Keep Your Kids Safe Online - Weekly Q&A - Sep 2 2026 Video

I'm sharing the Family IT Guy plans as of October 2026: guidance for choosing apps and devices, device setup classes, and education for parents and kids. I also talk about Boring, my phone-accountability prototype; private AI projects; school curriculum; and literacy education.I explain why privacy matters in the software I'm building, how I measure progress, and what I want to hear from you about your family's questions and problems.What questions would you like answered, what problems would you like solved, and what teaching materials would help your family? Tell me in the comments.Read the full update: https://www.familyitguy.com/october-2026-update.htmlAnswer privately: https://www.familyitguy.com/feedback.html0:00 Mission: teaching adults first2:09 Choose: apps, games and other decisions4:23 Set up: device classes and software projects8:37 Teach: AI education and curriculum13:35 Why privacy matters in the software15:00 How I measure progress17:23 Your questions and feedbackFamily IT Guy helps parents protect their kids from the two biggest digital dangers: addictive algorithms and anonymous communication, and the ways AI is making both worse. Ben Gillenwater spent 30 years in cybersecurity, and he teaches this as a parent in the same trenches you are.Website: https://www.familyitguy.comListen to the Family IT Guy Podcast:Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/family-it-guy-podcast/id1831912044Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/72yZUVsOqdDk7en5FS9U8g#parenting #onlinesafety #digitalparenting #familyitguy

This is a conversation about how to tell whether a video game is safe for your kid, with a game developer who has spent 25 years making games, including Club Penguin.My guest is Stephen MacDonald, CEO of Magic Potion Games, the studio making Imagine Island, an online game built for kids under 13. His work includes Club Penguin at Disney, plus time at Ubisoft and Electronic Arts, and he's the dad of two boys who both play a lot of games.We start with why so many games kids play were never made for them. Stephen calls these accidental kids games: games whose players turned out to be much younger than the developers expected. He explains how a kids game can make money without dark patterns, which he describes as design that tries to trick people into spending money, and why his game sends kids to get a parent before they can pay for anything or chat freely.I also share what happened when I signed up for Roblox as an eight-year-old, to see what my son would see. Almost right away it tried to sell me $199 in Robux. Robux is Roblox's in-game currency, bought with real money.Then we get into chat. Imagine Island has no private messages, and Stephen explains why: "If you can't say it out loud in a group, you shouldn't be saying it." Kids find ways around chat rules, and one he has seen is a shared Google Doc on a school Chromebook. He gives parents a test for when a child is ready for games with open chat, such as voice chat: can you have a real conversation with them about grooming and sexual exploitation? If you aren't ready to have it, or they aren't ready to hear it, he says they aren't ready for those games. Grooming is when an adult builds a child's trust in order to exploit them.Stephen's advice is to check a game yourself before your kid plays it. Start with what the game's website says about moderation, parent tools and age verification. Moderation is how a game filters and reviews what players say to each other. You can also ask an AI tool for a list of pros and cons. Then spend at least an hour playing it the way your kid would. When I asked for his one piece of advice for parents, he said to play with your kid.My guide to what chat in games and apps means for your kid: https://www.familyitguy.com/online-chat-dangers.htmlChapters:0:00 Highlights from the conversation0:52 Who Stephen MacDonald is, from Club Penguin to Magic Potion Games8:51 The questions parents ask about games, and Roblox11:37 How Roblox grew17:02 Accidental kids games20:17 Why he builds games for kids parent-first24:39 Making money from a kids game without tricking kids30:04 How Imagine Island keeps chat off until a parent verifies33:20 What the law asks of games for kids under 1337:43 Signing up as an 8-year-old: a $199 Robux offer43:48 Try the game yourself before your kid plays it45:35 When is a child ready for chat?46:32 Two red flags: chat, and games built to hold attention49:38 Attention is trained, and kids copy what you do57:17 Paying his kids to think: $50 to beat Chrono Trigger and explain it1:00:34 Chat in Imagine Island: a fenced playground with no private messages1:08:42 Kids find a way around rules: a Google Doc on a school Chromebook1:11:10 When your kid asks to chat: starting the real conversation1:13:31 How to check a game's safety yourself1:18:34 How games pull kids back, and checking a company's values1:24:41 Can moderation keep up as a game grows?1:31:17 Can an adult pretend to be a kid?1:35:10 Watch how your child reacts to a game1:41:34 His advice to parents: play with your kid1:43:46 His advice to game developers1:49:28 Where to find Stephen and Imagine IslandWhere to find Stephen:Imagine Island: https://imagineisland.game/Magic Potion Games: https://magicpotiongames.com/Family IT Guy helps parents protect their kids from the two biggest digital dangers: addictive algorithms and anonymous communication, and the ways AI is making both worse. Ben Gillenwater spent 30 years in cybersecurity, and he teaches this as a parent i

