I’m currently setting up a windows 11 machine for a kid and want to make sure that their traffic is easily monitored. I’ve debloated much of it. Normally, I’d get rid of Edge and put on Firefox. But I noticed that Microsoft Family has the ability to monitor website usage.
I was wondering if there’s similar functionality with Firefox or Chrome.
I’m most familiar with the iOS parental toolkit.
Finally, I want to let him have some access to some games, but I don’t want him to purchase any games yet. I’m open to suggestions to getting this aspect locked in as well. I was just going to mimic my set up with Playnite. But I haven’t really dug into it yet.
As much as I dislike the apple ecosystem, the simplicity of those parental controls and the breadth of coverage they provide is difficult to match on windows without a lot of fluffing around.
I hear that! I’ll take the DIY temp when he’s a teen and see if Linux is a fit. But that’s a whole 'nother bag
Just installed Timekpr-next on my children’s Linux machines. Helps in controlling their screen time a little.
Apart from that we just talk regularly and use Steam Family to control the games they can install. And for non-Steam games they ask me anyways. And they also want to talk about games, even dicey ones. I might be special, but I also let them play GTA. They mostly use it to drive around anyways. The occasional explosion is nice to look at. To create mayhem they usually go with Goat Simulator anyways.
Discord and Roblox are much more problematic. Though one kid already uses Discord to chat with his friends. We have regular chats about chatting on other servers.
Minecraft seems to be good for now apart from some griefers. But I guess you should be as careful with that as with other games and services that allow chatting.
Cheers! Robolox is a no go for now. Minecraft is okay, but only for friends that he knows in real life.
But I agree, discussions and trust are the most important. I monitor so he doesn’t stumble upon anything and if he does, we can have a discussion.
Steam Family lets you control what games you share and you can buy them games or allow/disallow them buying their own games.
Excellent! Thanks!
Setup a dns guardian system to make sure that they are not accessing some forbidden web pages (like only fans or Instagram). This extra layer of annoyance is pretty useful because there a lot of apps for kids with obvious holes to side load web pages that always keep me wondering if they were there by intention.
Apart of that I would setup a restricted shell to execute only the approved apps.
Cheers! I like this idea. Thanks.
Depends, how old is the kid?
- First computer.
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Edge=chrome. Just stick with edge for the convenient family features. I’m not aware of anything like that for Firefox.
Yeah. There was a sliver of hope that he wouldn’t get caught in the enshttification of chrome and maybe escape it early with Firefox. But it sounds like it will be tough to get the monitoring I need.
Second this. They also have add ons. So you can get ad blockers and other tools to help keep the kids safe.
