How do I get/why are there not tight parental controls for broadband and mobile network?

[RedAppleMedium]

Things are sliding through. Despite setting parental filters on home broadband (mobile network is rather shit) and discussing with DC (teens) they've been able to watch porn and other nasty stuff, probably !!! And I worry how it's affecting them !!!!

Advice and tips, please

That’s not the governments fault though. If your issue with getting control apps on your children’s phone is that you’ve given them free reign and now they don’t let you then that’s a parenting issue not a government, internet or parental control issue.

Then you change the Wi-Fi password and cancel their mobile contracts until they tell you. With backup from someone, following your post about your son’s violence.

Your child calling you names and hitting you isn't because of stuff he's seen on the internet/porn, its a parenting issue, most likely copying his father.

You say they are teens, if they want to find porn they will nomatter what you try to put on their phones. At some point they are allowed privacy too eg the PIN locks on their phones. Being controlling yourself isn't going to help their behavious any.

This. You don't allow them to have the phone unless they abide by a code of conduct which includes you knowing their pin.
Tbh it sounds like you didn't sort this out when they first got phones, i didnt hand the phone over without setting the PIN myself and going over strict instructions not to change it and have always been clear ill stop the contract and take a hammer to the phone if they don't stick to the rules

How old are the 'teens'? There's a huge difference between a 13 year old and 18 year old.

Assuming they are young teens you could:
-If you pay the mobile phone bills, cancel them until they agree to rules
-install apps to restrict or track (My DCs have to ask permission to download apps and have content controls)
-look at your behaviours too, simply being controlling won't solve the problems you have. Counselling could help all of you.

If they are 16/17+ they'll need and want more freedom and privacy. Doesn't excuse behaviours towards you but you'll need a different approach to address it- again counselling could be really useful.

I have put controls in place on broadband app and mobile network, but restricted content has filtered in for some reason. I'm sure I said that. Nothing to do with supposed non existent parental control apps

The broadband provider is not filtering content, nor is the mobile network.

Please tell me more about these additional parental control apps that I can install. If they refuse, I will cancel contracts as advised

You're living in dream land if you think that this can be done successfully. It's more or less trivial to get around any measures that are reasonably available, and as soon as one kid finds out about them...they all find out about them. VPNs, alternate DNS servers, separate profiles to hide the apps and activity...it's all totally do-able and very, very easy when you know how to do it.

The only way to properly do this is to educate your kids and foster an atmosphere of honesty and non-judgement.

If you don't think that's realistic, then you just have to accept that you're pissing into the wind. You can't win this one, all you can do is fool yourself into a false sense of security.

Is it though? Australia have brought in bans. Why can't the UK? Nothing is done here to protect childhood. Fucking shitshow

Because laws don't prevent technical evasion measures. All they can do is make it so that, when your kids get around the blocks, they're breaking the law.

Laws that mandate "blocks" are nothing more than security theatre, because the blocks don't work - because the blocks can't work.

I'm a developer, not even a security professional, and I can get around just about any of the blocking measures - either app-level or network-level - in about five minutes. In another five minutes, I could post instructions on the Internet. Give it a day or two, and it'll be passed around every school, and there's nothing anybody can do to stop it.

Moreover, if there were any way to stop these things working, it would fundamentally break the Internet as we know it and make everything less secure for everyone.

This is the reality of the Internet. Sorry to say, but you need to get used to it, because it's not going to change...at least, not in the way that you want.

Red apple I agree and it's heartbreaking. It's so damaging to young people/children. It's particularly shit for women & girls (quelle surprise) but I'm glad I'm not trying to raise a boy in this environment. Fuck knows how you can raise them decent when the toxicity you used to be able to keep from them to a certain extent is now in their hands night & day.

Porn on Teletext eh?

Right.

Just be aware using private browsing/incognito can bypass even router bans.

Apple family share is good as it shows what app they use, and has various settings.

We have parental control on the phone and the pc, along with family share, and the router. Tesco mobile automatically blocks over 18 unless you can prove you are over 18 with a credit card.

The gaming sites like steam or Roblox contain links to user uploaded content and links to discord, Reddit and cesspits like that. Community forums on gaming sites are cesspits.

It's a fecking nightmare.

Australia have said that under 16s shouldn’t be on social media and want platforms to sort out the logistics. It doesn’t mean that under 16s won’t be on SM because kids will use VPNs or fake birthdays like they have since the dawn of the internet. Not all parents will give their kids devices with controls. If you search what happens in China (TikTok for teens is limited to something like 20 mins a day?) then you might get some data on how effective it is. I remember a senator grilling the CEO of TikTok about why some countries in Asia have a different (safer?) version of TikTok for kids and whether or not he’d allow his kids on TikTok.

I have seen a lot of ads for Instagram teen accounts as I’m guessing that platforms can see that there’s demand for SM-lite experience for teens.

You could see if it's possible to log sites visited on your router although I think most of the ones supplied by ISPs don't allow this. Then you could take away phones if porn sites are found in the logs. A lot of effort though, and wouldn't catch stuff that they access via mobile network.

Webcam girl channels on tv.

Thank you all. This makes more sense. I'm going to have to think about what I can do to try keep filters as tight as possible. I do think blocked content is on being bypassed on apps.