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Is There Such A Thing As A Kid Cell Phone With Restrictions

Written By Sunday, 2 October 2022 Add Comment Edit

As a longtime engineering science journalist, I have reported on smartphones, parenting apps, and other tech trends for the San Francisco Chronicle, CNBC.com, and other publications. As a parent of a 10-year-old whose friends already own smartwatches and smartphones, the question of whether I should give her a phone—and which one—is a personal one that I am securely invested in.

This guide is for parents who are thinking about giving a child of elementary schoolhouse age or older their own smartphone, and for parents who would like to manage the phone their kid already has more closely.

When should a child get a cell phone?

By age viii, 16 pct of kids have a cell phone with a service plan, co-ordinate to a Nielsen written report published concluding year that surveyed nearly iv,700 parents with kids ages 6 to 12. Past historic period 10 to 12, near half of kids have a cell phone with a service programme. Asked why, ninety percent of parents said they wanted to get ahold of their child hands; 80 percent said they besides wanted to be able to rails their child's location.

Giving kids their own phones tin can obviously make family communication and coordination easier. But doing so is a difficult choice for many parents. Tweens and teens are spending increasing amounts of time using a screen—as much equally half dozen½ hours a day, according to Common Sense Media—and having a smartphone means that a screen is all the more than accessible and tempting. Concerned nearly the impact that smartphones tin can have on sleep, mental health, and bullying, groups of parents take pledged to "wait until 8th." Some families in Silicon Valley particularly are as well but trying to avoid whatsoever kind of screen time for their children for as long as they tin can. Some affluent communities are fifty-fifty pushing back at schools to discourage the utilize of screens in the classroom.

What's the right age for a smartphone? The simple answer is that there isn't one. When you lot give your kid a cell phone depends on your family, your needs, and your kid'due south readiness. Dr. Megan Moreno, a pediatrician and pb author of the AAP'south policy argument on kids and media use, suggests that parents brainstorm past asking themselves if their child truly needs a telephone even so, because going dorsum is hard. "Handing over a phone is a watershed outcome for kids," she said. "Once they take a phone, they won't ever not have a telephone."

Parental controls tin aid parents navigate their child's outset experience with owning a smartphone. Parents tin use them to set time limits and enforce them automatically, without constant nagging.

Experts recommend keeping in mind iii basic guidelines:

Set clear rules. Cell telephone users ages viii to 12 are peculiarly eager to please their parents, said Moreno. "We constitute that kids really want to interact with parents well-nigh rules and what they are supposed to practise," she said. "They are hungry to have that conversation." Teenagers need concrete rules, too. Determine, for instance, how much time they should be permitted to spend on the telephone on weekdays and weekends, specially on social networking, amusement, and games. Curb screen time at nighttime when kids need sleep. One recent written report of 8- to 11-yr-old kids constitute that those who were active for at to the lowest degree sixty minutes a day, slept nine to 11 hours each night, and spent no more than two hours a twenty-four hours on recreational screen fourth dimension scored higher in language, planning, and other mental task tests than kids who met none of the three criteria.

Designate screen-complimentary times and/or screen-free zones. Recognizing that not all screen time is equal—students may need to text their friends virtually a homework assignment, or use an educational app to written report—the AAP has moved away from recommending specific restrictions on the amount of time kids spend on screens. Rather, it recommends that parents designate screen-free times, such every bit during dinner or in the car, and, if possible, screen-free zones, such equally in the bedchamber. Importantly, parents, as role models, should follow this guideline, likewise.

Continue the conversation going. Parental controls are non a substitute for talking to your kids about technology—nor are they possible to "fix and forget." But parental controls do provide an entry point to discussing how and why to apply a phone. For example, some parental controls provide reports that break down how your child is spending time on their phone, which tin be a starting bespeak for a conversation.

