Six Best Parental Control Apps for Android

Parental Control Apps for AndroidWhen you give your child a smartphone, you give them the world –  access to a wide world of information, people and possibilities, anyway. That world can come with a lot of fun and education. But it also comes with a lot of risk. The possibilities are endless, but so are the dangers to your children when they immerse themselves.

At the same time, when you send your child out into the world today you no longer have to worry about not knowing where they are. Technology allows parents to monitor their children’s locations with smartphone apps and GPS technology.

Today, there are many free and premium apps on the market designed to help parents monitor their children’s online behavior and physical locations. How do you choose the right app for your child’s android phone? How do you prevent them from downloading the wrong apps or media? Which apps will let you know where your child is at any given moment of the day? Which apps help you know when your child is being cyberbullied on social media? In this blog post we’ll break down six of the more popular parental control apps for Android so you can choose the one that is right for your family.

Related: Cyber Safety Tips for Kids – Preventing Cyberbullying and Inappropriate “Friends”

Top Six Apps for Android Parental Control

MamaBear App: MamaBear is your all-in-one family safety app providing parents information to worry less and encourage larger boundaries for kids to explore more. This app is especially good for kids that are first time smartphone users and new to social media. The app allows kids to keep parents updated with simple check in buttons with added emoticons, “Come Get Me” or “Emergency” notifications. MamaBear allows parents to know their child’s current and recent locations, setup arrival and departure alerts for places like school, home and practice or know when they exceed a preset driving speed. Our favorite feature is a time saver from trolling our kid’s Facebook and Instagram accounts. Parents can set up alerts to monitor only the important stuff like new friends/follows, words on your programmed restricted words list, uploaded photos and tags.

The Kids Place: Kids Place is an app launcher with parental controls and child lock especially nice for shared devices. It protects your personal data and restricts kids to apps you have approved for them. Kids Place also prevents children from downloading new apps, making phone calls, texting or performing other actions that can cost you money. It includes convenient features for parents such as auto app restart and is useful for small kids who accidentally exit launched apps.

Kid Mode: Kid Mode puts all your child’s favorite Android apps in one place also good for shared devices. With the app’s child lock feature, kids stay safely in Kid Mode – the app prevents accidental in-app purchases, deleted texts, or confusing ad clicks. Kid Mode comes with fun games and videos customized for every child’s age, an art studio where kids can paint, color and draw, illustrated storybooks that family members can read and record, a video mail feature that lets kids exchange short messages with family, weekly activity emails on what your kids have been playing and learning and more.

Norton Family: Norton Family with parental controls helps you protect your child from online threats while you’re on the go. Protect your kids from inappropriate web content, unsafe texting and unsuitable mobile apps. The app allows users to track the websites kids visit or attempt to visit, block access to inappropriate websites, setup custom email alerts to notify you when your kids attempt to do something they shouldn’t. A premium version of the app with additional features is available for a fee.

MMGuardian Parental Control: MMGuardian Parental Control enables parents to lock your child’s phone via a simple text message, set time restrictions to limit use, eg: during school hours, prevent your child texting and driving, block incoming calls and texts, monitor alarming text messages, control which applications can be used and when, then receive a daily report on your child’s phone usage.

Screen Time: Screen Time is a parental control app that allows you to monitor and manage the time spent on your family’s tablets and phones. Screen Time is not as invasive as many of the parental control apps available, so it is well suited to families with older children and teenagers, as well as younger children. The app’s features include daily time limits on selected apps, bedtime curfew on selected apps, lights out curfew on all apps, school time curfew on selected apps and more.

There are many great tools on the Google Play app market that can help parents make the most of smartphones and keep their families safe at the same time. Arm yourself with knowledge so you can make the most educated app choices for your Android devices.

 Image Credit: Techradar 

Comparing Family Safety Apps: MamaBear and Life360

Mamabear Family Safety AppChoosing the right family safety app isn’t easy. There are a number of  great options on the market today providing parents some peace of mind. MamaBear App and Life360 are two top choices many families consider.  While both apps have similar features when it comes to monitoring a child’s location using a smartphone or other mobile device, there are some key differences between the apps. Let’s discuss what makes MamaBear and Life360 similar and different.

Similarly, the MamaBear and Life360 app offers parents the ability see their children’s current and recent locations. Both apps also allow kids to check in with parents using the app. They also allow parents to set automatic alerts to track when their kids come and go from places they frequently visit (school, soccer practice, friends’ houses, etc.).

Both apps have some key differences as well.

Here’s a breakdown of the ways in which these two Family Safety Apps differ:

– Mamabear offers social media monitoring.  For example, with MamaBear a parent can receive alerts when a child makes a new friend on Facebook, follows someone new or uploads a photo on Instagram, gets tagged or @mentioned in a photo, message or at a location on Facebook or Instagram.  The restricted words list allows parents to be notified to words or phrases that are posted on their child’s Facebook or Instagram page. The list can include inappropriate language or words that may indicate bullying.

Related: Protecting Kids from Internet Stranger Danger

– MamaBear offers driving speed monitoring for teens. Parents receive an alert when their child drives or rides over a preset speed limit that tells them how fast they were going and where they were when they exceeded the preset limit. You can also view the child’s speeding history.

