Apps to Keep Your Kids Safe While on Their Mobile Device

It used to be that we didn’t get phones till we were at least in our teens. Many of us didn’t get tablets till we were adults. This generation, however, was born holding a mobile device of some sort in their hands. Kids as young as three years old go online by themselves!

While this may be convenient for parents – it seems that iPads and iPhones are excellent babysitters – the dangers of being connected cannot be ignored. Not only are there unscrupulous individuals potentially waiting to prey on your kids, but the content they consume is also potentially harmful. Even older children – teens – are not exempt.

What can you do to ensure that your kids are safe while on their mobile device? Using apps it is possible to monitor WhatsApp messages and other social media messages.. Here are some apps you can take a look at and use to keep your kids safe online.

Use these apps to keep your kids safe

1. Familytime

FamilyTime is an excellent app to monitor and control your kids’ mobile phone and tablet usage. It is highly lauded by users due to its powerful features, which include location, phone logs, app blocking, geo-fencing, and internet usage. Additionally, there is an emergency feature (panic alerts) which enables your kids to get in touch with you instantly in case they are in trouble.

Packages start at $1.15/month (Unlimited parent devices, 5 child devices).

2. SMS Spy

SMS has made communication easier but it has also opened up a whole new can of worms. While parents ought to respect their children’s privacy, there is also a need to monitor who and what they communicate with via SMS. This app will allow you to do just that. The great thing about the app is that it’s not limited to a single messaging platform. It can monitor various messaging apps, such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger.

3. SPIN Safe Browser

The internet is chockful of information – some useful, some not so much, others totally inappropriate for children. For TV and movies, it is easier to monitor what our children watch, but when they go online, it is a whole new game. Without any parental control, children can be exposed to all sorts of content.

SPIN gives parents a helping hand when it comes to controlling what children view through their internet browser. It is a full-featured browser which blocks porn and keeps “Bing, Google and Yahoo web and image searches safe with enforced Strict Safe Search filters.”

Some of its default filters include:

• Prone to Porn
• Pornography
• Nudity
• Unfiltered Search Engines
• Proxy & VPN
• Drugs
• Alcohol & Tobacco
• Gambling
• YouTube (many videos with mature content exist)

4. Net Nanny

NetNanny “allows the good, keeps out the bad”.

Another monitoring and parental control app, NetNanny has the following features:

• Time management
• Alerts & reporting
• Internet filter (18 categories)
• Profanity masking
• Remote administration
• Pornography blocking
• Social media monitoring
• User profiles and settings

No doubt, profanity masking and social media monitoring are two of the most important features NetNanny offers.

Note: New users will be offered an in-app purchase of Net Nanny Family Protection Pass for $59.99 for 1 year of access. This one-time purchase will appear on your iTunes account and will give you access to use all the Net Nanny Family Protection Pass features on up to 5 of your families devices for 1 full year.

These are only a handful of apps that can help make sure your kids are safe while on their mobile device. While you have to pay for them, you can’t really put a price on peace of mind, can you?