The New York Times, Wirecutter'south parent company, offers a guide on how and when to limit kids' tech utilise, from infants to teens. The American Academy of Pediatrics provides a tool to create a family media program, including a estimator that determines how much time a child should exist allowed to spend on screen time, balancing it against the amount of sleep and agile time a kid needs. Common Sense Media answers commonly asked questions virtually screen time, researches how children are using applied science, and gives parents tips and advice on good for you technology use.

What kind of parental controls practise you need?

The parental-controls market place is a large and open up-ended i: Some specialize in blocking pornography and other inappropriate content, others claim to monitor social media for cyberbullying. Under pressure from parents and shareholders, as well as a digital-addiction awareness movement among Silicon Valley movers and shakers, both Google and Apple have recently rolled out free parental controls. (Apple, for its part, has said that it began developing Screen Time before the letter of the alphabet from shareholders).

Christine Elgersma, a senior editor at Mutual Sense Media, recommends that parents offset with the to the lowest degree invasive controls. Though parents naturally accept the urge to proceed their kids rubber, they too have to give their kids room to brand mistakes and effigy things out on their own. "It's how they larn," she said. Some experts also warn that heavy surveillance could undermine your relationship with your child. Anya Kamenetz, writer of The Art of Screen Time: How Your Family Can Remainder Digital Media and Real Life, suggests thinking of parental controls equally scaffolding that can help kids develop self-control so that they can somewhen manage how they apply their phone on their own. "You lot're non going to be twiddling with the knobs [on parental controls] when your child is in college," Kamantez said.

Plus, even if you install the tightest parental controls, kids can circumvent them—for instance, but past borrowing their friend'southward phone. Kids are resourceful—just ask this dad, whose 7-twelvemonth-one-time figured out a loophole to bypass his iPhone'south app time limit almost instantly.

What nearly flip phones, smartwatches, and other parental controls?

In lieu of a smartphone, some parents have opted to purchase simpler phones—commonly called feature phones or "dumb phones"—or smartwatches, such as Verizon Wireless'due south GizmoWatch, which tracks the kid'south location and allows the child to telephone call or text upwardly to x designated people. These devices have been recommended by the organization Expect Until 8th equally a beginner step to owning a prison cell phone, and we programme to review them in a future guide. But we expect that equally parents upgrade to new phones, they volition exist inclined to pass down their old ones. Smartphones too have some advantages: Parents tin can rail their child's location, while kids can utilise it to take pictures, look up directions, and utilize study apps.

In addition, some parents accept turned to hardware at dwelling house to manage their child'due south screen time, such equally Disney'southward Circle, which limits admission through your Wi-Fi router. Although Circle does offer a way to keep track of your child'south phone outside your home, it is an extension of Circumvolve's home production, so nosotros did not to test it for this guide. Our picks for Wi-Fi router and Wi-Fi mesh networking kit both include Circumvolve functionality.

Based on our research and interviews with experts, we determined that parental controls need to include three cardinal features:

  • Power to manage and monitor a child's device hands: Parents should exist able to change settings, receive notifications, and view usage remotely, ideally through a mobile app with an easy-to-use interface.
  • Ability to cap a kid's daily screen time: The best parental controls allow you to set time limits on individual apps, categories of apps, and general device apply, and requite you the flexibility to instantly block or permit admission to an app or the device with ane bear upon (or at the request of the child). Most, however, provide only a subset of these capabilities.
  • Power to set a schedule that automatically blocks phone apply: Parents should exist able to assign at least one time menses—bedtime, for example—when telephone functionality is disabled. The ability to make multiple schedules is a bonus.

Additional features that we feel are useful merely did not weigh every bit heavily:

  • Web and content filtering: All of the apps and parental-control options we considered offer some sort of filtering, some by age and content ratings, and others past categories such as pornography, violence, or other inappropriate and developed content. We did not extensively test how well the filters worked, except to note if they were hands bypassed. The reality is that most filters are far from perfect, every bit they don't catch everything and kids can notice ways to bypass them.
  • Location tracking: Because other apps on both iOS and Android devices can runway the location of another telephone, this feature is convenient, but lack of it was not a dealbreaker.
  • Usage information and assay: Existence able to see which apps their kid is using and for how long tin can be useful for parents, but may be an unnecessary level of detail for some.

