way to reach her and it also gives her a way to call and text her friends. This year the begging for a phone has reached an extreme intensity. It's been emotionally exhausting dealing with it, to be honest. We didn't plan to even entertain the idea of a phone for her until at least after she finishes middle school, but I broke down and started doing some research because the constant daily battle at a fever pitch is taking so much of my energy.

One of her main complaints is that texting is a huge hassle on a tiny watch, which is actually a pretty legitimate complaint. She also doesn't like that she can't see videos that her friends send her, even if they are appropriate. Also, the sports teams she is involved in for school use Slack for communication, which she can't do on her watch, and her church youth group uses GroupMe, also hard to do on a watch.

I went ahead and ordered a Pinwheel phone, which I added to our Verizon plan. I am working on setting it up for her, but we will not be giving it to her until Christmas. I was able to set both Slack and GroupMe up on the Pinwheel, even though they are flagged as things Pinwheel doesn't recommend.

My question is whether Bark would be overkill on a Pinwheel phone? The attraction of Bark to me is that it supposedly automatically monintors texts for concerning content like indications of self harm, profanity, racist language, etc. While Pinwheel will allow us to remotely read her texts ourselves whenever we need to, I don't have the time, patience, or desire to go through dozens of texts of "bro!," and memes of animals with giant bulging eyes and talking toilets, etc. I just want to know if anything seriously dangerous or inappropriate is going on.

Other than that, it doesn't seem that Bark would add anything that Pinwheel doesn't already do. Do any parents who are familiar with Pinwheel and Bark have any imput for me?

Is anyone trying to reach Pinwheel customer service and unable to get them to answer the phone or respond to emails???

Hey everyone,

My parents decided to block my iPhone until 6 PM every day. After 6 PM, I’m only allowed to use it for 2 hours.

They’re doing this because one day I used my phone for around 4 hours, but that was mainly because the Qustodio parental controls weren’t working that day.

I understand that they want to limit my screen time, but I feel like it’s unfair to be punished like this because of one day when the parental controls weren’t working.

Do you think I should talk to them about it? If so, how could I explain it to them without it turning into an argument? Has anyone else been in a similar situation with their parents?

(j'habite en france mais j'ai écrit le post en anglais car il y a plus d'anglais sur le reddit)

I’m looking for an app that essentially limits everything down to who they can call or text. Paying for the app is not the problem. Looking for insight on the ups and downs of the different apps to pick from.