How to get digital control over savvy minors

BarcelonaThe accelerated digitalization of society has turned connected devices into ubiquitous tools in homes. But while adults navigate this ecosystem with varying degrees of skill, children navigate it with an ease that often worries their parents. The question is clear: how can we protect our children from a digital environment that's growing faster than we can understand it?

The Labyrinth of Parental Control

The most drastic method for restricting minors' access to inappropriate content is to not provide them with their own devices at all. Families concerned about keeping track of their children's whereabouts have access to other connected devices, such as lockets or tracking watches, which don't support apps or access the web. However, parents who have decided against depriving their children of cell phones can still intervene in several ways.

Network level controls

The router Modern phones offer parental control features that act as a first line of defense within the home, controlling internet access for all devices connected to the home network. These systems identify each device by its unique MAC address and allow you to configure exclusive restrictions for each family member. However, their effectiveness is limited to the home environment: when minors leave the house with their phones and connect to mobile networks, these controls lose all functionality.

To overcome this limitation, telephone operators also offer content blocking mechanisms for children's lines. These systems can be activated and configured by parents, who are the contract holders and payers of the bills, allowing parental controls to extend beyond the home.

One of the features is access time restrictions, in which you can define time periods during which filtering rules will be applied. Content filtering operates through two distinct policies: blacklists, which prevent access to websites with specific keywords, and whitelists, which only allow access to content with pre-approved keywords. However, this method has limitations: it does not directly control the use of specific applications on the device or the internal functions of the operating system.

Controls integrated into operating systems

More granular are the controls built into desktop (Windows, macOS, and Linux) and mobile (iOS/iPadOS and Android) operating systems. Setting them up typically requires adding your child to a family group and managing settings online or through the device's settings app.

The core features include limiting screen time, with the ability to set different durations for each day of the week; restricting specific apps and games; and even blocking certain apps altogether. Content filters ensure you don't see inappropriate material when searching the internet, with options to filter out adult content or create lists of blocked or approved websites.

App restrictions allow you to prevent the installation or removal of programs, control in-app purchases, and restrict system-specific features such as the camera, web browser, or voice assistants. Apps can also be limited based on their age rating. An additional advantage is that settings established on one operating system can be extended to other linked devices, such as game consoles.

Third-party applications

Finally, there are specialized apps that parents can install on their children's devices to monitor and control their digital activity. These tools can automate tasks such as setting time limits and blocking adult content, which is especially useful for young children. However, their quality is variable, and many parents acknowledge that technologically savvy children can find ways around them.

Platforms: Between Self-Regulation and Responsibility

Major digital platforms have adopted parental control measures with mixed success. Instagram has opted to make accounts for children under 18 private by default, but it doesn't have a parental control system as such. TikTok offers Family Sync, which allows parents to limit searches and set time limits, but its effectiveness depends on the minor's voluntary cooperation. Twitch doesn't verify the age of its users, and its control tools are limited. This disparity highlights an uncomfortable reality: many platforms lack robust age verification mechanisms, creating a loophole that minors easily exploit.

Age verification methods: security or privacy?

Age verification methods have evolved beyond ineffective self-declaration, developing several systems that each show their own limitations. Verification with official documents, through uploading manually verified IDs or with artificial intelligence, offers reliability but raises concerns about privacy and the risk of forged documents.

Third-party services use various data sources to confirm age, but they are costly and involve sharing sensitive information. Payment-based systems, such as credit card verification, can be circumvented by minors using their parents' cards.

Biometrics, especially facial recognition that estimates age by analyzing features, shows promise but suffers from uncertainty for ages close to the legal limits and raises significant privacy concerns. Artificial intelligence helps detect deepfakes and synthetic identities, but accuracy remains a challenge.

Behavioral analysis or age-inference devices have limited success and raise significant ethical issues. Meanwhile, digital identities and digital wallets based on state-issued IDs are considered the approach of the future in the European Union, despite the deployment delays evident in the Spanish case.

Technical loopholes and countermeasures

Furthermore, many minors have discovered they can circumvent age restrictions by using virtual private networks (VPNs) that simulate the user's location in countries with less restrictive regulations. This method allows them to access blocked content or avoid location-based parental controls. However, properly configured parental controls can counteract this strategy by restricting or completely blocking the use of VPN applications, thereby closing off this technical escape route.

The main challenges remain the privacy and cybersecurity of personal data, the accuracy of the methods, the impact on user experience, and finding the right balance between protection and privacy.

Legal framework

The European Union and Spain are trying to fill this gap with a battery of regulations that, however, highlight the complexity of the challenge. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requires "reasonable efforts" to verify age, but this ambiguous concept leaves much room for interpretation for companies.

The European Digital Services Act requires protective measures for minors, but without specifying how to apply them. In Ireland, binding codes already establish that simple self-declaration of age is not valid, thus setting a stricter precedent.

Spain has opted for its own solutions with mixed results. The draft law on the protection of minors in digital environments plans to make parental controls mandatory on all devices and raise the minimum age for accessing social networks from 14 to 16. But the case of the Digital Wallet, colloquially called passport, illustrates the gap between legislative ambitions and technical reality. Announced in July 2024 as a privacy-friendly solution for verifying the age of majority in adult content, it remains inoperative due to security certification issues and user resistance.

The educational key: beyond technological filters

This proliferation of tools and regulations hides a fundamental paradox: while we seek ever more sophisticated solutions to control minors' use of technology, we forget that the problem is more educational than technological. No filter is infallible when it comes to a motivated teenager with internet access. The answer lies where it has always been: in education within families. Parental controls can be useful as a temporary measure, especially with young children, but they are no substitute for conversation and trust with children about responsible technology use. Perhaps the solution lies not so much in perfecting filters as in teaching them to navigate wisely.