Help! How do you stop kids bypassing internet / phone controls to watch porn?

[Namechangedisaster]

Just this. I've just realised that DS is accessing adult content via proxies. I thought I had iphone locked down with parental controls on the device (via Screen Time) and by the provider (all parental controls set appropriately and regularly updated and checked).

Aparently this all counts for nothing, because teens know more about tech than we do. He's accessing the entire web via proxies and this has got around all my controls.

I had NO IDEA this was a thing.

Apart from taking the phone away, what can I do to stop this? I feel absolutely sick about what he has already seen

So sorry OP, I’m no help at all as and far less tech savvy than you as my DH works in tech so I trust and hope that he has set things up on my DS’s phone. He’s only 12 and no signs of puberty quite yet but I know it’s something that will become an issue soon enough.

Maybe you or DH could have a serious talk with him about why you want to avoid exposing his young eyes and mind to porn. There’s no doubt compelling research and info online to help you explain it.

Don’t blame yourself though…being a parent to teens is flipping hard and when it comes to tech they always seem one step ahead of us which makes it more challenging. That’s why I think the personal conversations about it, as awkward as they might be, are so important. Best of luck with it.

If you'd had adequate parental controls he a) would not have been able to install any app whatsoever on his phone without parental consent and b) wouldn't have been able to access the internet unsupervised to find out enough about VPN's and porn etc to be doing this. Its taken EE to tell you to block your child from being able to put apps on their phone, so no, you really weren't on top of this. I dont know anyone who lets their kids install apps on their phone and isn't using parental controls to prevent this.

And yes i have kids this age and nope they are not, and nor are their friends, sharing tons of porn in WhatsApp groups. Not at 13. My kids can't even access the browser on their phones to be looking at inappropriate shit and only get extremely limited phone time per day such that they literally dont have enough time to be doing this shit in addition to messaging friends.

Apple actually arent the best for this stuff - everyone i know finds Google Family Link is much better for being able to block things more effectively.

Everyone i know using iphones for teens has had these issues.

He doesn’t need a phone. How on earth would he be able to have a smart phone with internet access if you didn’t provide and pay for it. Of course you can take it away! How utterly ridiculous and irresponsible.

Just to update - I have now spoken to DS and he accessed the porn via proxys on Google. To clarify, he has maximum parental control on his iphone and cannot download apps without permission.

He did however have Google. The phone was locked down with a child's SIM (EE Safer SIM) AND parental controls all set up on the device via Apple screen time AND our home router similarly set up to block adult sites. I thought, stupidly, that this would mean that he could not access adult content.

No additional apps required and the parental filters did not and do not filter out proxies. It's not hard to find out how to access porn on a kids phone - if you don't belive me, get your kid's phone right now, google proxies and then click through. You'll be at Grannies of Hove before you know it.

I have spoken to him about the seriousness of the situation, but in a completely pornified world, I don't think he really believes me.

We have talked about porn - consent, coercion, and control. We have talked about unrealistic sex, violence in porn, distorted body image and the potential for long lasting damage to relationships and to self esteem in anyone that watch it. We have talked about safeguarding, grooming and the need to keep children safe online.

When I say "we" I mean me, of course. He's a child, he didn't want to have the conversation and I don't know how much he understood.

He has lost his phone for now, but eventually, we will give it back.

To anyone reading, please keep checking your kids phones. Belive me when I tell you that it's impossible to lock them down completely - if it were, someone in the last 4 pages of this thread would have told me how to do it. They haven't, becaues you can't.

As PPs have helpfully suggested, the only way to keep kids safe is to take their phones away completely, until they are 18.

If you are reading this and you are a parent who has removed a smart phone from a teenager permanently, please can you share what happened and how it went?

The only way your DC can pick up another one is if he had the money to do so. Take away his access to money! You’re trivialising this - you have a very vulnerable son who is becoming enmeshed in extreme porn. How do you think this is going to end if you do not start to have robust, enforced boundaries in place? He needs to be taught that his behaviour is totally unacceptable and given very strong consequences.

Do your teens not have phones then @WeaponsOfNaffDestruction? Genuine question. How old are your kids and how do they communicate with their friends if they don't?

