YouTube Despite a Block: What Went Wrong at Our Home

On the morning of 3 November, YouTube played on our child's laptop even though we had blocked it there. This text tells what we found and what we take from it.

At home we run a filter of our own in the home network. For our child's laptop we had entered a whole series of blocks, YouTube included. None of them worked. The blocks were tied to the device ID, the fixed number of the network card, so our filter couldn't recognise the device at all. It only recognises devices by that number if it hands out the addresses in the home network itself. At our place the router does that. To the filter the laptop was a stranger, and strangers only get the settings that apply to everyone.

That means the rules we had entered for our child never worked. Not just on that day, but from the start.

Looking closer turned up three more things:

1. Addresses change. Devices get a second kind of address on the network (IPv6), and on some devices it changes several times a day. A block tied to such an address doesn't last long.
2. A browser went its own way. Firefox asked for addresses encrypted at a third-party provider instead of at our filter. We haven't conclusively worked out why that happened despite our settings. Part of the page requests never reached us. The technical details are in Why Parental Controls Sometimes Don't Work.
3. Games ran by detours. We had blocked game portals, but the games loaded their files from other addresses. More in Browser Games Despite a Block.

The technology is the smaller part, so only briefly: our filter now continuously matches which device belongs to which addresses, so the device rules work. The detour through encrypted lookups is closed for the whole network. The addresses that belong only to the games are now on the block list; shared platforms stay open. Afterwards we checked on the network, not on the child's device.

If you want to rebuild this for yourself, the way is in the Home Guide. The Internet-Schutzschild is the simpler start: it enters the filter at the router and applies to the devices on the Wi-Fi, not on mobile data. Rules for single devices aren't part of it; for those you need a filter of your own.

This is the more important part, and here we describe our attitude, not an event. If the gap was in the technology, "What did you do?" is the wrong question. The child bypassed nothing; they opened something and it worked. The mistake lies with the adults.

Better is: "We found a gap in our technology. We've fixed it. Let's look together at what is okay for you." That turns "I did something wrong" into "We found something". And it opens a conversation you might not otherwise have: what do you like most about YouTube? When do you like to watch? Whoever knows the need behind the watching finds a fitting rule more easily.

The brain researcher Manfred Spitzer describes what young people need from adults (our translation):

"… but again and again shows understanding and again and again tries to build a bridge." — Spitzer, 2014

• Technology is never finished. A filter that was set once isn't right forever. Routers, devices and browsers change.
• Check the technology, not the children. We had entered the blocks and believed it. We hadn't checked. Set a fixed occasion for it: after every router update and on the first Sunday of the month after breakfast, open the protection check in the browser of the child's device.
• Protection in the home network, guidance in everyday life. The filter sets the boundary, the conversation gives it meaning.
• A small weekly look, agreed with the child. Our advice: once a week, look together at what was blocked and why, rather than going through single addresses. That is an approach, not a product. How you can build it yourself is described in How Much Insight Is Okay?. You can write down your agreements in the family media agreement.

– Fabrice