Child Phone Monitoring App For Parents
One area in which most mobile parental control solutions excel is in their ability to prevent children from using selected apps. This can come in handy for parents looking to prevent their kids from using social media apps, messaging services that are difficult to monitor, or browsers that get around the defined web filters. Still, it can be difficult to keep track of every new app that your child installs. Better yet are those services, such as Boomerang, that automatically block new apps your child installs until you explicitly approve them.
The parental control space is always changing—especially on the mobile side of the equation—so we will be updating this roundup as new entries appear and as others fade away. If you use a parental control app that we did not mention and have strong feelings about it one way or another, be sure to leave a comment on the article below. Your suggestion might make it into the next round of updates.
If you just moved to a new neighborhood, or are planning to, you can research any neighborhood with this app. Simply activate your smartphone's GPS and connect to the National Sex Offender Registry to locate registered sex offenders and predators in the area. You can search by name, address, and zip code, and results will be displayed on an interactive map. Click on a location for more details, such as pictures, names, addresses, and a list of offenses. ($1.99; IOS and Android)
Touted as the "next generation baby monitor" from Engadget, this camera/video app allows you to keep tabs on your baby's crib. Other features include password-protected audio and video, audio alerts, and infrared night mode, but only specific cameras (mostly Y-Cam and WiFi Baby) are compatible with this app. Check WiFiBaby.com and SunshineApps.com before purchasing Baby Monitor HD to make sure you have the correct combination of hardware and software. After purchase, Engadget.com has detailed setup instructions. ($9.99; available on IOS only with specific cameras)
This incredible digital safety app has saved lives. Really. Bark monitors text messages, YouTube, emails, and 24 different social networks for potential safety concerns, so parents can save time and gain peace of mind. It can even proactively alert you to issues like sexting, cyberbulling and depression thanks to algorithms that constantly analyze words showing up on your child's phone. But in addition to alerting parents, Bark also provides recommended actions on how to deal with it and has in turn saved 33 lives by alerting parents of their child's potential suicide intentions. (Free trial available but requires a monthly fee; IOS, Android, Amazon)
Some services, including Locategy, Boomerang, and FamilyTime, go one step further, letting you construct geofences around a location. For the uninitiated, geofences are digital boundaries around a physical location that help parents keep track of when a child arrives at or leaves a given location. Kaspersky Safe Kids even lets you add a dimension of time to a geofence, so you can easily make sure a child stays where they are supposed to be throughout the day. Boomerang offers a unique feature, in that you can draw custom geofences on a map; others just create a circular radius around a point you define.