Because we meet parental controls as a starting indicate for managing your child's kickoff smartphone, we did non test or seek out more invasive features such as text message, electronic mail, or social media monitoring.

To determine our finalists, we surveyed parents and studied recent reviews and reports on parental controls. We narrowed the list down to:

To test the parental controls, we installed them on an iPhone 6 and/or our 2018 option for the best budget Android telephone, the Nokia half dozen.ane. Because many kids finish up with their parent'due south older phone subsequently their parent upgrades, or with an cheap new phone, we wanted to see if the parental controls could be used on older and cheaper phones. I used an iPhone 10 as the parent phone.

We spent nearly 30 hours installing and examining the parental controls one at a time. We set daily caps and bedtime schedules on the phones, and handed them over to our kids to see if they worked. Nosotros tested the apps' ability to block pop apps such equally YouTube Kids, as well every bit less popular kids apps, such every bit Hatch and Pululu, digital pet apps that can run offline.

We too spent time looking at how the parental controls managed Spider web searches, text messaging, telephone calls, location tracking, and the power to download or delete apps. Two Wirecutter staffers besides tested the picks using an iPhone XS, iPad Air ii, Google Pixel 1, and Samsung Galaxy S9. We did not test on an Android tablet because our preferred budget alternative to the iPad is the Amazon Fire HD 8 Kids Edition, which has good born parental controls.

A person using an iPhone with the Screen Time app screen open.

Photo: Kyle Fitzgerald

Our choice

Apple Screen Time

Best for iOS users

The controls built into iOS 12 let y'all set a daily time limit on app and/or device use and give you more data nearly and command over your kid'southward screen fourth dimension than 3rd-party apps can.

At present that Screen Fourth dimension is part of Apple's iOS 12, it's difficult to run into a reason to pay for additional parental controls for a child'due south iOS device. In addition to being free to users of compatible devices, no other software for the iPhone or iPad offers parents the same window into their child's screen fourth dimension habits—or is equally effective a style for parents to customize how they desire to manage information technology—considering it is so tightly integrated with the operating system itself. We found that third-party parental controls we tested for a child'southward iPhone or iPad simply did not compare with what Apple tree'due south Screen Time can do.

As with other parental controls, Screen Time lets parents fix a daily limit on the amount of time their kid tin spend on their iPhone, as well as automatically shut the telephone down at bedtime. But dissimilar third-party iOS apps like Qustodio and unGlue for the iPhone, Screen Time provides parents with a deeper expect at how their kid is using their device, by showing how much time their kid spends on social networking or entertainment apps. Compared with tertiary-political party apps, Screen Time also gives parents the near flexibility to manage how much fourth dimension their child spends on sure kinds of apps; for instance, parents tin let their child to read ebooks for every bit long every bit they want, block all games, and limit social networking to an hour a 24-hour interval.

With Apple Screen Fourth dimension, you can set time limits for usage by app category (left) also as content or ratings restrictions (right).

Screen Fourth dimension is already part of iOS; you can enable information technology in the iPhone's settings. Kids will first need their own Apple tree ID, and yous will demand to plough on Family Sharing on your phone and your child's if you desire to manage your kid'south telephone remotely. In one case the parent'due south and child's iPhones are linked, the child'south profile will appear as a tab inside the parent's Screen Time. Inside the child'southward contour, parents tin manage the child'southward daily access to the iPhone, including:

Daily allowance: Under "app limits," parents can cap how much fourth dimension—by minute and/or hr increments, up to 24 hours, and by day of the calendar week—their child spends on the iPhone overall or by category of app. Screen Time groups apps into ix categories, including entertainment, games, social networking, teaching, and productivity. Once their kid reaches the limit, the apps are blocked and the child must asking boosted fourth dimension from the parent. In addition, parents can limit how much time their kid spends on individual apps each day. To do and then, click on the daily screen time report, scroll down to "Most used," tap on "Bear witness apps & websites" if information technology's set to "Prove categories," click on the particular app you lot want to manage, and set an individual time limit.

