Posted
Lots of content services have "parental controls." Amazon Prime, Disney+, YouTube Kids, Epic (books), etc. Generally they work like this:
- Tell us how old your kid is
- We'll decide what they can see
The obvious problem is that media companies aren't parents. My values aren't their values, and even if they were, they don't know what my kids can handle.
Now obviously, my real goal as a dad is to teach my kids to make good decisions on their own by the time they're adults. But fences are helpful in training, and are especially important when kids are small. There's no reason my toddler should be able to tap on something I don't want her to see when I'm not looking. It shouldn't be on her screen to tap.
The frustrating thing is that there's an obvious technical solution to this: let parents decide. It would work like this:
- I pick the content my kid is allowed to see.
- ... that's it, that's how it works.
No ratings systems, no recommendation engines, no AI, just some very simple code and a few bytes of boolean flags. In software terms, it's what we call an "allow list."
Is there any reason this isn't implemented on every platform?
Maybe it's because they don't care what parents want, only about maximizing "engagement" and revenue. Maybe they want to be able to suggest whatever they think will make kids watch more.
But guess what: I'd pay more for a service that we could use with more peace of mind. And isn't revenue the actual business goal?
If you work for a content service, please consider this feature request. It would be easy to make, and parents would thank you.
Just let parents decide.