Experience with parental control apps for Android
I'm looking for input from the Tildes community about experiences with Android parental controls apps. My daughter is 8, but she rides the bus, so we want to make sure she has ways to contact us if something happens.
Other than that use case, I intend to limit her to offline content (audiobooks and music loaded directly on the phone) and some games.
The platform for this is an older phone (Android 9). I'm not averse to buying a newer phone if that makes the solutions workable, but I wanted to start with the "free" option.
I've installed Google Family Link on the phone. It does a nice job of restricting access to apps, setting time limits on individual apps, and filtering some content. The major limitation seems to be there's no way to restrict what numbers the phone can text or call with.
Bark seems to be the most visible alternative, and adds a lot of features for content monitoring social media, which is not really our use case. The main thing I'm looking for is an app that would let me administer the calling and texting features of the phone. I'm not opposed to paying for a service if that's what's needed.
Anybody have insights into tools? There's a ton of noise in the search results. Other solutions to the problem?
I use Google Family Link for parental controls on my daughter's phone. It's great, but you're right, it doesn't have any way to restrict what numbers she is able to contact.
As I recall from the research I did before, you would have to have your service provider restrict it on their end.
Thanks for sharing your experience. It's good to know I am not missing something with Family Link.
I use bitdefender. They offer a 10 device license for their premium suite that includes antivirus, VPN, and parental controls. I think I pay around $130/year.
The controls are pretty good, if a little clunky at times. The parental control on the Android phone let's me see the location of the device on Google maps, see phone calls, texts, and apps, app usage, and block or allow apps, and content and site filtering. It also lets me set screen time limits.
On the device itself, it has a check in feature so if your kids is headed somewhere they can push a button in the app when they get where they are going and it will send a push alert to your phone.
I wouldn't pay just for the parental controls, but the overall suite of licenses makes it worthwhile to me. It also lets me manage his computer and phone usage from one interface, which is nice.
I setup ManageEngine MDM and use that. My kids are younger so the key is restricting apps. I've got it in "kiosk" mode but it's an enterprise solution so it's got quite a bit of customization. It's free up to like, 25 devices I wanna say. I don't know if you can restrict which numbers can be called but should be on your list!
This doesn't help your specific question... But I was looking at a dumb phone for my oldest.
Still has Google maps, but an old person flip phone, with Google assistant to use your voice to input texting and a crappy camera.
Not a lot of trouble they can get into with that.... Except I don't think there's a restrict number solution...
Yup, that was the conclusion that I reached -- no parental controls on the dumb phones. The Nokia phones that run KaiOS seem to have a nice (and fairly limited) set of apps. But no parental controls, and no way to do location tracking.
My friend used the Gizmo watch from Verizon. I'm sure there are others. It's fairly cheap and lets you set up to 20 people that they can text and call. Also gives you their location. Not sure if there are apps/games though.
I looked at the Gizmo watch, but it's too bulky for her to wear. But thank you for the suggestion!
Just to follow up with what I decided to try: I had already set the phone up with Google Family Link, and I decided to add MMGuardian (partly based on these reviews), which has tools to block calls and texts. It turns out there's a fundamental limitation on Android 9 (not older or newer versions, just 9) that you can't manage, track or block calls.
We're going to trial this on our existing phone for a while and then probably buy a phone with a newer android version and that is being updated.
There's a lot of overlap between the app management provided by MMGuardian and Google Family Link -- I have both on there now, but am letting Family link do the time and app management for now, and mainly using MMGuardian to block/manage texts.