Comment by everdrive - Hacker Neue

everdrive Dec 12, 2025 parent

Agreed. My kids are young right now, but I'm wondering if we can just have a shared family room computer like in the 90s. (school-based laptops might thwart this, but maybe by the time they're school-aged people will realize that constantly putting kids in front a screen is a bad thing to do?)

bennyp101 Dec 12, 2025

Yep, I bought a separate all-in-one computer that is in the living room, in full view of everyone else, so we can keep an eye on what is going on when they are using it.

We also have pi-hole running that blocks a lot of things, and can turn on and off certain domains (so they can play roblox etc for a short while, then its blocked again) and their devices are pretty locked down

keernan Dec 12, 2025

Just a heads up:

All four of my daughters prohibit my 7 grandchildren from going anywhere near roblox. My grandchildren are currently ages 2-11 but my daughters are so outraged by what happens there that they say their children will never be allowed on roblox until they move out of the house. Apparently it is extremely predatory, lots of bullying, and highly sexualized - and while children are the site's target audience, the site provides no effective oversight.

bennyp101 Dec 13, 2025

100% - They are only allowed on certain games, no chat, and I have a couple of private servers so they can do this steal a brain rot thing

bombcar Dec 12, 2025

You can be pretty effective with not much - school laptops can be router-blocked to the needful, the main familyroom computer can be visible to all but also have rudimentary DNS blocking, etc.

The key is to be open about it and “more” than reasonable; allow things when requested that aren’t harmful.

If we’re too perfect at protecting them from the world they’ll have no tools to deal with the world, which they will have to do eventually.

froglets Dec 12, 2025

Even if they don’t share a computer you can still set up their own computers in a shared space. We don’t put tvs in bedrooms either just to keep those rooms for reading/sleeping. Added bonus of keeping computers in common spaces is that your kids won’t disappear into their rooms one day and never come back out.

krupan Dec 12, 2025

You can have a shared family room computer! It works really well. No screens in the bedroom is a great idea. iPhones with strict Screen Time settings are awesome when the kids get old enough to use a phone for communication but not old enough to handle a phone with games and the full Internet

wiredfool Dec 12, 2025

My 16 yr old just had his phone update and apply his old screen time settings from 4 or 5 years ago. Sorry kiddo, don’t remember the screen time password.

Now why they came back, and weren’t working before? The restrictions were so full of holes that they didn’t really work as anything other than a speedbump.

hellojesus Dec 12, 2025

I don't have an iPhone so haven't tried any of this, but can you not treat your kids devices like you would a business's?

It looks like normal user device enrollment with device management is optional, hence why I think business probably makes sense.

https://support.apple.com/en-sg/guide/apple-business-manager...

The you can force all traffic through a proxy.

https://support.apple.com/en-sg/guide/deployment/dep7ba46fcd...

And since you have root certs on the devices, you can decrypt traffic and uniquely identify devices and block internet from your central management, at any time, regardless if the phone is on your wifi vs a friend's vs mobile data.

I think it should work.

ipython Dec 12, 2025

All I can think of when reading this is: https://www.hackerneue.com/item?id=9224

rawgabbit Dec 12, 2025

With my family, I shut down and threw away my last PC; too many security head aches. I bought the cheapest large screen iPad(s) and promptly locked them down. One of my best decisions.

everdrive OP Dec 12, 2025

I think that's the idea behind the family room PC -- you have parental observation rather that attempting to rely on (necessarily-imperfect) security software.

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