6 Best Parental Control Apps

Parenting is a great experience, but it can also be an emotional roller coaster ride, especially when your little ones have just learned how to use a gadget. Fortunately, there is no shortage of tools to help you create a safe and healthy environment for them. And with the right apps in your arsenal, you can finally take that breath of relief and relax. Below are the 6 best parental control apps designed just for parents like you!

1. Google Family Link

Parental control software must often interact with the operating system to regulate and monitor your children’s online activity. Google Family, however, offers a unique approach that operates almost exclusively within the child’s Google account.

Google Family Link’s app management is fantastic. It lets you filter your child’s apps by time spent, name, or how recently they were installed. You can also set a time limit for any app you desire or even restrict it altogether by pressing on the hourglass next to its name. Definitely a must-have app on your Samsung phone!

2. Kaspersky Safe Kids

Kids these days are engaged on a variety of devices and platforms, which presents a challenge for parents who wish to monitor what their children are doing. While numerous parental-control apps are available, Kaspersky Safe Kids remains one of the most distinctive.

Kaspersky Safe Kids has many great features, such as content screening, app management, screen time limits, location monitoring, geofencing, and more. Besides that, they also have YouTube Protected Search and history supervision which are the features that you won’t always find in even the best parental control app. And, unlike the rest, Kaspersky Safe Kids is not only available for Android; it is also available for iOS, Windows, and Mac.

3. Norton Family

Norton Family has various features such as limiting screen time, banning improper online content, restricting app access, monitoring location, and receiving alerts when your kids arrive or depart from home and school. In addition, unlike other apps, Norton Family presents an image of the videos they watch on their cellphone as well as the description.

You can also set your own house rules with this app. The house rules govern what your children can and cannot do online. Once you have established a profile for your child, Norton Family will prompt you to select one of four restriction levels. Then, your level choice will be displayed in a list of online categories to designate as improper for your children’s age. Easy, right?

4. Bark

Bark is considered cheap, compared to the other parental control apps, but it accomplishes far more than the others. It offers features such as content monitoring, screen time limits and site filtering, which ensures parents’ complete visibility.

Bark is user-friendly app for parents and transcends all gadgets that children may use, providing alerts and notifications as needed. It is also compatible with Amazon Fire Kindles and Chromebooks. Bark provides a 7-day free trial, giving you plenty of time to decide. The prices are also affordable, ranging from $49 to $99 per year or around $5 to $14 per month.

5. Net Nanny

Parental controls can only be effective if they encompass all child’s gadgets and activities. Fortunately, Net Nanny has evolved beyond its internet-filter foundations and now includes features for blocking apps and limiting a child’s screen time. The company was purchased by Zift in 2016 and briefly changed its name before returning to the classic Net Nanny identity in May 2019.

Net Nanny scans sites as they are loaded onto a child’s device, instead of depending solely on blocklists. The basic fee is $39.99 per year; however, you can only monitor one desktop device, either macOS or Windows. If you wish to use it on more than five devices, the fee is $54.99 per year, and anything beyond that is $89.99 per year.

6. Qustodio

The one feature that sets Qustodio apart from other parental control apps is the ‘call and text tracking’ feature. Qustodio is available for Android, iOS, Amazon Fire tablets, Windows, and a Chromebook edition with two key features: screen time and browser filtering.

Qustodio’s pricing has stayed relatively consistent in recent years, with a basic free tier covering only a single device. You can also unlock all premium features by selecting one of three plans based onthe number of devices you need to safeguard. The basic 5-device premium plan costs only about $54.95 a year, which is in line with most of its competitors.

Given today’s internet culture, children are easily exposed to age-inappropriate content without even having to click anything. So, it is up to parents to take the necessary precautions to ensure that their children have a healthy internet relationship. Know that if you are not going to take action, then who will?