I am a parent (11 year old girl and 7 month old son) and I restrict her (son is a little too young!) time playing games in the same way my parents did by making sure I do my chores and homework first. I don't rely on OS level parental controls and I find it kind of sad people need to. I spend a lot of time playing Animal Crossing with my daughter for example and she knows when she can and can't play it.

I guess I just find it kind of depressing that we have all these kind of digital restrictions in place for kids these days. Part of the reason I am successful in what I do [professionally] is that I didn't have such restrictions as a child and I hope my daughter in the same. At the end of the day playing Mario Kart or Viva Piñata isn't going to ruin her life.

So, without further ado: Each person / family is different. We could probably sit down and have a conversation and find out some topic where some random solution works amazingly well for me, but - surprise! - it does not seem to be working so well for you. At which point, it would be my turn to observe how you could just man up and do it; after all, it's so easy. For me. In my particular case. Which is different from yours. People and families being different from each other.

Have I belabored the issue enough now?

I was simply sharing my opinion that until a few years ago no kid grew up with these automated digital restrictions and pretty much everyone seems to be ok.

I understand that such things can be helpful however my personal opinion is that it is a little sad that there is such a need for such features. I would bet that most people on Hacker News are successful in their lives because of unrestricted access to computers as children/young adults. I know that is certainly the case for me. I would spend hours typing in BASIC from computer magazines sometimes into the early mornings. I would get told off and have my computer taken away now and then for breaking the rules my parents put in place but this was ultimately good for me I feel (both the breaking of the rules and accepting the punishment).

I also view parental controls as contrived and harmful, and dont use them personally, but I'm certainly not going to critise someone else for doing so.

However, I honestly doubt that parental controls will have any significant impact, generally, on the viability of the steam boxes.

Just like I'd love to have automated lighting in my home, or automated curtains, or a computer that will automatically turn on at certain times, sometimes it's also nice to have a things that automatically turn off after a while as well.

Why not just set a timer on your smartphone and when it goes off turn off the kid's console..

This is no magical fiction world, I assure you.

Respect them, have reasonable rules, discipline every single rule violation (most important), and have fun. Suddenly you'll find kids are awesome.

The timer method does work (tried and true), but it's far, FAR easier if the computer automatically locks the account.

It will be small, put it away in a cupboard when it isn't being used like any other toy.