I haven't been able to find anything about how to do it on the xfinity supplied router. Only thing I seem to be able to do is turn on parental controls.
I had a versalink router when I had dsl and I could see every website that was visited and set rules based on that.

Can I hook up the versalink to the xfinity and use it as a wifi extender and be able to use the site capturing and blocking features?

The problem is my son. He has school through the zoom meetings where he needs internet access. His sisters have told me he puts the zoom meeting on and then uses his laptop as a hot spot to get on video games and social media while he should be paying attention to class.

Any input is greatly appreciated.

Might be above your skill level. But Pi-Hole will block ads for any device on your network. You can also add websites to be blocked specifically as well.

https://pi-hole.net/

You can go the "rasberry pi" route. Or even use an old laptop. It is essentially a server that needs to be on all the time and connected to your network.



ETA: This will not get you to where you want to go. You honestly need an advanced router.

I personally use this:
https://www.untangle.com/untangle-ng-firewall/
This has advanced content filtering and access control that will do exactly what you want for a kid in the house.
But isn't exactly a turnkey sort of thing.

Easier turn key solutions. But maybe not as effective.
https://www.lifewire.com/best-parental-control-routers-4160776

I went through this 20 yrs ago when devices and the services in use were a lot simpler. Dealing with the behavior turned out to be much more effective than passive aggressively trying to control access.

To do so is whack-a-mole. There isn't much you're going to throw down that a determined teen won't be able to get around.

If he's getting the work done and has good grades, the games and social media aren't hurting anything. However, when grades or assignment completion isn't getting done, start taking shit away. He's either gonna learn self discipline, or get used to living life like the Amish.

Get your own modem and save $10/month.  Then you can use that router you are familiar with or another model like Asus, TP-Link, Netgear, etc.

You can block individual sites from there and/or use Pi-Hole.  I had my doubts about Pi-Hole until I read some user's comments in GD and I wanted to give it a try.  I first set it up on an old AMD Athlon laptop using Linux Mint and it worked great.  By moving it to a Lenovo M93P Tiny with an I5 processer / Ubuntu LTS and a gigabit Ethernet port, the response seems a lot faster.

The second the kid figures out Tor, all of the above will be a giant waste of time.

How old is he?  Is he technically proficient? Are his buddies?  If above about 8 and / or has buddies then this is a lost cause. He's got more time and energy to get around what you try to do so will ultimately win. The other poster talking about behaviorally fixing this is the right way to go.  Put the computer in the living room where everybody can see what he's doing. No privacy is needed for school work, just no distraction.

You could probably create a whitelist in DNS or use one of the third party DNS providers that allows censoring.  Blacklisting (blocking things) only works if he goes to specific places. If he's generally just wasting time on the internet then there are plenty of places to do that.  You can make some headway only if his account on the computer is not an admin or power user level account. Strip all "change stuff" permissions and then do whatever lock down.