November 11, 2026
Access for a Purpose: What Parents Can Do About Kids and the Internet
What families can do at home, and how to judge any law or product that promises to protect children.
By: Brian Lenney
I’ve spent over 30 years in tech, including as Chief Technologist for a $10B/yr IT company and as an NSA contractor. Since becoming a dad, I’ve focused on helping families. Today I run Family IT Guy, where I teach parents how to protect their kids online.
What children face online
Most apps, games and websites are built for adults. Parents are left trying to remove the features and content a child shouldn’t have.
When a child goes online, other people and companies can reach them. They can contact the child, influence what the child does and collect information about them. The two biggest dangers that come from this are addictive algorithms, and strangers who can message children directly, including through the chat in many games.
Addictive algorithms come from apps and games designed to keep people using them as long as possible, and the more these apps learn about a child, the better they get at it. An endless stream of videos and posts makes it harder for a child to stop. The algorithm also chooses what they see, and seeing the same things repeatedly shapes what starts to seem normal to them.
Children’s mental health is part of what is at stake. From 2007 to 2019, the suicide rate among U.S. children ages 10 to 14 nearly tripled. That rise coincided with smartphones bringing addictive social media feeds into children’s backpacks, pockets and bedrooms. Suicide was the second-leading cause of death for that age group in 2024.
Strangers are the other danger. An adult who wants to exploit a child can use friendly attention, gifts and a sense of belonging to gain the child’s trust, then ask the child to keep secrets or isolate them from the people they trust. Knowing how that works helps a family recognize danger before a conversation turns into an obvious threat. More than 21 million reports of suspected child sexual exploitation reached the CyberTipline in 2025, the national reporting system run by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.
What works
Four things protect children online: parents who lead by example, the parental controls built into children’s devices, education for parents and children, and a community of other families making the same choices. Every family can use all four. Finding a community can take effort, but a family that looks for one can find it, even if it’s online.
Lead by example
Apps are built to hold adults’ attention too, and our kids watch how we handle that. Putting a phone away during a conversation shows that the person in front of you deserves attention. Keeping phones, tablets and computers in the shared rooms of the house, and out of bedrooms and bathrooms, protects children’s sleep and their safety: many of the harms to children online happen late at night, in bedrooms and bathrooms. Children learn that habit by watching the whole family keep it. Being open with our children about our own internet use, what we want to change about it and when we don’t manage it shows them that self-control takes practice for adults too.
Use the parental controls built into the device
Many parents assume children need internet access. Often they don’t, and many don’t need a phone of their own either. A 9-year-old who walks to a friend’s house might need a way to call home if plans change, and the friend’s family likely has a phone they can use. Until recently, children grew up without phones of their own. So the first question is what problem a device would solve for your child, and whether solving it needs the internet at all. If a device is needed, one that only calls and texts approved contacts may be enough.
When a child does need more, the parental controls built into almost every phone, tablet, computer and game console let a family turn on only what the child needs. A child might need to finish schoolwork or play with friends, and each purpose deserves its own decision. A family might allow only the websites a school assignment requires, or let a child play a game with its chat turned off. That is what I mean by access for a purpose: a child gets what a task requires, and more as their needs and judgment grow.
When choosing an app or game, it helps to look beyond its settings: what the child will see, how it is built to keep them using it, and what it takes time away from, such as sleep, exercise and time with family and friends. Some controls have workarounds or gaps, so they work best alongside leading by example, education and community.
Learn, then teach
Parents can learn how the apps, games and devices in their home work, and what each one exposes a child to. Children develop judgment by practicing it. They can learn to question what they see online, notice when someone is trying to influence them, decide what to share and recognize when they need help. Parents can work through unfamiliar situations with them and explain the reasoning behind a decision.
A child needs people they can go to when something online becomes confusing, uncomfortable or frightening, including after they’ve made a mistake. Tell them before anything happens: “If anything online makes you uncomfortable, or if you make a mistake, you should tell me. You will not be in trouble.”
Don’t do it alone
When other families make the same choices, no child has to be the only one at school without unrestricted internet access or social media. Families in the same class can agree together to delay smartphones. The Wait Until 8th pledge is one way to do it: parents promise not to give their child a smartphone until at least the end of 8th grade, and the pledge takes effect once 10 families from the same grade and school have signed. Shared activities and communities where children belong also give them places to build confidence and friendships offline. Parents benefit from those connections too.
Protection has to preserve privacy and freedom
Privacy protects a child’s future. Much of what a child does online is recorded, and those records can still exist when the child is an adult. A child’s privacy belongs to them, and parents protect it from companies, strangers and the government while the child learns to make informed decisions. So choosing a product includes asking what information it collects, who receives it and how much control the family keeps.
The same questions apply when the government proposes to protect children. When the government gathers records of a family’s interests, relationships and online activity, that is surveillance, and people may censor themselves when they know they are being watched. When the government decides what people may see or say online, that is censorship.
Age-verification laws are an example of both. They aim to keep children away from pornography and other harmful sites and apps, and I share that goal. But to work, such a law first has to find out who is a child, so everyone who uses those sites and apps, adults included, has to prove their age, often with an ID, a face scan or a guess based on their behavior. That creates records, held by the app stores, websites or companies that do the checking, linking people to what they use online. The government can demand those records with a court order, and hackers can steal them. Rules about who else may see those records are written into law, and a later law can change those rules. The law also defines what counts as harmful to children, and a future legislature can add to that list.
A proposed protection should therefore be judged by what it does to a family’s freedom as well as the harm it promises to prevent. Families need limits on government surveillance and censorship written into constitutions, where a future legislature can’t remove them with an ordinary vote, and a way to enforce those limits in court.
Whoever holds the authority over a decision about a child should be accountable when that decision goes wrong. If the government decides for families which apps their children may use and says it is keeping kids safe, and then a child gets hurt, the government isn’t held accountable. The parents are. Decisions about a child’s technology belong with the parents, who are accountable for the results.
Applied to a child online, that gives families, companies, the government and schools each a clear role. A family can stop using an app, so whether a child uses it, addictive design included, is the family’s decision, and a company’s duty is to be honest about what its product does and what it collects. A stranger who exploits a child commits a crime, and prosecuting it is the government’s job. A school sits between an app and the government: a family can leave a school only by changing schools, homeschooling or moving, so a school that requires a device or online service should be able to explain why the child needs it, what it exposes the child to and what happens to the child’s information.
Where to start
If you want a first step for each of the four, here are some:
- Show your child how much time you spend online. Tell them why you’re careful about what your family is exposed to online, and how hard it is to use the internet less. It helps them grow up knowing that it takes ongoing practice, and that they aren’t the only ones who find it hard.
- Ask whether your child needs a device at all, and if so, whether it needs the internet. Then set up the parental controls so they have what they need and no more.
- Talk one app through with your child: what they use it for, what else it exposes them to, such as addictive algorithms, messages from people they don’t know or spending money, and what they’d need to learn before they’re ready for more freedom online. Remind them they can come to you.
- Find two or three families in your child’s class who want the same things, or start a Wait Until 8th pledge at your school.
As your child becomes more capable, their opportunities and their responsibility can grow as they do.
If you’re a lawmaker or an advocate, ask four questions of any proposal to protect children. What problem is it meant to solve? Does it actually address that problem? What does it cost families in privacy and freedom? And who answers for it if it fails?
As parents, we want our children to grow into adults who can think for themselves and direct their own lives, with their privacy and freedom intact.
There’s more on all of this, with practical guides, on my Start here page. I’ve written down the principles behind it in my Declaration of Principles.
Cheers,
Brian
