How Does a Parental Control App & Software Work?

I have created this simple guide to help you understand how parental control apps work! Read this before installing any parental control software! 

Parental control apps are software used by parents to monitor their kid’s online activities. Once the password-protected parental control app is installed on a smartphone or computer, it blocks adult content and monitors app usage. Besides filtering content, a parental control app has many other useful monitoring features.

This article will cover:

• Monitor your kid’s screen time on every devices
• Find the parental control app that works for you
• What does a parental control app and software do
• Extra Features Offered by Parental Control Apps on Phones
• Takeaway

Parental control apps are a fantastic tool to keep your child away from unseen cyber threats. Today, there are +1000 apps and sites that let you access unsuitable content without any proper age verification. As a parent, I feel uncomfortable knowing my child could access every inappropriate website by just putting a fake date of birth kept. 

Uncertain about which parental control app to get? Take a look at this list of the best parental control apps. I have put lots of hours into this guide, and you’ll find the ideal app for your family!

That is when I started looking for ways to keep such websites and apps away from my child’s sight. I asked other parents and asked if they are already using something that could help me with this issue. They all mention parentals control apps and how they could help monitor their child’s online activities 24/7.

My understanding is that parental control apps help parents who want to limit their children’s online access and wish to monitor their activity around the clock. 

Here’s how parental control apps have helped many of my friends keep their children safe and build healthy digital habits.

Monitor Your Child’s Screen Time on All Devices

We no longer live in a world where each household had only one internet-connected device. Now, everyone owns their own personal devices. Therefore, all of them should have the appropriate tools for monitoring and limiting children’s screen activity. Moreover, a parental control app/software needs to support multiple platforms like Android, Windows, Chromebook, and iOS. 

My kids are spending around 2-3 hours on a tablet. From doing their homework, watching videos, and playing games, I have a hard time monitoring what they’re really doing. 

As a parent, these monitoring apps have certainly made my life a lot easier.

Find A Parental Control App That Works for You

To get the most out of a parental control app, you need to make sure they are supported by your devices. Every parental control app provides a varying degree of monitoring for free or at a price. 

Here is how to find if a particular parental control app is a good fit for you!

Free Built-In Parental Control Apps

Almost all platforms (Windows, Apple, Android, Chromebook) have a free built-in parental control software. Most of these free apps will cover the basic monitoring you need. 

Apple, for instance, has a free built-in software called Screen Time. It lets you monitor your child’s activity across various apps and block inappropriate content across the websites.

Microsoft also offers a free parental control app known as Family Safety. It filters content and set time limits across various apps. It also provides parents a daily and weekly activity report.

Google Family Link is another free app that supports Chromebook and Android devices (running version 7.0 or higher). This parental control software lets you access and blocks various apps, set and monitor screen limits, locate your child and remotely lock your child’s access to the device if need be.

Downloading a Parental Control App

Not all parental control apps or software are in-built like Screen Time. Some must be downloaded and set up. Moreover, you might have to pay to access the premium features, depending on your needs.

Google Family Link is one of my favorites. It’s free to download and offers excellent features. It works with Android and iOS devices. Plus, it lets me change the app settings remotely through my phone. I was also able to create a Google account for my kids that helped them access most of the google services needed to get the schoolwork done.

How Much Do Parental Control Apps Cost?

Parental control apps like Screen Time and Google Family Link are free and have no premium features to offer. Family safety from Windows, however, provides some basic features for free. Still, you’ll need to pay to get access to all features.

Other great parental control apps like Bark, Qustodio, and Net Nanny, offer paid yearly subscriptions ranging from 10$ to 100$. These prices vary depending upon the number of devices you want to monitor and the features you want.

For example, Bark offers a 7-day free trial and charges 100$ annually upon subscription. Qustodio provides a 30-day free trial and charges 55$ annually. Net Nanny, however, does not offer any trial period and charges 40$ annually to access its features.

Note: The prices may vary depending upon the number of features you want to have access to.

Parental Control App Installation

From my experience, the installation process of these apps was designed to be as easy as possible. After the installation, you’ll need to configure the app through a series of questions. Don’t worry; you don’t need to be a software engineer or a world-class hacker to install a parental control app.

What Does A Parental Control App and Software Do?

Parental control apps help parents monitor and control their children’s internet usage across various apps and games. They allow you to create a personalized checklist for setting parental controls on devices under your children’s access.

Parental control apps let you control networks, devices, and applications. Network controls are the ones that are set up on hubs or routers. These settings are applied to all the devices connected to the network. The controls are applied on devices like PCs, tablets, and smartphones. The controls use across various applications such as web browsers (YouTube and Google) and games.

Some of the significant functions that parental control apps can perform are:

• Filter content across web and social media
• Set time limits for app usage
• Control device usage
• Track location
• Block specific calls and texts (on mobile)
• Access to your child’s browsing history across websites

Some apps also offer premium features for extra monitoring across social media and contact lists.

General Parental Control Features

Parental control apps offer a variety of features depending upon the age group of your child. You can allow more access to your teen and less to your 9-year-old child through the same app.

