Santa’s bringing my 13-year-old a laptop and naturally I’m keen that he doesn’t use it to access unsuitable content. I intend to do some childproofing ahead of Christmas Day, but I’m a Mac user with no experience *at all* on a PC so I’m already a bit frit about the process. I’m also keen to avoid an issue we have on a family Mac, where I’m an administrator and am constantly being called upon to enter my admin password. Basically I want him to have autonomy but without access to anything unpleasant. Is that possible, or do I have to bite the bullet, withstand a barrage of disgruntlement and set myself up as admin? Yours, cluelessly, LB.
ATM — setting up a laptop for a teen
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With Windows 10 you can do this via Microsoft user accounts. You set up one for yourself, and then use that to create a second one for your child with the various restrictions in place.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/12413/microsoft-account-what-is-family
Thanks. His will literally be the only PC in the house. Will this be a problem? Can I do the necessary from my Mac?
You should be able to manage everything from the account.microsoft.com/family website.
Yeah, this. My kids have super-budget laptops and Windows parental controls are very easy to manage from the Microsoft site, including time budgeting and content filters. Their laptops are also the only Windows machines in the house and I’ve had no issues at all.
We use the Windows account too and get a weekly email detailing what they looked at online and for how long.
Bloody hell, I hope my wife doesn’t find out about this.
Dose of realism here. As an average 13-year old he will be spending breaks at school discussing exactly how to get round all this, or go round to a friends without any parental controls. Not to say you shouldn’t do all this, but it’s no substitute for discussing what’s out there, and what the consequences of watching it could be.
Brilliant. Thanks, everybody, that’s a great help.
Thanks for the warning, Mose. I have had a talk of sorts (for all the good it will do!)
So when I set up his laptop do I do it with my (newly opened!) Microsoft account?
Jesus, good luck is all I have to say. The world is getting harder and harder to filter for children. My son is six and I dread the next decade or so of growing up.
Yeah, it’s a nightmare. Especially this bit. Three hours I’ve been trying to set this bloody thing up. It’s updating. The trackpad won’t work. I still don’t know if the family account thing is working. Even if I can get the trackpad to work can’t he just log out of the family account and create new one?
The whole thing is reminding me why I hate PCs.
I had a track pad stop working which turned out to be a tick box that had unchecked itself. I had to plug in a regular mouse to sort it.
Yeah, I’ve plugged in the normal mouse and now I’m hoping that when I restart it after the updates, either it will magically work, or I can diagnose the problem. It worked okay at first so I don’t *think* it’s a hardware issue.
Half the problem is finding my around an unfamiliar operating system. It feels like trying to cook a meal in someone else’s kitchen.
Update: the trackpad is now working!
Just one query then. When he opens it tomorrow he’ll be logged on as a family member on my MS account, with all the restrictions that entails. In the future is there anything to stop him logging out of that account and then back in as someone else?
Only an administrator can set up a new account, so he can’t do that. As long as he doesn’t know or can’t guess the administrator account password, he can only use his restricted account.
Never underestimate the adolescent male in his search for “education”…….
Hopefully that would work then, although the only account his laptop knows is his one — i.e. the ‘child’ one I set up.
Thanks to all who have replied, and Happy Christmas!