Raising Tech: Navigating the Online Identity (Premium)

There is an interesting dynamic between parenting and the Internet; I have written a couple of times about enabling my daughter to explore the bounties of technology while also trying to not let it overwhelm her entire existence. But as she grows older, schooling becomes more pervasive, and the fact that we are locked inside for the next few weeks at best, it’s time to revisit the topic of enabling online activity but in a way that is controlled.

I am not forging any new ground here, many others have gone down this path but for me, but this is my first time working intimately with Microsoft’s and Apple’s parental control features. And let me tell you, it’s a pain in the butt.

The good news is that I likely have a couple of years before my kid is old enough to be on a PC to where she could get into trouble but let’s start with the Microsoft side of life first.

After finishing my basement (post coming soon, finally), we set up an area that has a Surface Studio for her to use as she loves to color and there is not a better device available for this task. Which ran into the first problem, creating a child account.

With my daughter dancing around and having the patience of, well, a child, I was trying to set up her account on the device and there is no way to do this without having an email address for her.

When you attempt to create the account, it asks for an email address which she didn’t have at the time (she’s six) and if you select to skip that input, you are then asked for a phone number for the account. What child on this planet is going to have a phone number but not an email address? And if you enter your own phone number that is associated with another MSA, you get denied.

If you want to have a child account on your Windows 10 PC without sending all your data to the cloud, you are out of luck and this, quite frankly, sucks. Again, this is a first walkthrough for me, so maybe I missed something but I feel that I am slightly more educated on Windows than the average parent and if I can’t figure it out, good luck to others trying to accomplish this task.

The only option I could find was to create a local account, not linked to anything, and I was finally able to let her use 3D paint to have about 20 minutes of entertainment while I finally created her an MSA to properly setup an identity for her to login to the PC.

I understand why Microsoft forces this mechanism and candidly, when she had to start schooling from home because of COVID-19 and was using a laptop, the ability to login to her account instantly on that device is convenient. But, completely locking out child options for those who don’t want an MSA is a letdown and I do wish there were other options.

Once you are comfortable with letting Microsoft peer deeply into your child’s digital life, the family portal does provide a robust set of controls to fully monitor what your child is doing on the device. The controls for limiting application time, spending, and other device limits are helpful.

That is, they are helpful when you can access the information. When trying to setup my daughter’s account on a Surface Pro for her to use for school-work, I couldn’t login: “there is a problem with your Microsoft account”. Great. I was able to fix the account by logging in online but I don’t know what I did…I logged in and then magically I could login on the Surface Pro – magical.

As with most things Microsoft, the intent and final product are typically quite good and offer a robust feature set that makes the task of jumping through all the hoops worth it. But getting there is a frustrating journey and random error messages, such as the one below while trying to access detailed info about here usage for this writeup, can drive you nuts.

Microsoft announced this week a new set of tools that will be included in the consumer version of Microsoft 365. I am optimistic about what these new features will offer but much like setting up these parental features for an MSA, I worry that the onboarding process is going to be frustrating.

And then there is the Apple side of things. While I have no intention of buying my daughter a MacBook at this time, the iOS experience is better than what Microsoft is providing (in limited scope). I fully admit that all I really care about on iOS is blocking app downloads and purchases, which Microsoft provides too, but as you would expect, you are forced to create an iCloud identity as well. This once again lets another massive company peer deeply into the life of your child but I don’t think there is a way around this.

The basic feature is that I get a push notification for approval on my phone if my kid wants an app/purchase and I can approve or deny the transaction. It’s simple, it works, and was easy to setup. Not trying to downplay Microsoft on this one, they both have the features families need, which is a good thing, but as is usual with Microsoft vs Apple, Microsoft’s features are more diverse and span multiple platforms where Apple’s wall-garden approach makes it simpler but you are confined in the options available.

So why am I writing this? Much like other posts in the series, I am not traversing unchartered territory but I am a new user to the experience which isn’t something I often get to experience in the Microsoft ecosystem for an established product or service. To the other parents out there with kids in similar situations, I would love to know what tools you are using to help maintain a healthy relationship with technology.