Friends have a 13-year-old and are afraid that if they let him build a gaming desktop computer that he will hide in his room until it is time for him to go off to college. They are hoping to hector him into agreeing with them that the real world and the social world of humans is more interesting than the virtual worlds created by the best minds of the game world. Their household currently is Mac-only, which the young man considers unsuitable for gaming. One of their ideas is that he can get a Windows laptop and then they can take it away from him if he overindulges. I’m wondering if there is a technological solution built into Windows 10.
This article contains screen shots of a non-admin user being limited to certain hours within a day and/or to a maximum number of hours per day. So does this one. The official Microsoft page also suggests that this can be done but apparently they didn’t have the energy to make screen shots. So it looks as though Microsoft has built in anti-addiction features.
That leads to the next question: Is it practical for a teenage gamer to be a non-admin user of a Windows 10 machine? He is going to build the machine with a friend whose parents are more liberal. Can he install everything that he needs and eventually turn over super-admin power to mom or dad? Will he have to bug them every hour for the next five years to come over and type the admin password? Will these devoted worshipers of everything that Steve Jobs might once have touched be able to execute their parental control role without thoroughly sullying themselves in the filth of Windows 10?
Related:
I don’t have an answer to your Windows 10 privileges settings but, I think the parents got this all wrong.
Didn’t the parents give this 13-year-old teenager a smartphone when he was 10-year-old or younger? Were they this concerned about it back then? If anything, they should be happy that he is asking them for money to build a gaming machine vs. buying one. I would take it a step further and also buy the teenager a used moped [1] that requires upkeep and have him get his hand dirty to enjoy riding it.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moped
Aikido vs Boxing, try redirecting the energy.
Perhaps they can through you, or their own contact get him a game studio tour. Maybe a budding developer,designer or director is looking for enlightenment.
For the outside world, look for anything that promotes independence(13, glider lessons?), in my oldest son’s case it’s been Boy Scouting. He’ll probably spend a good chunk of today on his game machine, which he just upgraded. But on Sunday we’re off for a week in the Sierra’s. Two weeks from now we’re in Florida at Sea Base for a week of Scuba.
Others have made the point that, in many teenager’s overscheduled, oversupervised, and overcontrolled lives, the closest thing that teenagers have to “hanging out” is shutting their bedroom door and getting on social media with their friends.
Your friends have two problems: They seem to be resisting the child’s desire to have some unsupervised social time with his friends. They need to figure out a way of granting their child some social autonomy. The other is an external social problem. If they live in a “good” neighborhood, the majority of the kids who have social autonomy are living in various pathological arrangements with their parents and are not the kids you want your kid hanging out with. All the good kid’s parents are driving them to music lessons, SAT prep classes, and Little League practice.
Physical access to a machine is admin access. Unless they plan to lock the cover, glue the USB ports shut, and forgo a DVD drive, that is meaningless. Even those measure will only delay the inevitable. At thirteen, how long will it take for him to (Google) find out how to use a boot disk.
And yes to bugging him repeatedly for admin access. Oops, flash isn’t installed. Now it needs updated. Or Acrobat Reader. And every new game his friends are talking about. Windows without admin access isn’t workable.
We solved the issue by not allowing electronics (phones, TVs, computers – exceptions were made for music players with WiFi shut off at the router) in the kids’ rooms. Each was given a work area in the house. The downside is I have to listen to my son playing games with his friends. The upside is we hear what he’s talking about, can walk in and see the screen so we generally know what he’s doing. Game and video watching time is also limited. These rules have been in place since they were young. Our friends thought we were being harsh when we imposed these rules on out kids. However we’ve had fewer issues with our kids’ behavior than they have with their kids. So after 19 years I can recommend our approach (second child now has one more year left in HS, the oldest is in college).
My advice would be to let the kid build his gaming machine with the stipulation it’s in the main living area of the house. I’d also give him admin rights as long as the parents also have admin rights.
Folks: He is a well-behaved person so if he agrees to the parental supervision in exchange for being able to have a real desktop with real video card then I don’t think he will try to circumvent the controls.
Is it true that you need admin access to accept an automatic update for something like Adobe Reader? Windows can update itself automatically even if the administrator hasn’t logged in, right?
Yes, you’ll need admin escalation privileges for installing software. This is beside the point.
There are 2 solutions. Windows 10 can plug itself into your Microsoft online profile, where you can create a family setup, and limit kids by time any way you’d like. That being said, I have 2 boys with computers, and it worked for one, but I could not get it to limit time for the other. So I’m now using Norton’s family setup, and this has worked without a hitch. The basic version is free. You install a plugin on the computer, and tie accounts to Norton’s definitions. It won’t matter if they’re a local admin. You can password protect shutting it off, and uninstalling it, and it’ll notify parents of tampering.
Xbox 360 has time limits. Xbox One, strangely, does not. I bought a “box” that needs a code to pass electricity through for the TV, but it turns the TV off when the screen goes black between shows, requiring entering the password again. This proved untenable.
What I’m looking for now is a similar time limiter for iPad — that doesn’t require you giving full control of the device to the company.
Try here
https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/
Oh and it’ll be more important to use the parental controls on Steam, Origin and Battlenet, not the actual PC, imo