Ask HN: How do you control internet access for your kids?

There are so many different approaches that I find it difficult to feel comfortable about her using the internet without my 10-year-old daughter feeling like I'm constantly looking over her shoulder. She's generally sensible and doesn't go searching for age-inappropriate stuff, for which I'm grateful, but recently she said she was searching for butterfly pictures and came across something that freaked her out a bit. (She doesn't want to tell me what it was because she's embarrassed - I've not forced her to tell me because I want to give her time to tell me in her own time, but I know she'll tell me eventually and we'll be able to have a conversation about it. In general she'll ask if she's not sure about something, which is also reassuring.)

Currently on her laptop I have the kids version of Kagi and uBlock Origin on Firefox, as well as a browser extension that you have to explicitly whitelist domains before they're available. It's the last of these that I'd like to drop somehow - it feels too limiting that every time she goes to a new domain I have to whitelist it, and I'd like to delegate that to a service that approximates my feeling about what's appropriate, or works that out from a few settings, so she's freer to explore the web.

A while ago I tried setting up a Google account for her to filter what she could watch on YouTube, but (a) had issues with my personal Workspace account not being able to be used as a parent account and (b) at the time the filtering was too restrictive because it was like a Google-approved whitelisting approach that excluded lots of channels that weren't specifically targeted at kids, but she was still interested in. (There was an interesting discussion of what you can do with YouTube and whitelisting here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44740380 - that didn't quite seem to resolve itself.)

I used Claude to write a browser extension that allowed me to do what I mention above - whitelisting YouTube channels - as well as hiding shorts by default, but I'm not convinced it'll function consistently given that it's just a CSS / JS layer over the YouTube UI. I could just feed it back into Claude if it starts failing, but I won't know when that's happens because I won't be the one using it.

I'd be interested to hear everyone's approaches and ideas about how to do this because I'm sure there are some good ideas I haven't thought of.

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uyzstvqs 14 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You can configure a Pi-hole with filter lists. Alternatively, Cloudflare, Mullvad and Adguard offer public DNS resolvers with family-friendly filter lists.

For YouTube there's the BlockTube browser extension. You'll need to configure it yourself, but it's very flexible. It lets you block channels, videos and keywords.

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frereubu 14 hours ago | parent [-]

Thanks for the DNS resolver idea - will look into that.

The issue with having to actively block YouTube channels is that there are so many! I really want something where all channels are blocked by default and I can whitelist them, but without actually hiding the channels themselves, just stopping the videos from playing so discovery isn't affected.

	▲	uyzstvqs 12 hours ago \| parent [-]
		BlockTube also has an advanced blocking feature[0], which lets you define blocks using JavaScript if statements. You can flip it around to a whitelist-system by returning true (block) by default, and returning false (don't block) on your rules. But this does hide videos from search, recommended, homepage, etc. What you're suggesting could potentially be done by creating an extension which checks the channel_id, then blocks calls to the /videoplayback endpoint if the channel is not whitelisted. Though do be aware that titles and thumbnails could also be explicit. Side note: All of this is very technical and not suitable for the average parent, which is not great. [0] https://github.com/amitbl/blocktube/wiki/Advanced-Blocking

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brudgers 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

we'll be able to have a conversation about it

That is all you really have. Conversation. Trust.

Everything else is pretending their peers don’t have internet access. Pretending your child isn’t clever. Isn’t an autonomous person.

Every bit of time you spend shopping for solutions, spend writing code, spend configuring firewalls is time you don’t spend on your peer to peer relationship with your child. Time you don’t spend building trust. Time you don’t spend talking.

Ten years old is about the end of reliable “because I said so” parenting. Good luck.

	▲	muzani 9 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		When I was in university, there were a whole bunch of people who "gooned" and failed exams. Most were from conservative families and were not given any internet access whatsoever. They never built the "antibodies" for the wild wild web. I do restrict my kids' phone access, but often it's with discussion. I tell them I'm shutting down their phone access. Usually when they don't do their homework or when they start getting emotional. They'll build the self control muscle. And when they find the hard stuff, they'll be a little more prepared.
	▲	sandreas 11 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I think this is the way... OP is already doing the things that can be done. You could try to educate more on how to do things right instead of trying to block anything that might freak her out, e.g. searching for pictures only on curated sites like pixabay. However, basic filtering (adblock, kagi, DNS filter), trust and communication are the only things required in my opinion...

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austin-cheney 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

1. Don't buy your kids a cell phone until they are ready to drive.

2. Force all home network traffic through a DNS service you manage, for example a PiHole.

3. Back up the PiHole with a commercial DNS point that also filters like CloudFlare Family DNS (its free).

4. Every few months inspect your children's devices for their internet activity, VPNs, and other things.

I suspect there will be many excuses about how children cannot possibly live life without a cellphone or about how draconian these rules are. The reality is you are either being an active parent or you just don't really care.

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majortennis 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

trying to use youtube kids but haven't tried filters as i want to filter certain things like cocomelon bebefinn and blippi.