Parental Controls: What It Is and Why You Should Think of Online Security Instead

Over the years, many of you have repeatedly asked me for recommendations on a Wi-Fi router (or mesh system) with “excellent Parental Controls.” I generally don’t have the answer because I deliberately don’t use this feature—and I’m a dad of three.

In this post, I’ll explain what the Parental Controls feature is in simple terms and why I’d avoid it. It’ll be an interesting read.

If you’re in a hurry: don’t use Parental Controls as a barometer when picking a Wi-Fi router/system. It’s often not as effective as you’d like, and when it is, it does more harm than good. Instead, pick a router brand that offers good (preferably free) Online Security features.

The point is that you don’t want to outsource any part of parenting to an unknown third party. But you already know that.

Dong’s note: I first published this post on February 21, 2021, and last updated it on August 18, 2026, to add up-to-date information.

What is Parental Controls, and how does it work?

In home networking, Parental Controls is a feature that lets the admin user (the parent) of a router decide what a user (a child) on the network can or cannot do online.

How does this happen exactly?

The job of a home router is to let the network traffic pass through—among other things, that’s how we can access the Internet. As such, it can also have a certain level of in-depth traffic management. Specifically, it can scrutinize the information flow and manipulate certain types of data in specific ways.

An analogy: You can think of the home router as an airport security checkpoint before the boarding gates. In this case, the TSA officers are the programming designed to handle certain types of “traffic” accordingly.

The “Control” portion refers to programming the router’s firmware or third-party software to block or redirect certain types of traffic that meet pre-determined criteria. If you choose to apply the restriction to the criteria deemed to be “harmful” to your children, then that’s the “Parental” portion.

So, Parental Controls is just the name for a specific type of action within the encompassing traffic management function. The term is used mainly for marketing purposes—it’s a “packaged” portion of a much larger router function, similar to the Guest Wi-Fi network, which is a small part of VLAN.

Many routers—in fact, all business- and enterprise-grade hardware—don’t use this term for their in-depth, advanced traffic management. The need to handle the traffic goes far beyond parenting. For example, in a network, keeping devices safe from online threats and directing traffic efficiently are essential, whether or not parents or children are involved.

And that brings us to another term you often hear when getting a home router: Online Security.

Online Security vs. Parental Controls and your privacy

While Online Security and Parental Controls sound like one, they are not. As mentioned above, both are part of traffic management.

To manage traffic, the router—or any party handling the function—needs to look closely at the information being moved, including what it entails, where it comes from, who uses it, where it’s going, etc.

Continuing the TSA analogy: At the airport, TSA officers examine everyone’s stuff and their body using an X-ray machine and can scrutinize a particular person even more when deemed necessary.

As a result, in a home router, turning on this type of traffic-related feature means you’ll likely need to surrender your privacy to a third party.

We’ll talk more about privacy in a bit, but first, let’s take a closer look at how Online Security differs from Parental Control.

Online Security: Keeping everyone safe

Online Security generally applies when you want to keep everyone safe from apparent threats like phishing, ransomware, malware, hacking, misinformation, and so on.

Online misinformation and security: It’s all on you!

It’s the type of security you want to apply to the entire network. It’s the web-filtering mechanism for all. Once turned on, everyone within the network can avoid or be barred from the content/parties in question.

This type of catch-all traffic control generally works well. Filtering and blocking use the WAN IP address or the DNS server as the base and apply locally to your Internet gatekeeper—your router or firewall device. It also reduces privacy risks because the traffic is applied to an entire network, not a particular device (person).

That said, you should generally use Online Security if it’s available. Many routers come with this feature. A good example is the Network Protection of ASUS routers—it’s part of the free-for-life AiProtection suite. Better yet, Ubiquiti’s UniFi ecosystem offers advanced enterprise-class Online Security features. Other vendors, such as NETGEAR and TP-Link, sell it as a premium add-on via a subscription.

There is no complete protection. You are always the last line of defense. However, a router with an excellent built-in online security feature helps.

The takeaway is that Online Security is transparent, straightforward, and democratic. All network members are in it together, and therefore, all local network devices share the same treatment. It’s also more effective and less intrusive because there are no exceptions.

And that brings us to Parental Controls.

Parental Controls: The hit-or-miss nature and the privacy risks

Parental Controls is complicated. It basically means you want to let stuff in your home network but keep it away from select family members. It’s a do-what-I-say-but-not-what-I-do kind of deal.

Here’s the thing: Even if the moral high ground is justified, making it work can still be problematic.

For example, in real life, you know the difference between John and Jane as two individuals. However, your system doesn’t. It only knows the connected devices. So if you block Jane from certain online materials via her iPad, John is also blocked when he uses the device.

