Norton Family although a good product falls short in a few areas that prevent it from being an excellent program. Norton needs to look at the features of this program from the standpoint of a parent which it sometimes falls short. The first thing that has been missed is that many if not most of its users have multiple devices and they need to be able to be limited as a whole as well as by device.
For instance if a parent wants to limit their child to using their devices to 3 hours a day in total, there is no way to do that other than split the time between the devices. Ultimately this results in the parent having to give the child more time on a device they choose to use and the parent becomes a device administrator.
In a nutshell the features desperately needed by this program are:
1. The ability to limit time on computers BUT allow access to certain selectable programs for use by the user. Examples of this would be Word Processing, Spread sheets and Powerpoint, selectable by the parent, and limited access to the web allowing the parent to prevent access to areas as is already in NF but also exclude gaming sites and other sites of the parents choosing during the time that they are allowed to use parent selected programs. The thought here is that the parents can limit the time that their kids use their devices for playing but not prevent them from doing legitimate school work or other "legitimate" uses of the computer.
2. Getting features that the program is supposed to have working on all platforms not just limiting some features to certain platforms such as Windows, or IOS , or Android but not all three.
2. SECURITY - This is a big one. NORTON is a Security Company, yet they have holes in Norton Family you could drive a truck through. There are upstart programs in the marketplace that allow NF to be disabled or eliminated from the device completely. There are many ways to sidestep NF of which there are many and can be found by using google or even YouTube. The people that use "child mode" in this program are getting smarter and smarter every day as well as their friends and their friends-friends. Combine that knowledge base with the knowledge available on the internet and there is a lot of information and work-arounds readily available.
Norton is known for hiring and having personnel that know not every trick in the book but figure out every new hack, bypass and threat that there is every day. There is plenty of knowledge within the company but I am not sure that the left hand is working with the right hand.
BUT THE MAIN POINT IS THIS:
This program could easily be the answer to the fears of every one of the parents in the world that have given their children very powerful devices that can access communication, messaging, and web sites and information that they are not even aware of. In many thousands of cases they think that they have just given their child the newest phone that they can text their friends and take pictures on Or a new 3 pound laptop that can go anywhere and do all of what their phone can do and more.
Quite frankly parents are scared to death about their kids getting into drugs or other pitfalls of modern society but have no idea about the dangers that are on the cute new phones, tablets and computers that they just gave their kids for Christmas.
If they really knew the dangers and pitfalls such as cyberbullying, internet stalking, pedophiles, as well as every other sick entities a responsible parent wouldn't let their kids anywhere near those devices. This doesn't even begin to mention the ability to be sought out and sometimes recruited by terrorist organizations and the parent doesn't believe it could have been their child that was stalked, kidnapped, joined a cult or went out and shot up a school or theater. Although the prior example is a bit extreme it does happen and parents that take a minute to think about it are scared to death.
There are many other features that could be added to this program that would bring it to the top of the list for this type of protection, just as Norton Security is considered to be the Gold Standard for protecting computers, Norton Family needs to be considered the Gold Standard for protecting our children.
This program should be put at the top of the priority list at Symantec because there is not a responsible parent (and there are millions upon millions of them) on the planet that would not pay the annual fee for the security of knowing what their child is doing and that they can make sure that they can do their best to protect them and keep them safe.
From a simple business and economic standpoint the revenue that would be generated by this type of program is staggering and is more than reason to put every possible resource into the extended development of this product.
Ok I am off my soap box and if anybody cares I have about 20 other improvements for this program.