Bedtime: Chosen "Downtime," parents can set up a schedule for the iPhone to be disabled automatically, such as offset at bedtime and lifting the next forenoon. All of the telephone'southward apps—except those set up as Always Permit—will darken, requiring parental permission for access. Kids can ship a request to their parents, which pops upwardly as a notification on the parent's phone; parents can grant or deny the asking remotely or manually enter the screen time password on their kid'due south phone to allow additional time. Phone calls can nevertheless be made during Reanimation, and the clock can also nevertheless exist accessed.

Reports: Parents can monitor their kid'southward screen habits daily with a colorful bar chart that breaks down how much time their kid spends on each app category and a listing of the private apps that they're spending the near time using. Parents can too rail their own screen habits (Screen Time is automatically included in iOS 12; you can plough it off if you prefer not to track your personal iPhone use). This feature can be a starting point for parents to talk to their kids about how best to use their phone—and when to put information technology downwards. The data that Screen Time collects is saved to your phone and your kid's telephone and is not shared with Apple.

Inside Screen Time, parents can also manage the content that their kid can access. For example, they can prevent the child from downloading new apps or making in-app purchases, or allow it. They can also block the child from adult websites, as well equally set age restrictions for content from music, videos, and books.

The New York Times (Wirecutter's parent company) tested Screen Time with a xiv-year-old girl for iii weeks, and managed to cut her iPhone use by half, from six hours a twenty-four hour period during the kickoff week to almost three hours a 24-hour interval past the third week. "These early results should be welcome news to people who are growing increasingly concerned about long-term addiction to smartphones," Brian Ten. Chen concluded in his review. "In that location take been other ways to limit use, including apps like Moment, which take many of the aforementioned features as Screen Time. But none of them have been embedded into a telephone like Apple's new software."

Screen Time has plenty of room to ameliorate. One of the master complaints from users is the difficulty of setting it up, which isn't equally intuitive as it should exist—other parental controls, for case, simply require you to download an app on the kid's phone and sign into your account. Geoffrey A. Fowler, a columnist for The Washington Mail, complained that this was just one of also many decisions that a parent must make with this new feature of iOS 12. On the ane hand, it allows parents to customize Screen Time for their child, simply at the same time, "Apple treats parents like IT administrators for their kids, saddled with a zillion choices to make and knobs to adjust," he writes in his review.

Although apps like Qustodio provide guidance during installation, with Screen Time, you take to look up any kind of instruction. I seemingly went about it astern: I created my child's new Apple tree ID before I gear up Family Sharing, and was confused near how to connect our phones; it is easier if Family Sharing is already turned on in your telephone.

Finding sure data—similar how specific apps are categorized—involves also many clicks. You lot must tap on the report of daily screen time use, curl down to "About used," and click on "Show apps & websites" if it's gear up to "Show categories." Information technology'south also not obvious how to set time limits by individual app, but, as described above, parents tin can do that by looking at private app usage in the daily screen time written report.

Screen Time too doesn't have an easy "on/off" switch to completely disable a child'due south admission to their phone. Other parental-control apps, including Google Family Link and Qustodio, have a "lock/unlock" or "cake/unblock" button that you lot can tap to block your child's access to the telephone at any moment. On the iPhone, this requires an actress step for parents, and later on they'll accept to become back and reset the original Reanimation schedule.

A recent test of Apple'southward content filters also establish that they blocked longtime sexual practice education websites, but allowed racist and questionable websites to appear in Web searches. We presume that Apple volition continue to fine-tune its content filters, and acknowledge that filters, in general, tin can't catch everything.

Parents should also know that the default setting for the iPhone's restrictions for iTunes music, movies, and television shows—fifty-fifty though it recognizes that the iPhone belongs to a child—are explicit and NC-17. Parents must go in and manually change the restrictions if they want them to be more than age appropriate. (Also annotation that the filters apply only to the Safari browser and iTunes content. Parents still need to check the content filters on individual apps; for instance, in the Netflix app, parents need to designate that it is for kids just.)

