You either don't have kids, or your children are adults.

It's impractical in today's world to raise children without access to devices like tablets and smart phones. That's like having a sugar-free, no TV, hand-sewn, ect, ect, household.

What's more important is to know what your kids are getting into, making sure they are comfortable discussing what they see, and teaching them independent decision making skills.

For example, a few years ago, my then seven-year-old complained to me about all of the Jesus videos that were popping up on Youtube. I told her to thumbs down them, and now Youtube no longer suggests them. She also knows that if other kids watch Jesus videos, that's their right and to keep her mouth shut.

I'm curious, what were the "Jesus videos?"

Videos about Jesus aimed towards children. She never showed them to me. I'm assuming they're either Bible stories, "Jesus loves you and died for your sins" kind of things, or otherwise typical American evangelizing towards children.

We aren't a religious household, but we do occasionally expose our children to religious things because we live in the US and it's a big part of American culture and my extended family. For example, when my oldest was into ancient Egypt, I watched the 10 Commands (Charton Heston Movie) with her, then read Exodus with her. I also explained that this is not literal history but that some people believe it is, and that she shouldn't discuss religion at school.

She saw the videos shortly after we read Exodus, so I wonder if she was searching for for clips from the 10 Commandments or things about Exodus.

>> Hmm I can't find any porn on the internet, better ask around

> Sure Timmy I'll send you porn, but it's illegal and I'm taking a big risk here so you gotta do something for me, also you can't tell anyone

You've failed to solve the porn problem and now you've created a larger grooming/CDM problem.

You can add porn sites to the hosts file yourself.

The point that people are making is that while restricting overt internet porn does remove it from sight of a lot of kids, it will also continue to circulate as "samizdat" through whatever filesharing mechanisms exist. When I was at school someone got busted for distributing BBS porn on floppy disks, no network required. Now we have terabyte SD cards.

This samizdat is already in existence and the principal way my kids access inappropriate content.

Peer to peer, or peer to creepy pedo, is how the stuff gets passed around regardless.

Do you have any idea the sorts of things kids send via SMS?

Absolutely true. When I was a kid a few people got in trouble for drawing and circulating pixelated “porn” on their graphing calculators. You can’t stop teenagers from being teenagers.

hosts file isn't even the correct tool for this job. I don't know why this is being suggested a serious solution. I can add domain names and chose which IP address they resolve to. It can't even block websites.

If I didn't know any better I would assume you are spreading misinformation to put children into an unsafe situation

Yes I know this is technically true. One could use iptables, but it is easier for people (users) to do this instead of getting iptables / pf or whatever configured. It is one size fits all.