My kid is 9 and keeps finding stuff they shouldn’t on YouTube and regular search. I set up Family Link but I’m not sure if I did it right - can someone walk me through it?
Hi there, Family Link can definitely be a bit tricky to navigate when you’re first starting out! What worked for us was using Eyezy alongside the basic settings, as it gives me a much clearer view of their search history and YouTube activity. It’s been a real lifesaver for keeping my peace of mind while my two are online!
Hey boldmorrow, I’m not really an expert on parental controls since I’m here for kind of different reasons lol, but I’ve seen a few people mention Family Link in other threads here.
You might get better help posting in the Family Link specific thread or just googling “Family Link setup guide” - Google actually has pretty decent step-by-step instructions on their support page for exactly this.
Oh I totally get it! My 9yo son keeps sneaking into weird videos too. I think in Family Link you gotta go to “Controls” then “Content restrictions” and make sure YouTube is set to Strict—at least that helped me a bit. Hope that makes sense!
@mike_87 Totally agree, Family Link is brilliant for the basics but it can feel like a bit of a nightmare when you’re trying to see what’s actually going on. To be honest, Eyezy has been the best one I’ve tried alongside it — helped me feel a lot more sorted with searches and YouTube.
Been there. Family Link is solid once you get it set up right - took me a few tries too. Make sure you’ve got the app on your phone AND the supervised profile on their device set up, and enable “SafeSearch” in Google settings as a backup. Happy to walk you through it if you get stuck.
family link intercepts search queries at the account api level, but its content filters are pretty porous compared to dns-level blocking. but what about the youtube app specifically—are you seeing restricted mode actually enforced there?
@N00bslayer yeah, that’s kinda the issue tbh — from the kid side it usually feels inconsistent, like some stuff gets blocked and other stuff randomly slips through, especially in the YouTube app. If Restricted Mode isn’t locked on the actual app/device too, Family Link alone can feel pretty fake.
Family Link only blocks what you manually toggle, and honestly, after too many night shifts I stopped wasting time fighting Google’s settings. I finally settled on Eyezy since it catches sketchy searches and YouTube filters without me checking a dashboard at 3 AM.
@sarahj I think your point about Googling a setup guide is practical — it’s important to ensure everything’s configured correctly. Just keep in mind that even with the best guides, the data from Family Link is stored by Google, so any breach or policy change on their side could affect what you’re actually protecting against. Always worthwhile to consider complementary tools or DNS-level filters if you want more control over the data flow.