Parental Control Apps – Should You Use Them?
Trust your kid or control it via app – what do you think?!
“Trust is good, control is better!” as the old adage goes. Apparently that still holds true for many parents today. It’s not for nothing that the GPS tracker “Find my Kids” has already been installed over a million times on smartphones. And that alone only on Android devices. Other children’s apps such as “FamilyTime” were also developed to control children’s screen times etc.
It’s understandable that parents today are concerned about their kids and want to protect them. But should they be monitored directly via a control app? Here opinions differ considerably. Many are of the opinion that children only become more dependent and dependent on their parents through permanent monitoring.
In the event of a real emergency, it is then difficult for them to decide for themselves what to do. Sooner or later they have to go through life without their parents. Moreover, one can critically question whether their privacy is violated by control apps. Others are of the opinion that you should protect your children as long as possible. Even if you have to monitor them a bit with control apps from time to time.
Attention, control! What are the kids doing on their smartphones? Kids’ apps such as “Find my kids” should reveal this. This can be at the expense of privacy. The most extreme app in that field is Flexispy which has absolutely every surveillance feature you can imagine. This program even lets you intercept running phone calls. Read this in-depth review on Flexispy if you can’t believe it. So maybe you should think about not crossing certain borders that aren’t necessary in order to protect your child from dangers.
When Parents play Sherlock for Control
At Google Play, the children’s app “Find my Kids” is rated with 4.4 stars. This means: almost consistently positive feedback from various parents. The control app promises them that by using it they will have less to worry about their children if they don’t answer their mobile phone and their whereabouts are unknown. The following functions should help them in particular:
GPS positioning: This allows parents to see the child’s current location and all locations visited during the day. This is to prevent children from visiting dangerous places. Almost the same function is offered by the app “FamilyTime”. Here too, the child can be located. With the additional “Fetch-me-down” function, kids can even send their parents an exact location where they want to be picked up.
Sound Around: This allows the kids to be listened to. Possible dangers should be recognized in this way.
Application control: The application control shows which apps the kids have used, for example, at school. With “FamilyTime”, even unsafe content for adults can be filtered and blocked on the kids’ iOS devices. In addition, certain apps, such as WhatsApp, Facebook, etc., as well as all Internet access can be blocked with one click.
Security check: This allows parents to check whether their children have arrived at school or at a friend’s house on time.
Battery control: reminds kids to charge their smartphone in time.
Family chat: The chat can be used to send messages with funny stickers and emojis, similar to WhatsApp.
Compliments: If the child behaves in an exemplary manner, it can be rewarded with hearts.
With the gadget “Screen Time”, “FamilyTime” is definitely one step ahead of the control app “Find my Kids”. The function allows parents to set the children’s screen time. Whether it’s for homework, dinner or bedtime, parents can specify when the phone is idle.
To use all these functions, the children’s app must be installed on both the parents’ smartphone and the kids’ smartphone. Access to the camera, location and microphone must of course be allowed from both phones. The app then runs continuously in the background in power-saving mode. If you are considering using such an app for the control or safety of your children, you should get permission from them beforehand and consider the privacy issue.
It is important to clarify which control and safety features are okay for your child and which are not. Even though kids need more protection than adults, they should still enjoy privacy. After all, we have all been in situations where we would rather not have mum and dad around ;).
