An app on a child's phone protects that phone. The games console in the living room, the tablet, and the smart TV are still wide open. Parental controls belong in the router, where every device is covered without installing anything.
What router-level controls give you
- Per-device profiles. A child's devices get one policy; the parents' get another.
- Category blocking. Adult, gambling, and other categories, by profile.
- Schedules and bedtimes. The network switches off for a device at a set hour.
- Time budgets. A daily allowance rather than a hard cutoff.
Because the rules are enforced at the router, a child cannot remove them by uninstalling an app or changing a device setting. It is the same reason DNS-only filters fail — the enforcement point matters.