If parents desire to track their kid'south location, they tin can't exercise then with Screen Time, only they can locate their child with Apple's Observe my Friends app, which they take to set separately.

Because it is part of iOS 12, Screen Fourth dimension can run only on iPhone 5s models or newer. If you accept an older iPhone, y'all tin can still gear up some parental controls, such equally requiring permission to download a new app, simply you won't be able to track and manage your child'south screen apply in the same way. This is a disappointment because many older iPhones can still exist used, including iPhones that are more five years old.

Finally, kids have already found ways to get around some aspects of Screen Time, such every bit i child sending YouTube links to himself on iMessage, and watching them after his entertainment fourth dimension limit was upward.

One time your kid turns xiii, they can opt out of Family Link. The reasoning, Google says, is that kids are allowed to sign upward for their own account on Google one time they turn 13. (Likewise, 13 is the age when kids are allowed to sign upwards for Facebook, Instagram, and other sites, per the Child'southward Online Privacy Protection Rule.) Google's approach doesn't make sense, said the New York Times'south Brian X. Chen in a 2017 review. "I would argue that Google should design a policy with parents' all-time interests in mind. It could permit the parent decide when the child has demonstrated safe, responsible smartphone use and graduate from all restrictions. That might happen when the child turns 13, 15 or even 17. Simply the children should not be immune to strip away settings just because they turn 13."

In a statement, Google said:

Our approach is to give parents and kids transparency, and encourage a family conversation around this moment. Nosotros send emails to parents and teenshoped-for offset a calendar month earlier the kid'due south 13th birthday. Those emails inform both the parent and kid of some of the changes that will have issue if the kid decides to graduate. For example, the parent will no longer be able to use Family Link to manage the child'south account, and features similar screen fourth dimension limits, location sharing to parent, and bedtime settings will no longer work. This is something we proceed to get feedback on and will continue to consider the best approach.

A person using an Android phone with the Qustodio app open on the screen.

Photo: Kyle Fitzgerald

Our pick

Qustodio

For kids on Android who are over xiii

The premium version of this app provides the greatest level of detail about your kid's phone usage of the Android options we tested. It allows y'all to set up time limits besides every bit multiple schedules, block calls, and view text messages and Web searches.

Buying Options

If your child is 13 or older and uses an Android phone, the paid version of Qustodio is your best bet. The lowest-tier almanac subscription ($55 at the fourth dimension of publication) covers up to five devices (the middle tier offers ten, the highest tier xv). Discounts are oft offered on its website. Like Google Family Link, Qustodio is an app that parents download on their iPhone or Android phone, as well as on their kid's Android phone. Unlike with Google Family Link, you employ the aforementioned email account to set upwards the app on both devices.

Qustodio offers the well-nigh features and flexibility among the third-political party parental-control apps nosotros tested. The paid version allows yous to set multiple schedules, limit overall phone use and specific app use, and block phone and app use. It as well gives a much more than detailed breakdown of your kid's phone apply than Google Family unit Link and allows you to monitor texts, emails, and Facebook activeness. Go on in mind, though, that many experts warn that this level of monitoring is non actually adept for kids.

Qustodio too offers a free version, which tin can be used on one device. With it, parents can set a schedule and determine how much time—by 15-infinitesimal increments, and up to 24 hours—their child spends on the telephone daily. The free version also includes reports for parents, as well as the Spider web filter, but petty else.

The paid version offers more insight and management tools. Qustodio is ane of the few apps we tested that allow parents to set more than one schedule, an reward over Google Family Link. On a grid, parents can block out the hours they want to shut off access to the phone, such every bit bedtime, during dinner or while the child is at school.

