Can anyone tell me how to block a website across all internet devices in my house? My kids are spending stupid amounts of time on YouTube and it's pissing me off. I get no support from the wife on keeping them off, so I'm blocking the website all together. I've gone into my router and looked through every setting there is and nothing is remotely close to allowing me to block a website of any kind. Service provider is Windstream if that matters. Router is whatever they installed with the service.
There should be a place in the routers settings to block sites. You may need the MAC address of their devices or IP address to block YouTube for those specifically.
Well first we need to define the "devices". Particularly difficult on something with a cellular radio. Easier on things without it. Ultimately the answers are the simple ones of the past. Destroy the devices and make sure they have enough chores to do all day that they don't have time to look at a screen. If they are exhausted when the sun goes down and can't hold their eyes open you'll reduce their screen dependency dramatically.
Only my oldest daughter has a cell phone, outside my wife and I.....but I can control that easier than I can the school laptops and my office computer, etc. etc. Additionally, not sure she would know how to turn off the wi-fi on her phone and use just cell data.
I've been through every single setting option, page, etc. on my router. There is nothing that even remotely mentions blocking a site. I am not opposed to going to Best Buy and picking up a new router if means I can block websites.
Read through this and see if you can follow the instructions. https://helpdeskgeek.com/how-to/block-websites-from-your-router-or-using-dns/amp/
You’d be shocked what your kids understand about their devices and how they can “hack”. They may not understand the pure theory of the underlying technology. But they all poke around the menus and have strong Google-Fu. And they share what they learn with their friends. I go through my 12 year olds phone and it’s amazing. He’s not doing anything bad, but hes got a lot of shit goin on. I give him a certain level of connectivity because it allows me to gather information about him and his friends and what these devious little shits are up to.
My brothers kid is 4 and can pick up his phone and FaceTime me while his dad is sleeping. I promise your kids can find a way around your plan.
You can try pi-hole. But you need someone who actually knows stuff about IT to set it up and run it for you. It's an ad blocker at your router level, so anyone that is connected to the network the router is serving gets ad blocking by the device. Pretty sure you can just add the website domains on there and then it will block it. Doesn't do anything if they are on mobile data of course. And probably not the best choice either.
Everything at your router can be subverted by the cellular connection. It would be fine for anything that depends only on the router. DNS is a sure fire way but if they can google for 5 seconds and understands their device settings they can work around that pretty easily. Forcing them through a proxy server is also effective but involves knowing how to set up and run a proxy. It also requires enforcement of settings on the devices. Unless you are willing to setup a 100% managed environment to control the devices you are essentially wasting your time. Any device they have admin control over is a device that be configured to work around your blockades. You best bet is to control physical access to the devices.
I have Verizon for my cell phones and in my account I can block sites I don’t want my son seeing in the security settings for his device/phone.