The Sentinel has two advanced settings that allows the ability to both limit access to social media sites by age and the parent’s sense of the child’s maturity and allows the limiting of the amount of time allowed separate from the total amount of time allowed during an Entertainment Desktop Mode login.

Enable Social Media – allows parents to set a perceived maturity level for a child’s access to social media sites. It can be set to a) Actual User Age (default), b) Restrict All (no Social Media Sites allowed, regardless of age) or c) Minimum Age x where x is age in years of the child’s maturity level. Example – the parents feel their child is less mature than their chronological age of 16 and feel that they would feel their child would be safe at sites approved for children 13 years of age or younger. Set this value to Minimum Age 13.

IMPORTANT – Most social media site’s terms of service do not authorize use by those individuals less than 13 years of age. This may violate the site’s terms of service. In the event that laws in certain US states restrict access to social media by age, configuring this setting to an age OLDER than a child’s actual age when a child has registered with the social media site stating an age older than their true age may result in a violation of state law.

Note that websites like Twitch.tv may be categorized in another category other than Social Media. In this case the limits will be restricted by the actual age of the user and the website’s policies. This can be overridden by User 8 Utility Mode running the System Settings App.

Social Media Daily Time Limit ”Social” - This allows a separate limit to the amount of time a user can access Social Media web sites each day. These settings set a maximum limit however they do not override available time in Entertainment Mode. The settings allow No Limit – when set to blank simply means that they are allowed access, depending on age, during Entertainment Desktop logins. Other settings offer specific time limits each day. If set to a specific limit, the user will not be able to access the Social Media websites from the browser until Social Media access has been successfully requested while logged into the Entertainment Desktop mode.

While in Entertainment Desktop Mode login only, the user presses the front panel button, then “Social Media Login ->” should be displayed next to the Reset Button. If there is no limit set OR if there is no remaining available social media time, there will be no option to request a Social Media login. Press the Reset Button to request Social Media access. Once logged in, the front panel will indicate the change and will display the remaining time in this mode. If a browser window is open, after the login it will be able to access “age appropriate” social media sites. What sites are considered “age appropriate” will depend on the actual age of the user AND the Enable Social Media settings (previous section).

When time runs out in Social Media access login mode, the system will switch back to the Entertainment Desktop if time is still available in that mode. If not, the system will log the user out. Note that GamePlay+ extensions are not available during a Social Media access logins. To conserve Social Media access time, the user can either switch, using the front panel, to either an Entertainment Screen Break or return back to the Entertainment Desktop mode without access to social media. When returning back to Entertainment Desktop, all Chromium Browser instances will be closed. Entertainment Screen Break will not consume Entertainment Mode time nor Social Media access time however the screen will be blanked. Depending on settings, audio may or may not be enabled during an Entertainment Screen Break.

 

Social Media Settings

To exit and return to Owner Registration and Setup, press <Alt>-<F4>