A proposal for quality and interoperability standards for parental screen time controls across all devices and applications used by a family.
As parents, we understand the importance of managing our kids' screen time. The problem is that existing screen time solutions are fragmented and non-overlapping. Some devices and applications offer integrated screen time controls, but they don't work together: the Nintendo Switch doesn't know that your kid has already spent an hour in YouTube Kids on her iPad today. There are many services that claim to offer over-arching solutions, but none of them cover all common devices and scenarios in any cohesive way: services that push Mobile Device Management profiles when limits are exceeded rely on network connectivity (and can be flaky as a result), while hardware solutions that control the Wi-Fi network don't work on offline content like games or wired devices. All of this adds up a confusing mess of partial solutions. Parents are desperate for a screen time solution that "just works".
What we need is a set of quality and interoperability standards that device and application vendors can use to solve this problem together. Standards are a rising tide that lifts all boats: you use a USB stick for portable storage because you know you can plug it in anywhere. In the same way, a common certification for screen time controls that work together would increase the value of all products and services that adopt it. Imagine a logo that you could trust to mean that a product or service has been certified to work with all other products bearing it.
Common problems with currently available solutions include:
- Controls that only work for online content, and/or don't work when offline
- Timers that continue to run even when the device or app is in sleep mode
- Inadequate scheduling controls and/or granularity
- Controls that don't apply to individual user profiles on a device
- And so on.
The quality standards should establish a minimal baseline of usability. That doesn't mean requiring or listing every possible useful feature, only the ones that are necessary to ensure a mostly frustration-free experience.
Isolated screen time control experiences don't work. In the real world, families use many different kinds of devices and apps, made by many different vendors. It's not sufficient for Microsoft, Apple, Google or Amazon to offer a great experience for parental controls only if you exclusively use their devices.
What we propose is an interoperability standard that allows devices and apps to be aware of each other, in a secure and privacy-respecting way, for the purposes of allowing families to effectively manage their use of technology. Families should be able to choose which vendor's screen time and parental controls tools they would like to use. This doesn't necessarily require a separate, new service to manage this information. Rather, we believe that vendors should have a way to share screen time information so that families can manage their time in one place.
Privacy is a critical aspect that must be addressed for this to work. One reason that this space is so fragmented is that device and app usage data is incredibly valuable, and vendors are averse to share it with rivals. That is why the certification process should include guarantees and controls that ensure shared usage information is isolated, and ultimately only kept on behalf of users - not to feed into advertising algorithms, or competitive analysis.
At this point, this is just a trial balloon to see if there is sufficient interest to organize a project around this idea. The status quo does not encourage any of the major vendors to drive a comprehensive solution, as it is not in their short-term interest (even if we believe it is in their long-term interest). It is up to us, the users - mothers, fathers, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and other guardians raising children - to push for a solution. We suspect there are enough like-minded engineers, designers, lawyers, industry influencers and others who would be instrumental in bringing this to fruition.