Is there a solution where we can compel parental control to be enabled by default on kids phones?

That would seem to be least intrusive option.

Using the internet in the UK/EU is such a horrible experience, every cookie pop-up is a reminder how badly thought out these rules are.

> Using the internet in the UK/EU is such a horrible experience, every cookie pop-up is a reminder how badly thought out these rules are.

Technical cookies don't require any consent so every time you see a cookie banner the website owner wants to gather more data about you than necessary. Furthermore, these rules don't require cookie banners, it's what the industry has chosen as the way to get consent to track their users.

It's very easy to make websites without needing cookie popups in EU/UK. Every cookie popup is a reminder of how stale the thinking around tracking and data sharing is!

UK mobile networks and ISPs have had age-restricted content filtering enabled by default since ~2013-14.

This policy was pushed by David Cameron, who was the prime minister at the time:

https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/the-internet-and-porn...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23401076

Age restricted filtering of the internet is the default on all UK mobile networks as far as I know, it might even be the law that it defaults to filtering. You have to actually ring them up and say you want the filtering switched off or some do it as part of the sign up process.

All the routers also come with filtering settings as well and ISPs ship with the filtering on by default, since that is the law and has been for several decades.

The simplest solution is to require all online devices to have a "child mode" that can be activated during setup, and require all parents to enable this for minors under 16. In this mode, the device takes screenshots every few seconds of active use, and makes this viewable on the parents' devices as a timeline. This must be private with full end-to-end encryption and limited data retention in the clients (7 days or so).

It's much simpler than blocking, and much more effective. Most parents don't know what to block proactively, blocklists are imperfect, and the biggest threats are hiding in the most innocent looking apps (Discord, Roblox, Reddit, even just messaging with friends from school).

> Using the internet in the UK/EU is such a horrible experience, every cookie pop-up is a reminder how badly thought out these rules are.

That's what the advertising-dependent implementers who deliberately made it shittier than necessary (stuff like "you have to decline each of our 847 ad partners individually") want you to think, at least. It's mostly malicious compliance.

Having done several rounds with parental control, I'd say -- nfw. We were worried more about timesink than anything else, but over a long period of time, it mainly boils down to knowing your kids, trusting them, with checkups. The tech is just not there to actually control what happens on a device.

White listing worked for a while (months) when they were young, but it was super-high touch and stuff just broke all the time. You try to whitelist a site, but you have to then figure out all their CDNs.

Restricting specific sites works, sort of, until they find some place that hosts that content. Blocking youtube doesn't work(*), every search engine has a watch videos feature. (Why are you spending 3 hours a day on DDG?) There's really no way to segment youtube into "videos they need to watch for school" and "viral x hour minecraft playthrough". Somehow, we've managed to combine the biggest time waste ever with a somewhat useful for education hosting service.

That's leaving out the jailbreaks that come from finding an app's unfiltered webview and getting an open web escape there.

There's basically no reliable method for filtering even on locked down platforms.

* there's probably a way to kill it at the firewall based on dns, but that's iffy for phones and it's network wide.

Install uBlock. In its settings: Filter Lists -> Cookie notices

I'm happy to have popups with "Reject All" button. If there is no "Reject All" button I close site immediately.

Cookie regulations are perfectly Ok, businesses which want to add 429 vendors and data processors to simple internet shop or corporate blog is not.

If you use cookies only for legitimate basic local functionality (like login and shopping cart on online shop site) you SHOULD NOT have any popups, there is exemption for such use cases in the regulations. Only if you want to sell data or pass it for processing to third party you need popup. Simply don't.

Sure, but you'd need to apply it to all phones, because what's stopping a kid from buying an adult smartphone if they have the money? And smartphones can be dirt cheap.

Also remember that the pop-up is an industry choice, the rules only mandate that a user should opt in, not how. No laws mandate the cookie banners, no regulations say they should be obnoxious.

The cookie popups is such a painful representation of Europe tech in general.

Like you can configure your browser to do whatever you want with cookies - blocking them all, blocking only third party ones, etc. - there is no need for government regulation here.

But the legislators are completely tech illiterate and even the general public supports more interference and regulation.

Come to think of it, parental control would be a neat application for something like Apple Intelligence. A local system service that is "trustworthy enough" to monitor everything on screen, and written content too.

I hate that the internet is being destroyed in the name of iPad kids

Some would argue the point is to be intrusive... The most cost effective and simplest solution to kids watching porn would be regulation around on-device filters. Why the UK didn't do this and instead tried to regulate the entire internet should be questioned – is this really about the children watching porn?

When purchasing an internet-enabled device the UK could regulate that large retailers must ask if the device is to be used by an under 18 year old. If they say yes, then they could ship with filters enabled. They could also regulate that all internet-enabled devices which could be sold to children should support child filters.

If we did this then whether or not a child views NSFW material it will be on the parent, instead of the current situation where whether a child can view NSFW material online depends on the age verification techniques of Chinese companies like TikTok or American companies like 4chan.

i love how screen time is only detrimental to young minds, and older minds are somehow immune to its evils.

> Is there a solution where we can compel parental control to be enabled by default on kids phones?

What do you mean? Parents can easily set this up before they give them to their children.