Block YouTube & TikTok on Your Child’s Phone
Hedgehog Browser stops YouTube and TikTok loading at the network layer. The pages simply don’t open — even if your child types the URL directly. Pair Hedgehog with a removal of the YouTube and TikTok apps, and the infinite-scroll feeds are off the device.
Infinite scroll wasn’t made for kids
YouTube Shorts and TikTok are engineered to keep humans watching. The algorithms behind them are tuned by armies of engineers to maximise watch-time, swipe-through, and return visits. They’re effective on adults. They’re overwhelming on children.
The official solutions don’t really solve it. Apple Screen Time and Google Family Link let you set a daily minute-budget, but the apps are still installed, still pingable, still one fingerprint away. Take away their phone? They use a friend’s. Disable the WiFi? They’ll wait until you’ve gone to bed.
Domain block at the proxy layer
Hedgehog ships with a built-in transparent proxy (MITM). Every web request the phone makes passes through it. YouTube domains (youtube.com, youtu.be, ytimg.com, googlevideo.com) and TikTok domains (tiktok.com, tiktokcdn.com, musical.ly) are matched against the block-list and stopped before they leave the device.
From your child’s point of view: they navigate to youtube.com and the page just doesn’t load. There’s no “blocked by your parent” banner to argue with — the request never reaches Google’s servers. Same for TikTok.
If you remove the YouTube and TikTok apps from the device (Settings → Apps), then Hedgehog has covered the only way back — via a browser. The infinite-scroll feeds are off the device entirely until you put them back.
For homework, for bedtime, for the long evening
- Homework time without a YouTube tab waiting in the background
- Bedtime without “just one more video” loops
- No TikTok algorithmic exposure to content you didn’t pick
- No subscription — unlike Family Link Premium, Bark, etc.
- No invasive parent dashboard — we don’t log your child’s browsing