– MamaBear offers a custom child view. Kids can check in with parents with emoticons or send a quick “come get me” or “emergency” notification from a different view with a child profile log in.  Kids can also customize their view of the app with wallpaper selections.

– Life360 offers a premium version along with their free app. The premium version of Life360 comes with access to a 24/7 advisor connecting you to a real person who can direct emergency responders to your location, give you personalized crisis care, access your emergency profile, etc. The premium version of the app also includes stolen phone protection.

– Life360 has the same map view regardless of the family role as a child or parent allowing parents to share their location if they choose. The app also adds crime updates and sex offenders plotted on the map.

More recently, the app added “Circles,”  a feature to create custom groups of people to share location and messages.

Two great family safety apps with many different features filling different needs for families. Choose the right one for your family and let us know how it goes!

Using MamaBear with Apple’s new iOS 7

Apple recently introduced iOS 7, the newest version of the  iphone operating system. The new operating system features a redesigned user interface and several functionality improvements.

MamaBear family members using an Apple iPhone upgraded to iOS 7, especially iphone 4 and 4s users, may have noticed a change with location updates. Although there are many great new features to iOS 7, there are new settings to be aware of  affecting location service apps.

The October 23 app upgrade to MamaBear included better iOS 7 compatibility and we continue to work on other improvements, especially the ability to update location more often using iOS 7.

In the meanwhile, there are some proactive steps you can take to get back on track with location monitoring.  These industry articles expand on the lag iphone 4 and 4s may have on iOS 7: readwrite.com and USA Today.

Please review these settings on your child’s iPhone

1. Be sure “Location Services” is on by reviewing Settings > Privacy > Location Services.

2. Be sure background app refresh is on for MamaBear by going to Settings > General > Background App refresh. We won’t be able to update your child’s location if this is turned off.

3.  Ask your child to keep MamaBear running in the background.  If your child swipes MamaBear up by double clicking the phone’s home button, it will close the app and not allow us to monitor location in iOS 7.

4. If your child is auto-updating apps, be sure they are logged in to MamaBear after they update any new releases from MamaBear.

5. Set up safe places in MamaBear!  Entering programmed places helps the app run in the background, not to mention keeps you updated!

Following these steps will help MamaBear work more efficiently on your child’s phone if they are now using Apple’s new iPhone operating system.

We’ll gladly answer any of your concerns by getting in touch with us at info@localhost. Stay in touch!

 

Using Apps to Keep Track of Your Kids this Halloween

halloween-safety-tips

Every kid wants to enjoy the fun of going house-to-house with friends in the dark trick-or-treating on Halloween night. Many of us parents remember the sheer joy of running through the neighborhood in the dark with friends collecting ungodly amounts of candy. Back then, our parents sent us out the door and let us go. Sure, they worried about urban-legend-inspired razor blades in apples, but didn’t worry as much about stranger danger as we do today or reputation damaging photos on social media.

Related: Protecting Kids from Stranger Danger

Today, things are a bit different. Sending our kids off into the the dark isn’t something we are all comfortable with. And while many neighborhoods around the country have designated trick-or-treating events to keep children and families safe, sometimes that is not enough to reassure parents worried about sending kids off to trick or treat with friends or to attend a Halloween party.

Halloween Safety Tips for Parents and Children to Help Keep Your Family Safe

  • Make sure costumes are safe. Kids don’t want to be restricted in how they wear their costume, but tell your children that there are some common sense rules they should follow. For example, make sure they keep their faces exposed so they can breathe and that their costumes don’t cover their eyes. Discourage them from wearing full masks when trick-or-treating in the dark. Of course, flame-retardant costumes are a must to prevent fire accidents and be sure it’s the right size so they don’t trip over it.
  • Increase visibility. Make sure your child wears bright clothing or even small reflectors. No one wants to worry about their child being hit by a car if they aren’t able to be seen. Encourage younger children especially to choose light-colored costumes. Give them glow sticks and flashlights to carry with them so they can be seen by drivers.
  • Travel in groups. Older kids are going to want to trick-or-treat on their own, without a parent. If they do, make sure they go with at least one friend, preferably more.
  • Monitor social media.  Remind your children to think about the consequences of a picture before it’s posted or messaged to anyone. Halloween is a high traffic time for photo sharing. Monitor your kids being tagged, or comments being made about their spooktakular attire. The MamaBear App can help you monitor your child’s social safety.
  • Track your child’s location. Install a family safety app like MamaBear on every family member’s smartphone so you can monitor your children’s whereabouts. The app allows your children to check in with an emoticon to share where they are and how they’re feeling. Children can also request rides from parents or send SOS messages if they are in trouble. Alerts can let you know if your child has indeed made it to that Halloween party and when they leave.

See Also: Halloween and Safety Tips from the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention

Thankfully, parents have resources today to keep their families safe during the free-for-all that Halloween night can be. Reminding your kids of these safety measures and monitoring their location  and social activity provides peace of mind while allowing your children to enjoy all the candy, haunted houses and other Halloween fun we loved when we were kids.

For more child safety tips visit the MamaBear blog or follow us on Facebook.

Image Credit: Kids Activity Blog