My daughter asked me for something called a squishy advent calendar in the middle of September. I had never heard of it. I searched for it on my laptop and got almost nothing back, a couple of listings and no adverts at all. On her tablet it was everywhere, down the side of a colouring video, in between two craft clips, on the game she plays before bed.
That gap is the whole problem with checking children’s screen time by looking at your own screen. The advertising a child sees is assembled for that device, in that household, at that moment, and it does not follow you when you pick up the tablet yourself. Researchers who study children’s advertising exposure get around this with a static residential proxy so they can load the same page repeatedly from the same apparent household and see what a real family would be served. ProxyWing has pointed out that a stable connection matters more than a fast one for this kind of work, because the profile has to persist between visits.
Why your screen shows something different
Three things separate your view from theirs, and none of them are settings you can simply turn off.
- The account. If the tablet is signed into a child profile, the platform is applying a different advert policy to it than to yours. That is usually a good thing, but it means you cannot audit it from your side.
- The watch history. Ten minutes of slime videos changes what gets served for days afterwards. Your search history for school shoes and council tax does not overlap with it at all.
- The app. Adverts inside a game are sold through a different marketplace than adverts on a website, and the rules are looser. This is where most of the things that worry parents actually appear.
YouTube Kids is not the same product
It is worth being clear about this, because a lot of us assume the two are interchangeable and let children drift between them. YouTube Kids runs a restricted catalogue with human review on top of the automatic filtering, and advertising inside it is limited to categories that have been approved for children. The main YouTube app does none of that, even on a supervised account.
The practical consequence is that a child who has aged out of Kids, or who has worked out that the videos they want are only on the main app, has moved into a completely different advertising environment without anything on the screen announcing the change. In my house that happened at about eight, and I did not notice for a couple of months.
The formats that cause the most trouble
Not all adverts are equally worth worrying about. These are the ones that come up again and again when parents compare notes.
- Playable adverts. A short interactive demo that looks exactly like the game the child is already in. Younger children frequently do not register that they have left one game and entered an advert for another.
- Fake close buttons. A small cross positioned where the real one usually sits, which opens the app store instead of closing the advert. This is deliberate and it is common.
- Rewarded video. Watch thirty seconds, receive in game currency. These are not deceptive in themselves, and they do train a very specific habit around paying attention in exchange for a reward.
- Countdown timers and limited offers inside games. These are advertising even though they are for the game the child is already playing, and they are the ones most likely to end in a purchase.
The five minute check
Pick up their device when they are not using it. Do not sign out, and do not clear anything, because that resets the very thing you are trying to look at. Open whatever they use most, let it play for four or five minutes, and write down every advert that appears. That is it.
Do it twice, a week apart. One session tells you very little. Two sessions tell you whether something has started following them around, which is the thing that actually matters.
If you want a more useful version of the same exercise, do it sitting next to them while they play rather than afterwards. You will see which adverts they tap on, which is information you cannot get any other way, and it turns the whole thing into a conversation rather than an inspection.
What to look for, and what is fine
| What appears | How concerned to be | What to do |
| Toys and games aimed at their age | Not concerned | Nothing |
| Other apps and games, endlessly | Mildly | Check whether the app is rewarded for these |
| In game currency and loot boxes | Concerned | Turn off in app purchases at the account level |
| Adverts for older age rated content | Concerned | Check the profile age is set correctly |
| Anything gambling adjacent | Very concerned | Report it and change the app |
| Adverts that mimic the game itself | Concerned | Talk about it, these are designed to be misread |
| Weight loss or appearance related | Concerned, particularly for older children | Report and block the advertiser |
The settings that are actually worth changing
Most parental control guides list about forty things. Four of them do the majority of the work.
- Turn off in app purchases at the account level rather than the device level, so it survives a factory reset and a new tablet.
- Set the profile age honestly. An age set two years high to unlock a game changes the entire advertising category list.
- Turn off personalised advertising in the account settings. The adverts do not go away and they stop being built from the watch history.
- Check which apps have been given permission to show notifications, because notification advertising sits outside almost every control parents are told about.
The conversation that works better than the settings
Parental controls are worth setting up and they will not do the job on their own. What has worked in this house is asking my two to tell me when an advert tricks them, framed as a game rather than a rule. Children are surprisingly good at spotting a fake play button once someone points out that fake play buttons exist. My eldest now announces them out loud, which is annoying during films and entirely worth it.
The useful bit is that it puts the child on your side of the problem rather than on the other side of a restriction. A nine year old who can name the trick is better protected than one whose tablet has every setting locked and who resents all of them.
FAQ
Does a child account stop all advertising?
No. It restricts categories and turns off personalised targeting on most major platforms, which is not the same as removing adverts. Contextual adverts still appear.
Should I just clear the history regularly?
It helps a little and it also removes the evidence. If you are trying to work out what your child is being shown, keep the history and look at it.
Are in app adverts regulated the same as television adverts?
Not in practice. UK advertising rules apply, but enforcement inside games and apps is much weaker than on broadcast, and a lot of the inventory is sold through networks with limited oversight.
Is it worth paying to remove adverts?
For the one or two apps a child uses daily, often yes. It is usually cheaper than the in app purchases the adverts are designed to prompt.
My child uses a school tablet. Does the same apply?
School devices are usually filtered far more tightly and often block advertising entirely. The gap tends to appear when the same child comes home and uses a personal device with none of that in place.