1- Filtering Content

One of the main common features in every parental control app is the web filtering feature. Which allows parents to limit their child’s access to age-inappropriate content across the web. It blocks access to children’s highly unrecommended sites, like gambling, adult videos, violence, and file sharing. 

I noticed this feature is for these filters to be most effective. You need to download the recommended browsers. Which is a bit inconvenient. Therefore, I found Google’s Safe Search option the most convenient in this regard, as it is my family’s go-to browser for research.

2- Screen Time Management

Screen time management lets you control and view your child’s activity across various apps. You can manage the amount of screen time spent by your child. You can also keep them from using the phone after or before a certain time (ex: bedtime). Which I believe is something every parent of a teenager wishes to do. 

This feature is my favorite because it allowed me to control the amount of time my kids spend in front of a screen.

You can also reward your child with extra screen time for getting good grades or helping you out with a house chore. Which I personally do often as it keeps my child motivated to finish emptying the dishwasher. 

This feature also lets you check your child’s detailed history of online activity across websites to ensure that he is on the right track.

3- App Monitoring

App monitoring is another area that parental control apps excel in, as they allow you to block or allow certain apps from being downloaded in your child’s tablet, PC, or smartphone. This feature helps you detect apps that are not age-appropriate or that might jeopardize your child’s safety. I honestly find this feature very helpful because I cannot know if a particular app is good or not without having used it.

The app monitoring feature does a lot more than blocking apps; it lets you see the sent and received emails and highlights the email with inappropriate content. Furthermore, it also enables you to check if your child’s specific mail or text was deleted.  

This feature also helped me monitor my child’s activity and the amount of time spent on social media apps like Facebook and messenger through screenshots.

Extra Features Offered by Parental Control Apps on Phones

Parental control apps offer a variety of features on phones as well. 

In fact, they offer a bit more for the phones than they do for laptops, like monitoring texts and calls. This feature of monitoring and blocking calls and texts is not very popular among parental control app users. 

However, Qustodio allows parents to get more control over their child’s day-to-day life through this kind of extra premium feature.

1- Monitor Call and SMS

This feature allows parents to monitor the outgoing and incoming calls and texts on their child’s smartphone. It will enable you to view the chat and call history along with their duration and timings. With this feature, you can block unidentified numbers and read the content of the private messages received or sent from the phone.

2- Monitor Messaging and Social App Activity

We know smartphones are the root cause of growing social media addiction. It can keep you entertained the entire day. This is where parental control apps come in. They let you monitor and view who your child texts to the most or spend his time in terms of social media apps.

Some parental apps let you monitor apps like Snapchat, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, tinder, Kik, and WhatsApp, which are popular among children and teens. Through parental control apps, you can view incoming calls and texts, deleted texts, and the posts and people your child engages with on social media apps. Observing my child’s social media activity has helped me establish boundaries for using those apps and phones overall.

3- Keep Track of Your Child Location

Location tracking is indeed a stress relief for parents. Because knowing where our child spends most of his time outside the home can help us keep them safe.

Most of the parental apps offer this feature and help you keep track of your children’s outdoor activities for the entire day. But some apps provide exceptional features like geofencing that let you set digital boundaries in the physical world. Through geofencing, I was able to add the places that I would not allow my child to go to, and if he ever tried, I would get a notification on my phone. It is an excellent monitoring feature to ensure that my child stays where he’s supposed to, the entire day (We live close to a river).

4- View Photos

Have you ever wanted to check your child’s phone for what kind of photos they take? We know it is a trend across teens to take objectionable images that can get them in trouble.

Through the parental control apps and software, you can view the kind of photos your children take or receive on their devices.

I feel like this feature is great for keeping an eye on the kind of activities our children are involved in. 

5- Disable Specific Features 

Apart from other monitoring features like blocking contacts and viewing photos, the parental control apps also allow parents to block or disable features that could pose some unknown threats in the future. For instance, you can make your child’s profile invisible in search results. Or turn the location off for pictures and posts, keep the posts shared on social media to friends, and restrict conversations to friend list only.

Social media apps like Instagram and YouTube let users see the activity across the app and restrict usage by setting a time limit.

Tiktok, a viral app among teens and children, also has features that allow parents to set app usage limits and manage their child’s privacy settings remotely.

I found these restriction settings for various apps in the app settings section. Still, I noticed that these settings were reversible unless they were password-protected.

Takeaway

Parental control apps are helpful for parents in this technology-driven era, especially when every child has his own personal device. 

It’s a relief to have parental control software available to monitor our child’s online web activity, social media activity, SMS and call history, and location. 

However, one thing to remember while using these control apps is that they are just a tool to monitor and not control your child’s personal life. Too much control over a child’s life can be frustrating, hinder creativity and curiosity. In fear of making mistakes, they could become anxious, depress, to the point of causing mental health problems in the future. 

From what I have realized with personal experience, too much control or interference into my child’s life has tended to make him look for ways to deceive me. Which obviously has been disappointing and heartbreaking for me. 

However, I am also aware that being a parent, we feel like we must be strict and restrict our children from the bad. Still, that attitude only destroys the sacred child-parent bond, so be wise and not get swayed by your emotions.