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Help Curb Teen Drinking and Driving with Social Media and Driving Monitor Alerts

teen-drinking-driving-percentage

MamaBear is helping families fight teen drinking and driving with social media and driving monitor alerts. It’s that time of year again, when the snow melts from the road and parents hand kids the keys for the first time. It’s also the season for spring break parties, prom and graduation. For many teenagers, it also means early experimentation with alcohol. In the United States, more than twenty percent of teens from tenth grade to twelfth grade experiment with alcohol consumption beyond a few sips. Even with drastic improvements in underage drinking and driving, on average three people under the age of twenty one die every day in alcohol related driving accidents.

MamaBear can offer parents some security when it comes to teen drinking and driving. Our driving monitor alerts give parents information about their child’s speed – whether driving or riding. Parents can use speeding alerts to talk about unsafe driving habits even before alcohol is introduced. A quick call after a driving alert allows parents to ask some questions and caution their speed.

In addition to driving monitor alerts, MamaBear can issue parents an alert when a child is tagged in photos, which we know our teens love to do at parties and social events. Restricted word alerts in social media involving keywords like beer, drinking, drunk and wasted can give parents a real warning if used in on their social media pages. Social alerts combined with driving monitor alerts can reveal possible teen drinking and driving giving parents an opportunity for a parent to interject in the situation preventing a dangerous outcome.

For most teens, drinking and driving will come up at some point. Our kids may be put in an uncomfortable situation when getting into a car of a friend under the influence. The MamaBear App on their phone assists our kids in getting out of the situation. With options that quickly and discreetly inform parents they need a ride, or need help, MamaBear could be an easy solution to peer pressure. This means even more options for responsible teens to avoid teen drinking and driving related problems, even when they aren’t doing the drinking or driving themselves.

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Is it Ok to Track Your Kids Cell Phone?

track your kids cell phone

There’s a lot of discussion lately about whether or not it’s ok to track your kid’s cell phone. Parents grapple with what’s enough, and when’ve we gone too far when it comes to our kids. I spend a fair amount of time talking to parents on both sides of this conversation. As parents, we know our kids aren’t going to accept every measure we use to protect them with the same love we feel when enforcing certain boundaries. At MamaBear, we know the decision to track your kids cell phone isn’t one parents take lightly with many reasons behind the decision. It could be purely safety, some accountability and opportunity to have real life cases to discuss with our children.

Knowing where our children are, and their social media behavior is our responsibility as parents and present riskier long-term consequences for kids in today’s tech world. So many parents find the best solution to giving a child the responsibility of having a smartphone to be a tracking app. Basically, tracking a phone is tracking a child – do you know a kid with a smartphone that goes too long without it? And parents that want to track their child, are well within their rights. Smartphones are not cheap, especially brand new ones. Buying a child the equivalent to a small personal computer can mean a pretty significant investment. Using a parental tracking app like MamaBear to monitor your child’s smartphone represents money well spent.

Child acceptance of a tracking app begins best with a straightforward conversation. Explaining up front that you intend to monitor your kid’s cell phone is a great way to make them understand the responsibility that comes with owning such an information accessible device. We give them the freedom to use a smartphone, participate on social media and hang out at locations within limits, but with any life experience, we want comfort knowing we’ve shared potential risks and outcomes with our children as they make choices. Having additional insight to our children’s daily lives provides for more relevant conversations with our children. Technologies, like the MamaBear app for Android and iPhones represent an easy, effective, time-saving way to achieve this.

At MamaBear, we know the goal when you track your kids cell phone is not spying. It’s about keeping our children safe. The MamaBear child tracking app gives parents as much, or as little, information they need to feel their child is safe. This can give our children the freedom they need to grow while giving us some security.

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The Benefits of a Family Locator App like MamaBear

family locator app

A family locator app may sound pretty simple. It should be an easy to use app that uses global positioning satellites (GPS) and a smartphone to give parents up-to-date information about their child’s location. In actuality, the idea of instantaneous tracking of a child’s whereabouts is fairly complex; as is the wide range of options it can offer parents. Monitoring a child’s location can be an invaluable parenting tool, and can go far beyond simple tracking. A family locator app gives parents a means to ensure children have been and are where they are supposed to be.