In addition, the paid version of Qustodio allows parents to cap how much fourth dimension their child spends on individual apps in 15-minute increments—going a step further than simply blocking individual apps, like Google Family Link. Equally with Google Family Link, parents can also turn off access to the phone with a unmarried tap. The paid version besides provides parents with greater access to their kid's communications than our other picks do: they can view their kid's Spider web searches, read their text messages, cake calls to and from specific phone numbers, and monitor their kid's Facebook activity (a feature that we did not test; it requires the kid to authorize Qustodio'south plug-in). The parent's feed logs any and all activity on the kid'south phone.

Qustodio allows you to schedule fourth dimension limits, logs all of your kid'southward telephone activeness to the parent feed, and lets you lock Web navigation or the phone with one tap.

Like other parental controls, Qustodio aims to filter adult content, including by categories such as weapons, drugs, and booze. Nosotros did non examination the filters extensively; in a quick search, we did find that we were blocked from purchasing whiskey, getting data on gummy edibles, and logging into dating sites such as Tinder and Scruff. Nosotros were, yet, able to discover gun stores online and nearby. Qustodio lets parents know the keywords of a child's Spider web search and if it was blocked. This information—forth with the amount of time the child is spending on the phone and on which apps—can be sent to parents in a daily email report or viewed as a news feed in the parent's app. Qustodio has a lengthy privacy policy on how it collects, uses, and stores your information, acknowledging that information technology may anonymize personal information for research or statistical purposes.

In a 2018 review of parental controls, Qustodio was PC Mag'south acme option because it "boasts but about every feature you might desire, including web content filtering, robust app blocking, and a detailed activity log" and it "lets parents take precise command over their child's action across desktop and mobile devices." Of notation, PC Magazine tested Qustodio's Spider web filters and found that they were effective in blocking inappropriate content.

One feature that Qustodio lacks is the ability to block the apps that your child can download, which Google Family unit Link tin do through its Google Play Store and Apple tree through its iTunes Apps Shop. Qustodio does alert parents well-nigh new apps that their kid downloads (which they can and so block access to). Parents should also check any apps that accept already been downloaded on their child's smartphone before they start using Qustodio, equally the service can cake them or limit fourth dimension on them but tin can't manage purchases or any activity done within a third-party app.

Although Qustodio offers the ability to track the location of the kid'due south telephone equally part of its paid version, doing and then is neither as reliable nor every bit straightforward as it is on Google Family unit Link. On Android phones, parents must plan the app to check the location of their kid's phone at regular intervals, the shortest being every v minutes. The near electric current location is displayed in a line on the app, above the parent news feed. Notwithstanding instead of showing the location on a map, as Google Family Link does, it simply lists the address. The problem is, Qustodio seems to have a hard time identifying the actual address. Several times, instead of an address, it just said "location unknown"; I had to click through to a map to pinpoint the approximate location. I likewise found that though I asked Qustodio to check the kid phone's location every five minutes, it didn't seem able to do and so; not all of the places that the phone visited were recorded by the app.

Finally, Qustodio is a skilful pick only for kids with Android phones. On the iPhone, the paid version of Qustodio is more limited: Although it can block a particular set of popular kids apps, such every bit Fortnite and YouTube, it cannot place all apps on the iPhone. When our kids were playing Hatch, a digital pet game on the iPhone, for example, information technology could not end them from playing it when time was up. The only way to cease our kid from playing by using parental controls was to block access to the entire phone manually. Qustodio has a list of all of the apps it can monitor on the iPhone: as of this review, there are only nigh 70. On the iPhone, Qustodio also repeatedly and inaccurately claimed that our child was visiting Amazon; Qustodio notes that its feed reports some third-party advertisements or content. And considering of Apple tree's restrictions, not all of Qustodio'south features are available for kids on iPhones: Qustodio, for example, tin monitor text letters and phone calls just on Android phones. "If you are an Apple tree iOS user, practice not buy the premium version," cautioned a reviewer in the iTunes App Store, giving it simply ane star. "Information technology does not offer any further functionality than the free version… The app itself besides yielded very strange and confusing reports. It kept reporting that my kid was using Facebook when the app is non fifty-fifty installed on his device. Deleting this 1 for good."

