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jninethousand t1_ix2n082 wrote

You would likely need a dedicated hardware firewall in the long-run, but simpler solutions may buy some time. There are business firewalls that would be too expensive for practical home use, but some have a free version you could install on spare computer hardware. You don't need much power to run a home built firewall but your trade off here is going to be learning basic networking and how to build a computer that doesn't run Windows.

You can also look into solutions that simply point DNS to a service that blocks whatever sites you choose. It's not too hard to get around though, either by reconfiguring or a VPN and it sounds like this kid will figure it out eventually if you aren't careful.

Ultimately, you're looking at IT to solve an HR problem. Yeah there's technology that can help but it won't take long to find the holes if you are not able to stay way ahead of it.

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CravenLuc t1_ix2nhgc wrote

I agree that this is an HR problem.

That being said, pihole is great for this. Could even lockdown VPNs, or work entirely off of whitelists. It's a pain and constant whack-a-mole, but it can be done. Just not sure it's worth the effort compared to actual parenting.

Like, why does a 9 year old even have unsupervised access to this level of tech if he's being problematic? Physically take those away except for when he is explicitly allowed. If he needs a phone to be reachable, buy a dumb phone. Solve the problem on that level instead of over engineering the Chinese firewall.

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