Is It a Good Idea to Block Websites As Parental Control?
Debate Information
Greetings!
In my opinion, parenting has become the toughest job nowadays especially if you are a single or even parent of a teen. Whenever I try to argue with my 13 years son about the use of smartphones, I always found him little aggressive. As I can't have an eye on his activities that's why I decided to block some websites from his devices tablets and smartphones etc. Do you think it is a good idea? As a parent do you also willing to take some precautions about to censor the activities of your kids or teens on smart devices?
Secondly, I am not sure where I will that list of sites that I need to block at my son's phone and I just found these sources in this regard.
https://www.familyorbit.com/blog/list-of-inappropriate-websites-to-block/https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/sites-parents-add-block-list/https://www.consumersadvocate.org/parental-control-appsHowever, when I talked with my friends, they raised a point that what I will do in case, kids find alternates of them? That was a real concern of every teen's parent. I would like you guys to discuss it in a general way instead of only focusing my son because it is a real threat for every parent nowadays and yes, we can't say no about the use of smart devices because his consequences would also be negative. In addition, I also found some parental control routers here
https://thewiredshopper.com/best-parental-control-devices-routers-to-buy/ in my Google search. Do you think such devices will help the parents? I never tried and have no knowledge about them so I want to get more information about their pros and cons and uses.
As it is about our future (kids are our future) so I expect this topic would be discussed in a very serious manner here with feasible and worth reading solutions.
Waiting for your responses.
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However, getting them out of everything is impossible. There are roughly around 350 MILLION porn pages on the internet, and more are made every day. And anyone can't block that many porn sites. There are probably way more game sites and too, so if some are blocked, there are guarantees that child will get to it. So personally, while blocking websites the child can access can help prevent what the child may see, they're inevitably going to go to where you don't want them to go. Always keep check of the kids' browsing history.
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  Entity Sentiment Detection: game sites    porn sites   porn pages   good idea  
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I think Google should launch its policy for kids or even can launch its App Store Version of kids or search engine like YouTube Kids.
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This trend in the modern developed world towards protecting people from all possible sources of discomfort, such as "adult content" or "offensive speech", is not something to celebrate. Kids growing up in sterile environment are not going to suddenly become mature upon starting the adult life; they will have a hard time adjusting to it and will make many mistakes in the process, mistakes easily avoidable by earlier exposure to some of the adult things.
Ever seen those videos on Youtube, with adults literally crying over losing a video game match? That is the consequence of growing up in a shelter, deprived of all challenges and the incentive to grow a thicker skin.
My policy, if I ever have children, will be simple: do whatever you want, but understand the consequences. If you want to smoke pot at the age of 10 with your friends, I will not stop you - but I will have a very serious conversation with you about it, tell you what I think, how much I disapprove of it and why you will regret doing it later. But I will not punish you for it. I believe that the role of the parent is to guide the child, not to enslave and control them.
By the same token, the child is responsible for their mistakes. Took a car loan at the age of 16 you cannot afford? Too bad. Do not expect me to bail you out just because I am your dad. Go through this experience and deal with it, and you will be stronger for it and learn some valuable lessons in the process.
This, I believe, is where my parents messed up a little bit: they never forced me to face my challenges on my own, and always helped me out. Granted, sometimes helping is reasonable, but it should not be a rule of life. I had a very hard time developing proper work ethics, for example, when turning adult, because I was never pressured into it in my childhood. For some people, extensive coddling can plain make them unable to survive in the adult world on their own, and they end up relying on their parents' help or on governmental welfare programs, falling apart as individuals.
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It is relatively easy for kids to get past parental blockage by using the Tor Browser. If there is somewhere that kids really wanted to get for some reason, they could do so provided they had a little bit of technical know-how.
https://www.torproject.org/
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It's also incredibly easy to make sure no child gets through blockers etc if you know-how. And trust me, I know-how.
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Think about that.
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How do you know-how? As far as I am aware, the child could always get past such blockers, by using a virtual machine for instance, or using the Tor Browser.
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Yes exactly. Tor can't be blocked as far as I know. If it would be also another browser would take its place.
Some ways:
https://blog.torproject.org/breaking-through-censorship-barriers-even-when-tor-blocked
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So, not if you block access to virtual machines and other means of access to anonymisers in the first place.I've also looked at multiple ways of blocking access to anonymisers and then put controls on my computer and then tested to see if these controls could be broken. So the first thing you need to do is think of every single possible way controls could be broken in order to gain access to anonymisers and then mitigate them. After you've done this you can then focus on other parental controls.
FYI, it's not about blocking the anonymisers or virtual machines; of course you can't do that. But you can block access to those on your own machine and your child's device providing you have full control over those devices. Now, I don't you about in your country but in mine this is exactly what they do in several workplaces, schools, colleges, universities, libraries, etc.
It's really not that a lot of kids are very clever these; it's more that a load of parents are somewhat unaware and /or lazy when it comes to administering their children's computer/mobile devices. A computer system is only as secure as it's administrator. And when it comes to parents and their children's computers more than half of them are literally allowing their children to be their own Administrators - a complete recipe for disaster.
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As a teen, yes you can block some websites, but usually we can find a way around them if we want to. So you may end up just wasting money on stuff.
As for the list of websites to block, he probably won't be happy if you block social media. And as he is 13, he probably has the sense to not waste a ton of money on shopping sites.
I wouldn't blame you for blocking the porn sites, those make sense. But again, if he really wants to, he can just bypass it in some way.
He probably gets aggressive over the use of his phone because there is a sense of freedom that comes with a phone, and he probably wants to keep that.
He also probably knows what porn is if he's 13. This doesn't mean he's seen it, but he has probably heard people joke about it at school.
If he has an Iphone, i'm pretty sure there is a way to block stuff on his phone because my parents have done it before.
My advice would be to get an app that allows you to pick and choose what websites your kid can access, he won't like it but it's probably the best solution.
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Is It a Good Idea to Block Websites As Parental Control?...
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