Family tracking apps can be used with a few intentions – safety, accountability and parental peace of mind. It offers families a life-saving technological innovation in the case of an emergency. In addition, a family locator app like MamaBear can let kids explore geographical boundaries allowing a parent to gauge where an intervention is necessary.

On the most basic level, a family locator app serves the basic function of tracking a child. With social location sharing and the utility of so many apps today, acceptance of the MamaBear app from our children shouldn’t be so uncommon. In addition, they may come to understand we’ll feel more comfortable allowing our kids to do a wider range of activities we may have otherwise found ‘too far’ or ‘too scary’ with the use of a family locator app. Knowing where our kids are when they’re camping, at an amusement park or on a day trip with friends can free up both sides of a parent and child’s relationship.

Upon the parent’s discretion, it can be a two-way street. The parent has the option of sharing their location with their children when they choose. This allows an easy way for kids to find their way to meet up with mom or dad. In addition, a quick press of the check-in or come get me button from the the child communicates immediately with the parent.

The times a family locator app like MamaBear can be the most invaluable are often the hardest ones for us as parents to consider, let alone discuss. In an emergency, a family tracking app can give parents and authorities an answer to a child’s current and recent location.

A family locator app like MamaBear gives parents options and reassures our trust. MamaBear can give us the reassurance we need to let our kids live a little, and can protect their lives in the worst case scenario. With availability on Android and iOS enabled smartphones, MamaBear represents a flexible alternative to family monitoring.

To learn more about the MamaBear family locator app watch the video below:

Download the MamaBear family locator app for Iphone

Download the MamaBear family locator app for Android

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Should You Use a Parental Control App on your Child’s Iphone?

parental control iphone

Do you really need a parental control app?

We all do our best as parents and I believe we all try to encourage trust with our children among the people in our community and direct networks. The good news is, most of us probably can. Even though we trust our children to make the right choices, and in much fewer cases do we trust the people around our children, the use of technology can help ensure our children’s safety. A little extra knowledge can be useful!
Parental control apps on the IPhone offer parents a chance to gain insights and offer a road to more communication. Monitoring apps also give children a new, and sometimes easier, way to communicate with us than existing methods. Parenting apps like MamaBear can offer options and reassurances.

The biggest hurdle most parents overcome when installing a parental control or monitoring app on their child’s phone is acceptance. Parenting apps offer much more than just monitoring and control options, and with a little explaining about the safety features, our kids understand this. GPS tracking for emergencies is becoming more and more common, and several parenting apps offer families an emergency call button. Apps like MamaBear with variable alert settings and options allow parents as much or as little monitoring as they want. When the kids are in an emergency, need to quickly check in or discreetly ask for you to pick them up, they’ll begin to understand why you installed the MamaBear app.

When children first join social media networks like Facebook and Instagram, a parental control app with social media monitoring features like MamaBear can be invaluable. Social media, combined with a smartphone, gives children connectivity to the world that most of us parents never imaged. A tool like the MamaBear app gives you an eye into their behaviors as they take their first steps on social media.

Parental control apps and monitoring apps can also be helpful when a child learns to drive. We all know we have to trust our kids with the keys at some point, but sometimes we need a little extra reassurance. With such a big, new responsibility like driving, most children understand that parents simply want to know they’re safe and the use of apps like MamaBear can do just that! Monitoring a child’s driving speed and where they’re traveling in the car is a standard use of parental control apps.

There are plenty of reasons to monitor and install parental control apps. Major changes and additions to the life of a child, (like giving them a new phone, joining a social site or driving) can be a great time to introduce MamaBear, both to give parents some insight and reassurance. When a child first joins Facebook or Instagram, or learns how to drive, extra monitoring is only natural and should be easily acceptable by the child given the stories we read. Using the latest technology, like MamaBear, for monitoring just makes sense.

The MamaBear child tracker app is available free during beta-stage on Iphone and Android.