So, things get complicated when devices are shared within a family, which happens all the time. And then, the blocking itself may not work in the first place.

That’s because, generally, the only thing unique about a particular device is its MAC address—it’s a car’s VIN. Your system uses that to distinguish one device from another. The problem is, as detailed in this post, the MAC address can be easily spoofed.

To make matters worse, in recent years, for privacy reasons, virtually all handheld devices—smartphones and tablets—automatically use a random MAC address by default when connecting to a Wi-Fi network. You have to manually change the settings if you want them to use their real MAC.

Wi-Fi extenders also tend to assign a virtual MAC address to a connected device automatically.

The gist is that you might be able to enforce Parental Controls on Jane’s iPad for a day. The next time she restarts the device or reconnects it to the network, it’ll register with a new MAC address and appear as a new device entirely that’s not on the filtered list.

If you wonder why MAC spoofing is so prevalent and commonly practiced by hardware vendors, again, it has a lot to do with privacy: If you give somebody your device’s MAC address, they can track and even spy on you.

Your router gets the MAC addresses of all connected devices in your home network and generally keeps them there without sharing those with an outside party over the Internet.

The serious privacy issues of “effective” Parental Controls services

When you turn on a third-party Parental Controls feature—like add-on subscriptions offered in many home mesh systems, such as Amazon eero, NETGEAR Orbi, or TP-Link Deco—you opt to share your network’s device-specific online activity with a third party. Often in real-time.

The next time you turn on or opt for a Parental Controls feature, make sure you read the entire “terms of use” or “disclosure” on data collection before accepting it.

Among other things, to fight against the virtual MAC address, this type of app-operated Parental Controls needs to be installed on your (child’s) device to be effective. When that happens, it creates a new identity for each device, tied to a specific account.

As a result, while they let you keep tabs on what your child’s online activities, the third party that provides the service can do the same, possibly more. It’s like having some creep stalking your family’s every move, including their real-time GPS-based whereabouts. The whole thing is a terrible trade.

The market for the Parental Controls feature and the data it mines is so lucrative that more and more networking vendors offer it as a premium add-on. In this case, you’ll pay a third party to mine your child’s data. Think about it!

Parental Controls: The alternative approach

Generally, the current state of Parental Controls in home networking falls somewhere between these two scenarios:

1. It’s ineffective: This is the case of the built-in Parent Controls feature on a router. Pre-teen and older kids can probably figure out how to bypass web filtering after a few Google searches. All it takes is one geeky friend. Younger kids who don’t know how to use a search engine yet won’t do anything crazy online anyway. Or
2. Privacy risks: This is the case when you use an app to handle Parental Controls. Those who can’t figure out how to bypass the system or disable the app face markedly higher risks of having their general activities monitored and data-mined by a third party.

That said, it’s generally not a good idea to use any packaged Parental Controls solution. Effectiveness varies, and the privacy risk is always present to some degree. Strictly from the tech point of view, here are my recommendations on this front:

• Set up Parental Controls using the device’s built-in function. This option is generally available on each device, such as a computer, media streamer, phone, etc. It’s a bit more work but much more effective. And it generally doesn’t require a third party.
• Use the Online Security feature on your router, if available, and block stuff that’s bad for everyone. A router’s built-in and free Parental Controls feature is worth a try, but in this case, don’t really count on its effectiveness.
• Avoid third-party Parental Controls services that require a mobile app and a login account. You’ll pay a lot more for it than the monthly subscription, and chances are you can’t 100% rely on it, either.

Additionally, in terms of real-life parenting:

• Set up a family time when no one uses any device. Take your kids out for a hike or a bike ride regularly. Cut down on “screen time”.
• Set up a mutually agreed-upon reasonable schedule for your kids to use the devices, then encourage and reward them for self-policing. It takes time, but it works much better.
• Be a friend and a role model for your children. Remember that they are intelligent creatures, and they learn fast. Hypocrisy only breeds resentment.

The takeaway

Online Security, Parental Controls, and parenting are all about nuance and degree. You can use a mix of what you think is most effective for your situation without going overboard, but remember your kid is another human you’re dealing with, not another device.

Think about your childhood. If you can’t learn from the way your parents raised you as a child, at least learn from how that didn’t work in your experience. Don’t do to your children stuff you wish had not been done to you. That’s a good start. Be a friend and spend time with your children instead of your own screen. That will help even more.

Making a child is a matter of biology. Being a parent is a lifestyle choice. It’s not supposed to be easy. There’s no app for it. And it never ends.

All the while, don’t use Parental Controls as a criterion in picking a router. You might end up with a Wi-Fi machine designed primarily to profit from you and your child’s privacy, only to give you in return the false sense of being a “good” parent. The truth: you’d be a couple of apps and a few screens away from one.