When I was 15, I built a videogame blocker as my GCSE electronics project. This was essentially a combination lock for a plug: the plug went into a locked box which was plugged into the mains and would only transmit current when the correct code was tapped into a keypad. Parents could lock their kids' games consoles with a keycode. I have no idea, now, why I thought this was a good idea (it's a terrible idea) but I designed a custom printed circuit board and soldered it all up and then I got downgraded to a B because you're not supposed to do a mains project at GCSE. Thanks, electronics teacher.
Parental controls have been a perennial feature of electronic systems for some time, from locked satellite TV channels to website blockers, and, to be honest, they rarely work but at least they might be used in more proactive ways. Introduced with the Fire tablet, Amazon's FreeTime software allowed parents to create separate profiles for their children, meaning they could only access a chosen selection of books and apps when logged in, and were kept away from the web, and their parents' copies of Fifty Shades.
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