Best Parental Control Apps
Based on In-Depth Reviews

Your Kids and Social Media

Children are getting online at a younger age each year. Teaching our children how to responsibly use online resources will only help them develop a healthy relationship with the digital world. They’ll be able self-regulate the amount of time they spend on their devices, create healthy social relationships, and learn to identify and avoid risky online behaviors.

A 2019 Common Sense Media survey found that the use of smartphones had increased across all age groups over the last four years, even among the youngest in the survey.

Time spent online remained fairly constant between 2015 and 2019, with kids ages 8-12 spending an average of four and a half hours a day online, while kids ages 13-18 spent about seven and half hours (not including time spent on homework). Most of the time spent online is watching videos, with YouTube being the most popular source, or playing online games

What does all this mean? Your kids are experiencing a world unlike any you grew up with. “Social media can be the springboard to civic engagement and creative expression, with thriving communities dedicated to social activism, music-making, fan fiction, and much more,” says Anya Kamenetz, education correspondent for NPR and author of The Art of Screen Time: How Your Family Can Balance Digital Media and Real Life.

Social media allows for more frequent communication with relatives and family friends who don’t live in your immediate vicinity. This can be especially important in maintaining relationships with older relatives such as grandparents, helping the younger generation enjoy a greater sense of family, and encouraging the older generation to be involved with and connected to their grandchildren. Kids can learn about other cultures, develop new skills, have an outlet for their creative expression, or take online classes they may not have ready access to.

That doesn’t mean there isn’t a downside. One of the biggest worries you may have as a parent is the sheer amount of content your child is being exposed to and how to ensure that this content is appropriate for them. Your kids can be exposed to violence, explicit images, online bullying, and sexual predation. The use of social media “likes” and the accumulation of followers as a barometer of popularity can lead children into contact with people they have never met--some of whom may not have the best of intentions. “[Children] actually have a lot of content and access and people potentially coming at them,” says Ana Homayoun, family counselor and author of Social Media Wellness, “and they don’t necessarily know how to structure that.”

Whether your child’s experience online turns into a positive or a negative doesn’t depend on the internet, but on how he or she chooses to use it. A parental control app can help to establish boundaries and time limits, and which app you choose will depend on your parenting style, values and assessment of your child’s needs. However, to get the best result from these apps, you and your child need to have a series of conversations.

Helping Your Kids Safely Navigate the Digital World

Relying solely on an app to limit your child’s access to online material can lead to a false sense of security. Kids today are more tech-savvy and can find ways around the restrictions these apps impose by creating new social media and communications accounts. But talking to your kids about why you believe the app is necessary and coming to a mutual agreement on its use can be helpful.  As Homayoun points out, having frequent and open conversations with your children with compassion, empathy, and understanding rather than with fear, anger, and frustration can help them make better choices online, regardless of whether you’re watching them.

Conversations can start as an explanation of the general rules for using a device. Make it clear that you are the actual owner of the device and that as such you reserve the right to occasionally check it. You can also have the password to your children’s phone and online accounts, but let them know you’ll use it only if a problem presents itself. The key idea is to teach your children the proper way of using their phone/tablet/computer and the online resources they’ll have access to. “Teach them the same etiquette online that you would expect of them in face-to-face social life,” says  Dalton Conley, Professor of Sociology at Princeton University.

Once general rules are established, the parental control app can serve as a reinforcement. Remember though, as with all things digital, that glitches, malfunctions and gaps can occur. If your child does happen to run across content that is not age-appropriate, make sure they feel comfortable coming to you with any questions and concerns. These may not be easy conversations to have with your kids, but they’re necessary nonetheless.

One other thing to remember. If you set a family rule that no cell phones are to be used during dinner time, or during family outings, the rule should also apply to you. Children, younger ones especially, learn behaviors by seeing what their parents are doing. If you are busy texting or answering the phone during times when you should be focused on offline activities, that is what your children will learn. If you do have to use the phone, make sure you explain that there is a specific reason for doing so. “We need to help kids understand the ‘intentional’ use of screens, that they have a proper time and place. It doesn’t have to be 24/7,” says Homayoun.

When Parental Control Crosses the Line

Parental control apps share a lot in common with what is known as spyware--apps designed to secretly monitor the phone or computer activities of another person without their knowledge. These apps track your location, use keylogger features to capture anything written on the device, and record phone conversations. The difference between the two is intent. Spying on a colleague or spouse is unethical and in most states illegal. Recording remote conversations is illegal without both parties’ consent. Parental monitoring, on the other hand, has an ethical goal: limiting children’s access to inappropriate online content, which falls within parental rights. 

