Now that I have a kid, I have opinions on parental controls. I’ve heard forever “they are awful” but very few of the parents could give me real reasons. So I am going to list my reasons.
They don’t make sense.
You set the age of your child and they deliver a smorgasbord of “age appropriate” shows and movies. Disney epitomes this weirdness. The number of times Eli or I have gone “oh, we think Remy would like this movie” but it isn’t available in the children’s profile. We flip to our adult-watch-anything profile and something G or PG is available to US (adults) but not my kid. And we have no idea why.
And there might be movies or shows we look at and go “wait, you let THAT pass through?!?!” Seriously, I have no idea what metric these people use. And it isn’t just Disney. The Lego movie is an example. HBO Max (Just MAX now) has all these cute Lego shows for my kid. But not the Lego movie. It has the Batman Lego movie, but not Lego Movie 1 and 2. WHY?!?!? Who is making this choice and what is the metric??
We can’t control it
Even worse, we can’t change it. We can’t allow movies or shows we would approve of. THEN WORSE, we can’t turn off things we don’t want him to see. Now, in general I don’t censor what my child sees beyond age-appropriate (ie he isn’t mentally/emotionally ready for sexual stuff, or strong blood/violence). But there are a few things that if he wants to watch – I want to block.
PBS has an app for all their videos. It’s great. But there is one show I can not stand. Every time my son turns it on it immediately begins to make my nerves hurt. I clench my teeth at the voices. I glance at the “stories” and I want to throw the whole thing out the window. I hate it. There is a visceral reaction. And my son doesn’t adore it, but he doesn’t like being told “no” (shocker, right?) and sometimes what began as a “stop hurting mommy’s brain” turns into a fight.
My Idea/Suggestion
I really wish I could just say “never show this” in the parental controls. None of the video apps seem to offer this. Not Disney, not Netflix, not PBS (which is 100% kid-focused), not Max. Not ONE (that I know about). It seems an easy and obvious parental control option “hide this show I hate.” For whatever reason. The crazy fundamentalists can hide shows with two dads. The white supremacists can hide shows with black people (so….. they would be left with nonhumans only I think, which is hilarious to me).
And the rest of us can hide that show that sets our teeth on edge even when we aren’t the one watching it but it’s in the same room.
Dream by Day 