I tried to protect my kids from the internet. Here's what happened.

An appeal to Apple and other tech companies -- and to policy makers

Note: This post is a version of the op-ed I wrote for the Washington Post last month in connection with the release of 10 Rules for Raising Kids in a High-Tech World. I’m reprinting it here with my encouragement to read it on the Post site for a fun pop-up surprise (no, not the paywall – a pop-up that shows exactly what’s wrong with our current free-for-all online, especially for kids). The piece is an expression of my frustration with the lack of regulation for websites and existing parental controls, especially those on Apple devices. It’s based on the section of 10 Rules called “Dear Apple: I Love You, but Your Parental Controls Suck.”

Writing that section made me sad. I have used Apple computers since I was a teenager in the 80s. In the mid-1990s, when Windows was pummeling the sales of Macs so badly it looked like Apple might go out of business, I said they’d have to pry my Mac out of my cold, dead hands. No way was I using a soulless Dell. I remember being thrilled the first time I was in Cupertino (where Apple is headquartered) and loved getting the insider info that residents sometimes called it “SuperCleano.” I was even more thrilled when the iMac in Bondi blue brought Apple roaring back in 1998. Between my own desktops and laptops, buying lab computers, and buying computers for my kids, I’ve bought at least 20 Macs. I’ve owned 5 iPhones.

So here’s my appeal: Apple, can you please have a checkbox in the setup process that says the computer or phone is for a child? And can you make your parental controls easier to use? All of us parents would appreciate it.

Love, Your Most Loyal Customer

p.s. To be clear, I think parents should be using parental controls, no question. (It’s Rule #6, with more in Rule #9). I just wish the device controls were easier to use. I also wish the social media and porn companies would verify age, which would really make things easier for parents. Australia recently passed a law requiring that social media companies verify age and raising the minimum age to 16; it’s set to go into effect in December. Some days I really wish I lived in Australia. (And not just for the social media law! It’s a beautiful place. Just to tie it all together, the blue in the first iMac was named after Bondi Beach near Sydney, one of my favorite places in the world.)

Like many parents, I do not want my children to access pornography online. I also do not want them to use social media until they are at least 16.

These may seem like simple requests, but they have been extremely difficult to achieve. In most states, including California, where I live, Pornhub can be accessed by simply clicking on “I am 18 or older — Enter.” Children can open social media accounts by simply choosing an earlier birth year. Age is not verified, and parental permission is not required.

Tech companies say that keeping kids off these sites is the parent’s responsibility. “We firmly believe that parents are best placed to police their children’s activity using the plethora of tools already available in modern operating systems and devices,” Pornhub states on its website.

Good luck with that. I’ve long been a proponent of parental controls and actively encourage families to use them on their children’s devices. But even I have struggled to implement parental controls. Policymakers, judges and tech companies should understand that they are not a cure-all. There is no substitute for legislation that requires tech companies to take the lead in verifying their users’ ages.

Last Christmas, I decided to buy my younger two children Mac laptops for doing their schoolwork because their school laptops were slow and had no ability to install parental controls. I’ve been doing research on kids and technology for a decade and have used Mac computers since the 1980s. Nevertheless, setting up parental controls was a day-long exercise in frustration.

I ran into trouble right after taking the laptop out of the box: Should I use my Apple account or create one for my daughter? I created one for my daughter only to find out there was no way to designate it as a child account. I erased everything back to its factory settings, started over with my account and then added one for her. After some more struggles, I read online that I should sign up for Family Sharing, which required my daughter to respond to an email — an annoying logistical hurdle, but one that also meant I needed to ask my child’s permission to add parental controls. With some trial and error, I finally found the place in Screen Time where I could block websites (it’s under Settings, then Screen Time, then Content & Privacy, then App Store, Media, Web, and Games, then a “Customize” button — a 5-step process and not exactly intuitive.)

Looking for a more convenient and comprehensive option, I searched for third-party parental control software that would work remotely. I bought Aura, only to find out it doesn’t work on laptops. I bought Net Nanny, but the instructions for installing it were so outdated I couldn’t make it work. I bought Qustodio (for $99.50 a year), which, hallelujah, finally worked. It blocked whole categories of websites, including those dedicated to gambling, violence and pornography. These kinds of broad filters are essential — parents can’t possibly know and input every inappropriate URL themselves — but they also mean we need to put our faith in parental control companies to keep them updated in a constantly churning internet.

I also chose to block the social networks category (their name for social media). At least, I thought I did. One day I logged into my Qustodio account and saw that both kids were using Snapchat on their laptops. Apparently Qustodio did not automatically include Snapchat under “social networks,” so they managed to access it. Onto the blocked list it went. Another time, I noticed Instagram had appeared on the list of allowed websites. I blocked it again and asked my daughter about this mysterious development. She eventually admitted that she’d sneaked into my home office, pulled up the Qustodio website and changed the control settings.

I’m far from the only parent who has run into these issues. Online forums like Reddit are full of parents complaining that parental controls, especially Apple device controls, aren’t meeting their needs or that their kids are finding new work-arounds faster than they can keep up. When Louisiana state representative Kim Carver (R) tried to pass a law requiring Apple and other phone software providers to enforce age restrictions on apps, the company’s lobbyists told him that Apple devices already included parental control tools. When Carver later tried to set them up on his 14-year-old’s new iPhone, though, he concluded they “aren’t the panacea they’re promised to be,” he told the Wall Street Journal, echoing the experience of countless others I’ve spoken with at school parent nights on kids and technology.

Now imagine what it’s like for parents who are working two jobs, can’t locate the device controls or can’t afford to spend another $100 on parental control software after buying their kid a laptop. Many parents don’t know that these parental control tools exist to begin with: Only about half of parents use any type of parental controls, and fewer than 10 percent use the controls available in social media apps.

In the U.S., you must be at least 16 to drive alone and 21 to buy alcohol, and age is verified. We don’t expect parents to bear the entire burden for keeping younger kids from driving or drinking, yet we have that expectation for online safety. If adult content and social media sites were required to verify age (say, 18 for pornography and 16 for social media), many of these problems would go away. This is far from an impossible request; there are so many companies that verify age online that they have their own trade association.

Age verification would also help address kids’ lament that “everybody else has TikTok” (or Snapchat, or Instagram). Kids often begin to say this at age 10 or 11, long before they are legally allowed to have accounts under the too-low existing age minimum of 13. Verify age, and the “but everybody else has it” argument wouldn’t work anymore — no 11-year-old would have social media.

Tech companies are not going to apply stringent age checks themselves for a simple reason: They won’t make as much money. When state laws seeking to enforce online age minimums or require parental permission have passed, companies have either sued or withdrawn from the state entirely (as social media site Bluesky recently did in Mississippi and Pornhub did in Texas). With the Supreme Court upholding the Texas law requiring porn sites to verify age, more laws may be coming. But for now, parents are mostly on their own, leaving even well-informed families with ample resources to fight an uphill battle to keep their kids safe online.