How to block social media on every device
Blocking a social site in one browser is easy, and it does almost nothing — the apps carry on regardless. Blocking it at the DNS level is different: one switch covers every phone, tablet, computer and console on a profile, all the time or only when you choose.
Why it keeps coming back
Social media mostly lives in apps, not browsers. Block the website, add a browser extension, and the app on the very same phone carries on as if nothing happened. Then a new app appears, a sibling’s tablet joins the Wi-Fi, and you are building the block all over again.
DNS filtering sits underneath all of that. Every app has to look up an address before it can reach anything, so a rule you set once covers the apps, the websites and the embeds on other people’s pages — and it works on a console or a TV, where there is nothing to install anyway.
Two ways to block it
The whole category
The Social Media category blocks Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, Twitter/X, Snapchat and the rest with a single switch. We keep the list current as the apps change, so you do not have to.
One app at a time
Pick the apps by name — Instagram, Snapchat, Discord, Reddit, X and many more — and leave everything else alone. The right tool when one app is the problem and the others are fine.
Setting it up
- Create a profile for the device or the person. In the DeCloudUs dashboard, create a profile for the device or the person the rules are for. Every profile has its own DNS address, so a child’s tablet and your own phone can have different rules.
- Turn on the Social Media category, or pick the apps. On the profile, switch on the Social Media category to block them all, or choose the individual apps you want blocked and nothing more.
- Point the device at the profile. Set the profile’s DNS address on the device, or on the router to cover everything on the network. The setup guide walks through each platform.
The change happens at the resolver, so it reaches every device on the profile straight away, without touching any of them. The setup guide covers phones, tablets, computers and routers.
Only during school, homework or bedtime
A total block is often the wrong tool — it is the version that gets argued about and then quietly switched off. A schedule does the switching for you: social media off during school hours, homework and bedtime, back afterwards, by time of day and day of week, with nobody having to remember anything.
Schedules belong to the profile, so the rule follows the device rather than the network.
Closing the ways around it
The browser’s own DNS
Chrome and Firefox each have a secure DNS setting that can override the device’s. The Filter Bypass category blocks the providers they can be pointed at.
A free VPN app
Quick to install, and it routes around everything. The same category blocks the public VPN and proxy services those apps rely on.
Changing the DNS setting
Lock the device’s network settings so the DNS entry cannot simply be deleted.
If it looks like it has not worked
Almost always one of these, in the order they usually turn out to be true.
- The device is on mobile data. A phone set up only through the router is unfiltered the moment it leaves the house. Phones need their own profile configured on the device.
- A VPN is carrying its own DNS. Most VPN apps resolve through their provider, which bypasses the filter completely. To resolve this, check with your VPN provider on how to configure your device to use your custom DNS as opposed to the DNS from your VPN.
- The browser is going its own way. Chrome and Firefox have a secure-DNS setting of their own that can override the device’s. Worth a look if the app is blocked but the website is not.
- The device is remembering. It may hold on to the old answer for a few minutes. Turning Wi-Fi off and on clears it.
The dashboard’s troubleshooting page queries your profile directly and shows the answer it got, which separates “the rule is not doing what I thought” from “this device is not using the resolver at all”.
One thing worth noting
Always keep in mind the difference between home devices and mobile devices. Home devices always stay home but mobile devices can leave the home. For mobile devices, do not only rely on network-wide DNS configuration since this will not follow a mobile device that leaves home. Rather, also set up DeCloudUs DNS profile directly on the mobile device so that your DNS rules stay effective inside or outside the home.
Try it
Start small: one device, one evening. Switch the category on, open the apps, and see what still gets through.