Topic: Why do Time Restrictions Require Internet Access?

As the title suggests, why does the PS4 require Internet in order to set the time restrictions for an account? For instance, if your ISP is down, your PS4 is useless for an account that has restrictions and the user is outside of their normal time limits. The parent or guardian is unable to allow the user to sign in since the PS4 can't communicate with Sony servers.

With that, if you create an account on the PS4 itself, there are no time restrictions that you can set.

Is there a way around this or effectively manage screen time like you can with a system with Internet access?

I can answer the "why", but unfortunately I don't have any help for you in dealing with it, as I'm no expert at Playstations.

Any computer, playstation or otherwise, which has a built-in clock in modern times, likely has a very cheap one that is prone to extreme drift, especially in situations where constant power cannot be guaranteed. So they all tend to use an internet-based time protocol called NTP, the Network Time Protocol. You can read more about it on the ntp.org website if you are curious.

The upshot is, modern computers have bad clocks, except for the very very few which have good clocks and act as the official time servers for everyone else. So any computer such as a playstation, which has no internet access, quickly falls out of sync with the rest of the world.

The designers of the PS4 time restrictions feature likely presumed that you would rather have the system fail entirely when not connected to the internet, than allow the restricted users free access to subvert the restrictions, by simply unplugging a network cable. Whether they were correct or not in that assessment is not something I will comment on.

So I hope that helps you understand. Maybe someone else can jump in and suggest some way to address that in your individual case.

@SomethingAwkward I highly doubt anyone would rather have their kid's game console simply brick without internet connection rather than relying on an internal clock that might lose a minute or two a year...