Although some parental control apps give you the option to secretly install them on your child’s phone, we don’t recommend doing so. Your kids will eventually find out, and that can damage the mutual trust that should exist within the family. You want to keep your children safe, but you also want them to trust you enough to discuss things that trouble them about their online experience. By contrast, if you monitor them secretly and they find out, it may encourage them to find workarounds like using burner phones, creating new accounts under a different name, or using a friend's phone. 

As parents, we have to learn to walk the fine line between not enough monitoring and too much. According to Kamenetz, not enough interest in a child’s online activity can lead to your child feeling like you don't care about them and encourage them to look for validation from other sources. Too much control can lead them to feel like they have to lie and hide their activities in order to protect themselves. “A teen who is experienced at hiding their online life won’t come to you if they really get in trouble,” says Kamenetz.

Privacy is important, especially for older teens who are learning to become responsible adults. Unless they are exhibiting extreme behaviors, you may want to relax a little on the monitoring. An occasional check-in could be enough. After all, they do need to learn how to set limits on their own. When using a monitoring app, let them know that it is to do just that-- monitor. You won’t be looking into everything they do online, but reserve the right to check in once in a while to make sure everything is okay. “I think kids do need some private space to interact with peers,” says Conley. “And since this mostly takes place online these days, it may be useful for children’s development not to have their parents in all their accounts.” 

The Trouble with iPhones

While doing research on parental control apps, we ran across a number of complaints about apps that weren’t working well on iPhones and iPads. This isn’t the app's fault and you didn’t install it incorrectly. Problems began popping up with these apps when Apple introduced iOS12 with Screen Time controls in 2018. In fact, many parental control apps were removed from the App Store at this time. The app developers were told by Apple that they violated App Store guidelines. 

Basically, Apple removed apps that used Mobile Device Management (MDM) and Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) to implement browser, time usage, and website monitoring controls. Instead, Apple introduced its Screen Time feature to install parental controls on iPhones and iPads, providing the same services as many parental control apps. The removed apps were no longer supported on iPhones, so the apps’ performance suffered. More recently, Apple has relented somewhat and some parental control apps are once again available in the App Store. However, many customers are still experiencing difficulty with some of the monitoring features they offer.

If you do use an iPhone and want more control than Apple’s Screen Time offers, you can try combining it with another parental control app. You’ll have to experiment a little to see what combination of apps works best for you. Here’s where the free trial periods each app offers come in handy. Take advantage of them to test all the features of the app. If you’re not satisfied, you can always cancel. You won’t be charged during the trial period. However, remember to cancel before the trial period is up; otherwise, you will be charged either the monthly or yearly rate.

Parental Controls for Gaming Consoles

One of the biggest problems associated with children and online use is the amount of time kids spend playing games, which currently averages about an hour and half of gaming time per day. The apps mentioned here can monitor and block games on cell phones and computers, but what about game consoles? Fortunately, all the popular game consoles have integrated parental controls. And here’s a crazy thought: why not sit down and play games with your kids? You can keep tabs on what they’re doing while bonding with them at the same time.

Sony PlayStation

The Playstation comes with a complete set of controls that allow you to set restrictions for individual children. These restrictions include age levels for games, movies on Blu-ray and DVD, the use of PlayStation VR, communication with other players, the use of internet browser and more. Information can be found at the PlayStation Support site.

Xbox One

The Xbox One comes with parental controls integrated within the console. You can control the information people see about your child, limit online communication within the game, view status and gaming history, limit content and purchases, set age limits, block inappropriate games, and more. 

Nintendo Switch

The Nintendo Switch is the only gaming console that has its own parental control app in addition to its in-console controls. With the app, available through the App Store or Google Play, you can set daily time limits, suspend play if time limits are exceeded, choose from pre-set options or custom select games that can be played, limit sharing of in-game text and images, restrict the ability to post screenshots of the game to social media, and restrict the ability to purchase games.

Summary

Once you decide to use a parental control app, make sure your children understand why you feel the app is necessary and that those restrictions can be eased when certain conditions are met. Always let them know that you are there to help and support them no matter what. As Kamenetz points out, “A sane and balanced relationship to social media comes out of a broader healthy family dynamic where the family spends time together, values each others’ opinions and ideas, validates emotions and where a sense of love and self-worth is coming from inside the family and you’re ‘in real life’ community--not solely from online.”