So for us, one child was generally ok and followed the rules, we had sky at the time who would notify you if someone was bypassing stuff so one was very much aware and I did tell a porkie and say anything dodgy you look for and I’m sent a notification lol. My other child would bypass everything and game into the night eventually smart phone was confiscated and they then told their other parent who bought them a phone and told them not to tell me. Regardless of being informed of the reasons and for their own safety. As a result they basically had free access to everything from a very early age. On the flip side you can only control what happens in your home, we’ve had other parent with totally different rules, freinds at school showing them things, access to stuff at other peoples houses at sleepovers etc. you can’t control everything, I think the only answer is do what you can but keep Communicating as well

We also had the rule I could check whenever, you get privacy when you pay for your own phone. Generally I didn’t read texts etc unless I had cause too and mostly didn’t need too. Oh and it’s everywhere stuff you think is innocent and there’s a pop up honestly it’s everywhere

Confiscated one of my child’s after repeated gaming through through the night, accessing inappropriate content etc. their other parent once they told them, bought them a phone and told them keep it secret and hide it, which they did successfully and they then had free access to everything. When little we had a computer downstairs and they literally went on that, we only gave them phones at secondary school. Honestly I hate them I wish phones weren’t a thing like in previous childhoods

We are with Apple parental control was shocking, I’d put limits on and Minecraft would ignore it, it would turn itself off not work for certain apps it was a nightmare. We used sky broadband thing and then my husband moaned about over 18 movies needing a password. I used family link I think 🤔

Another poster a few years ago said her sons had listened to Jordan Petersen.

The other parent is a sick scumbag.

For all the people saying to just take away the phone, there is such huge naivety going on here. My DD is 18 now but we had lots of conversations around the dangers of the phone/apps/strangers etc when she was younger and she regularly spoke about about a couple of friends who weren’t allowed certain apps who had secret phones. They either take old ones from their house when someone upgrades or buy an old phone cheap from a friend.
OP is better to try and tackle the access issue and then also talk to her son. Being overly strict just makes a secretive and sneaky child…
To be clear, children need rules but when they are teens, I think it has to become more of a slight balancing act between just hard and fast rules and getting them on board with why you are implementing them.

Would you give a car and keys to a young teen with no advice, teaching or idea of how it works or the laws regarding age of driving etc? Cmon get a grip parents are in control of what there kids see,watch and download and if you choose to be lax then expect consequences. Never had a single problem and we have many teens down to age 5 because a parent should exactly do that be the parent and not use excuses as to why they don't have security, daily checks or bi daily etc...Teens can have a social life without all the apps

Is he actually accessing porn though…because you need to be able to age verify with a credit card and then every single time after that you have a verification app.

The other stuff, it’s worth going onto chat gpt and asking it how to stop the work arounds, you’ll be able to get a breakdown of all of the ways he can get through the blocks and how you can prevent it. It’s probably one of the few things that AI can do better than people, I use it sometimes when I need to work out why my laptop isn’t doing what I want it to…troubleshooting tech issues is not my forte.

oh and don’t assume it’s just boys looking! I have one of each and one was definately much worse than the other

my son is 11 so i am praying i won’t be navigating the same soon.
this is a good reason for persisting with a brick phone despite me wishing i could see blue ticks on messages and tracking via find my phone.

would there be appropriate talk therapy?
i mean if he is doing what you think he is doing he needs to have space to process it.
and seemingly it is addictive and will be providing a compelling amount of dopamine.

EE have given you such a lame fucking response. It's pissed me off just reading about it. I've got an EE data dongle and I can't even access the National sodding Lottery on EE data so how the fuck can they tell you they can't block VPNs?

we were told that any child that had a phone would have it removed for a whole term if any teacher became aware of it- ringing/visible etc- and that there would be zero adjustment to that policy.

they went so far as to specify 3 models of phones they think are ok.

im not going to fool myself into thinking we are safe from online influence. but i do so hope it slows it down.

quite a few of my friends kids who started year 7 with smart phones ahve themselves downgraded to bricks by year 9, to get away from the chaos and intrusion.

it does take parents to make it happen.
the smartphonefree childhood groups are loud here.

So is a proxy a website rather than a VPN app?

You can get round age verification using VPNs.

Is it worth giving him an Amazon Fire tablet instead. There IS a way of turning them into normal Android tablets but it's complicated - I didn't do it because I was scared of messing it up.

Because it isn't on a normal OS, it might be easier to lock down and there's a lot less access to apps. I don't know if there's a VPN app. And they'll only be able to work via WIFI, not data connections.

Yes - kids log on to a proxy site, which acts as a sort of tunnel to the unfiltered internet (as far as I understand). The proxies themselves cant be filtered out by normal parental controls.

My kid found out about this by watching youtube on our smart TV.

I have logged on to the site he used from my laptop, so I know it's not getting filtered out (ironically, sites that I am trying to find out about how to get help talking to kids about porn ARE filtered out. Its infuriating).

On iOS: Go to Screen Time > Content & Privacy Restrictions > Content Restrictions > Web Content. Select Limit Adult Websites or Allowed Websites Only. This automatically disables Apple's Private Browsing mode and blocks known proxy domains

Instructions for preventing them doing it again. You have said yours is tech savvy so you may need this section too.

Consider premium tools reviewed by PCMag Parental Control Guide such as Qustodio, Bark, or Net Nanny. These apps continuously monitor background processes and can flag or kill active VPN/proxy data tunnels even if they run through standard web protocols