If your child uses an iPhone, and you utilise an Android telephone, our picks may not work well for you. That's because of the challenges of developing a parental-control app for the iPhone, which must exist canonical by Apple tree earlier it is offered in the iTunes App Store.

Ane popular option amongst parents we surveyed is OurPact, which used to run on both Android and iOS phones. Equally of Apr 2019 it runs just on Android phones, due to a move by Apple to purge screen-time tracker competitors from its App Shop or restrict their capabilities. OurPact offers 3 tiers: The basic tier is gratis, but limited in telescopic. Y'all can apply it to only ane child'southward device and information technology has the ability to create merely ane schedule; parents tin can essentially only limit their kid'due south screen fourth dimension at bedtime and not much more. The Plus tier offers unlimited ability to block access to the phone, simply ane parent we spoke with said her 13-twelvemonth-erstwhile daughter, on her iPhone 8 (before the app was removed from Apple tree's App Store), bypassed it within weeks. The Premium tier offers the most flexibility and control for parents.

With the Plus and Premium tiers, parents tin can create more than than one schedule. They can limit access to the smartphone at dark, likewise equally during dinnertime or other times. With the Premier tier, parents tin can as well cake or allow specific apps, like with Google Family unit Link and Qustodio, as well as track the location of their kid's phone.

OurPact has one main drawback: Dissimilar our picks, OurPact offers no information or analytics on a child'southward screen habits. Parents cannot see how their child uses their smartphone, such as if their kid is spending an inordinate amount of fourth dimension on gaming.

Similar to OurPact, unGlue is a subscription-based parental control app that operates on both the iOS and Android platforms. More than expensive than OurPact, unGlue stands out in that it allows kids to earn and save screen time in a "piggy depository financial institution" by completing chores or walking a certain number of steps, which may work better for some kids than others. unGlue also lumps all apps into "entertainment"; you tin't tell which apps are included under that umbrella or encounter the individual apps that your child is spending the most time on. On a child's iPhone, unGlue also isn't able to rail apps that don't crave the Internet, such as Angry Birds.

We dismissed both Norton Family and Net Nanny because they were cumbersome to set up, with express results. Norton does not offering an iOS app for parents, only a mobile-friendly website. Net Nanny'due south iOS parent app isn't an app at all, simply merely a protected Web browser. Considering parents are busy and manage so much of their lives (and their children's lives) from their smartphone, the lack of a parent app was a dealbreaker for us.

With both Norton Family and Cyberspace Nanny, the software requires parents to disable the phone's browser in lieu of their proprietary Web browser. Therefore, you would expect the browser to offering superior content filtering. On the plus side, both Norton Family unit and Net Nanny blocked access to adult content, likewise as potentially unsafe topics for kids such as suicide, something the filters for Apple tree and Google did non do. On Net Nanny, withal, we were able to stumble into a 4chan lath with inappropriate content for kids inside minutes; and though Internet Nanny claims to be able to mask explicit language, none of it was blocked out.

Although both Norton Family and Net Nanny received positive reviews from PC Mag, they are rated poorly in the Google Play Store and iTunes App Store. And though many of the poor reviews come from disgruntled children, one parent complained virtually Norton: "This app is an absolute joke. Child is txting away at school every bit I write this; while her phone is supposedly locked. Can not alter any settings thru the parent side of things using parent phone- must be done from a computer. Available options leave much to be desired."

  1. Christine Elgersma, senior editor, Common Sense Media, telephone interview , September xiii, 2018

  2. Anya Kamenetz, author of The Art of Screen Time: How Your Family unit Tin Balance Digital Media and Real Life, phone interview , September 17, 2018

  3. Megan Moreno, Dr., pediatrician and pb author of the American Academy of Pediatrics's policy statement on kids and media apply, phone interview , Oct 2, 2018

Is There Such A Thing As A Kid Cell Phone With Restrictions,

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/best-apps-to-manage-your-kids-phone/

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