Things to Look for While Choosing A Monitoring App for Kids
If you are a concerned parent or guardian of minors, there is a high chance that you have already thought about many online dangers your children face on the internet, especially on social media sites and instant chat messengers.
Whether it is cyberbullying, cyber predators, pornography, or violence, there are several reasons to protect your children on the internet. Perhaps you have already heard from other parents about monitoring solutions such as spy apps for Android and iOS devices and how these tools are being used for children’s online safety.
Despite hearing from others, most parents still do not have any idea about monitoring tools. They may come across a cell phone or computer monitoring software online but can’t decide which one they should opt for.
Various sorts of spy apps and monitoring software are available in the market, aiming to help you protect your children from growing online threats. However, choosing the best one from the lot still remains the biggest challenge for most parents.
Before you can start monitoring your child’s online activity and protect them from online dangers, it’s important to make the right selection. In this post, we are going to help those parents who are clueless about the things or factors they need to look for when selecting a monitoring app and parental control solution for their children.
Criteria to Look for in Monitoring Apps for Kids
The internet can be a dangerous place for children. Even though it has provided us with numerous benefits, it can still pose a serious threat to our children’s safety. Children may stumble upon various online dangers while surfing the internet either by mistake or by choice.
The only way to protect them from the internet hazards is to deploy a monitoring app or parental control solution on their digital devices. Monitoring apps are basically parental control apps, designed to help parents control what their child can do with a digital device. This may include disallowing inappropriate apps, limiting screen time, blocking and filtering inappropriate content.
Internet filtering, screen time management, and blocking unwanted apps are some of the main features of a good monitoring app. Because there’s a vast variety of monitoring apps out there, you may feel overwhelmed when you start looking for the best option. Not all of them claiming to be an effective monitoring app may turn out to be the best one.
We would like to make your hunt easier by telling you what things you need to look for while searching for the best monitoring app for your children’s online safety. An ideal monitoring app should allow you to do a number of things that have been mentioned as follows:
Block Websites
An effective monitoring app will allow you to block websites that you do not want your child to visit. You can block all the porn websites or any content that you deem inappropriate for your children. Sites containing information about drugs, alcohol, sex, and violence need to be blocked as soon as possible.
Some monitoring apps may allow you to block entire websites, some only block webpages within websites, whereas some block sections within webpages.
There are some sites you do not want your child to visit but there are others that have a lot of content that you wouldn’t mind your child accessing. The same concept applies to monitoring apps that block text messages, especially sext messages. Some apps will let you block entire messages containing objectionable words whereas others will only block just the word.
Control Screen Time
Some monitoring apps let you control how much time your children spend on their digital devices. Parental control or monitoring software varies in how granularly you can control their screen time. On one hand, you can allow or disallow a device to be used at all. On the other hand, you can schedule when certain apps can be used by your children or when the internet can be accessed on their devices.
Make sure to choose the monitoring app that gives you the option of controlling the amount of time your children are spending on their devices. If an app does not offer a screen time management feature, you should never consider using it.
Support Various Platforms and Web Browsers
A good monitoring app should be able to work on all the platforms including Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS. Some monitoring apps have been designed specifically to work for one particular platform. For instance, Android spy apps are used to monitor your child’s Android devices. The good news is that there are some monitoring solutions that support all operating platforms.
Another thing you need to consider when choosing a monitoring app is that it should work on all the web browsers, instead of only one. It if it works for one, your child is going to use another web browser to visit inappropriate sites. Therefore, it is better to use the monitoring solution that works with at least all the leading web browsers including Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge, etc.
