The boy keeps getting distracted when he’s supposed to be doing school work at home so I’ve been trying to get filters going in the firewall. It turns out to be surprisingly difficult to block YouTube. Even if I managed to get something working, he can just turn off wifi on the phone and bypass my firewall. I finally broke down and paid for Qustodio on his phone and laptop.
Installation was pretty simple and the overall experience has been solid since we started. $55/year was pretty easy to swallow too, especially given that he will likely be returning to school in-person after the holidays. We should only need this for the remainder of 2020.
I’ve really only run into one issue with it - updates take longer than I would expect to propagate between the central system and the software on the devices. When he complains about a legitimate site being blocked, it seems to take far too long for that alert to appear in the parent dashboard on their website or my mobile app. I’ve waited 15-30 minutes before, refreshing incessantly. Along the same lines, when I adjust the rules on my end, I see the same delays for them to be reflected on his end. Waiting for an explanation from support.