A game's age rating doesn't tell you which ads it will show. San Diego County alleges that AppLovin, which supplies the technology that puts ads inside mobile apps and games, sent adult ads into children's mobile games even with parental controls turned on.The county's lawyers say their tests in July and August 2026 found cannabis gummy ads in Hexasort, a game rated E for Everyone, on an Android device set up for a six-year-old with Google Family Link parental controls enabled. The county also alleges that AppLovin collected sensitive information from children's devices despite safeguards and choices to opt out. In a statement addressing critical investor reports, AppLovin CEO Adam Foroughi says the company does not track children's data, and that its policies prohibit partners from supplying children's data or using its advertising software with that data.In the video I wonder whether Hexasort set up its ads correctly. The County's complaint says AppLovin's own systems, not any advertiser's instructions, steer these ads to young children (paragraph 42), and that in September 2024 AppLovin removed the setting app developers used to tell its software a player is a child (paragraphs 43 and 44).Just because an app or a game is rated E for Everyone, or whatever the age rating is, doesn't mean it's okay. Any time you expose children to marketing systems, there's a lot of risk. By definition, marketing is about manipulation, though not always in an evil way, and in digital marketing that manipulation is personalized: it's based on studying each person and following how they behave, what games they play and what they do in those games. If a game makes money from ads, you never know which ads are going to run, but you do know the ads are trying to manipulate your kid, because that's what ads do.When we talk about kids being safe on the internet, I don't think the internet itself is the problem, and it's not necessarily screen time. It really boils down to marketing exposure. So when you're deciding whether your kid should use an app or a game, I think a really good filter is to ask whether it has any marketing in it. A lot of things do, but it's a good red flag to pay attention to.Sources:County of San Diego news release, October 5, 2026: https://www.countynewscenter.com/county-introduces-new-consumer-fairness-and-public-protection-division-launches-three-major-lawsuits/The County's complaint, People v. AppLovin Corporation, San Diego Superior Court (the Hexasort tests are in paragraph 35)AppLovin CEO Adam Foroughi, "Note from our CEO": https://www.applovin.com/en/archived-blog/note-from-our-ceoFull livestream, where I answer more viewer questions and cover news about kids and technology:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJ1sQRQOtn4Family IT Guy helps parents protect their kids from the two biggest digital dangers: addictive algorithms and anonymous communication, and the ways AI is making both worse. Ben Gillenwater spent 30 years in cybersecurity, and he teaches this as a parent in the same trenches you are.Website: https://www.familyitguy.comListen to the Family IT Guy Podcast:Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/family-it-guy-podcast/id1831912044Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/72yZUVsOqdDk7en5FS9U8g#parenting #onlinesafety #mobilegames #digitalparenting #kidsonline #familyitguy

Is Perplexity safe for kids? Common Sense Media tested the AI search tool with accounts set up as a 15-year-old and gave it its lowest rating, unacceptable risk. My opinion and my suggestion is that kids should never use AI alone.The testers set the age to 15 in Perplexity's phone app, and Perplexity still treated them like adults. It discussed pornography, engaged in romantic role play, and offered no parental or school controls. It also trains on user data and keeps search history by default. In the crisis tests, its default chat gave an actual crisis line in only half of the suicide and self-harm cases, and the only eating disorder hotline it offered has been disconnected since 2023. Academic mode, which Perplexity markets to students, gave complete answers to homework in 83% of the tests.I use Perplexity all the time, and for adults I think it's an amazing tool. For young people, using an AI chatbot is a high-risk activity. If kids use AI at all, and I recommend they don't, I think it should be 100% supervised: you can actually see the screen, and if you get up, their hands come off the keyboard.These are early adopter systems. Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, which makes Claude, wrote on his blog that "we do not understand how our own AI creations work." I don't think kids should be beta testers, especially of technology that enters their minds.Sources:Common Sense Media's Perplexity risk assessment: https://institute.commonsensemedia.org/risk-assessments/perplexityDario Amodei, "The Urgency of Interpretability": https://www.darioamodei.com/post/the-urgency-of-interpretabilityFull livestream, where I answer more viewer questions and cover news about kids and technology:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXv57vLtLpgFamily IT Guy helps parents protect their kids from the two biggest digital dangers: addictive algorithms and anonymous communication, and the ways AI is making both worse. Ben Gillenwater spent 30 years in cybersecurity, and he teaches this as a parent in the same trenches you are.Website: https://www.familyitguy.comListen to the Family IT Guy Podcast:Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/family-it-guy-podcast/id1831912044Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/72yZUVsOqdDk7en5FS9U8g#parenting #ai #perplexity #digitalparenting #onlinesafety #familyitguy

I think boredom is good for kids, and a school bus ride is a good place to practice it. A parent in my livestream chat has two boys, six and seven, with no phones or tablets of their own, and the youngest wants a screen he can play with on the bus.My first answer is that the internet is for adults, not children, for technical reasons and for legal and regulatory ones. Once you buy a device with an internet connection, you end up blocking one thing after another, because many of the things it can do are designed to capture attention. Even an hour a day adds up to hundreds of hours a year. A Wi-Fi tablet with no cellular connection still needs its videos from somewhere, and most video services aren't compatible with kids, even their kids' products. YouTube Kids, for example, is not safe for kids.Compared with watching content, even content you've filtered, I think staring out the bus window is better for a child's mental and emotional health. If he wants something to do, he could bring a book or a Kindle. My son is 11 and has a kids' Kindle with a filtered library, which you still need to check on, and he's been reading a lot of books because of it.The parent followed up that a handheld game console would be okay, and that being bored is okay too. If he'd rather play a game, an old console like a Nintendo DS works well. We found one for our son on Facebook Marketplace. The batteries last a long time, and it's sturdy enough for a kid.Full livestream, where I answer more viewer questions and cover news about kids and technology:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mXv57vLtLpgFamily IT Guy helps parents protect their kids from the two biggest digital dangers: addictive algorithms and anonymous communication, and the ways AI is making both worse. Ben Gillenwater spent 30 years in cybersecurity, and he teaches this as a parent in the same trenches you are.Website: https://www.familyitguy.comListen to the Family IT Guy Podcast:Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/family-it-guy-podcast/id1831912044Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/72yZUVsOqdDk7en5FS9U8g#parenting #screentime #boredom #digitalparenting #kidsandtechnology #familyitguy