How iPhone Parental Control Apps Keep Kids Safe

By giving children access to gadgets from a very young age, parents have the opportunity to set up parental controls on them and introduce certain restrictions related to privacy and screen time. However, children learn on the fly, and soon, such methods will no longer provide sufficient online safety. Many parents are beginning to ponder what the benefits of an iPhone parental control app could be.

Challenges of Raising Kids in the 21st Century

On the face of it, mobile gadgets only add to a child’s safety – you can give them a call at any time, or rest assured that they contact you by voice or chat if needed. But as we know, modern children and teenagers mainly use gadgets to access the Internet, which is bidirectional – just as your child can reach out there for information or communication, so do strangers of all stripes and with any intentions.

It is very challenging for parents to control these processes because the child may perceive this as parents poking their noses into their affairs and withhold or delete call logs, browser entries, content, etc. According to statistics, only 25% of children tell their parents about being approached by predators online. At the same time, they are faced with such inappropriate behavior of cyber perpetrators as:

• non-consensual sexting
• image-based sexual abuse
• threatened sharing
• unwanted sexual talk, etc.

Using the parental control app for iPhone or Android, parents certainly obtain more options to keep track of their children and their activities.

Free Parental Controls Available on iOS

The Apple ecosystem offers ample opportunities to connect, manage, and monitor connected devices absolutely free. By setting up the built-in features, parents can make it easier for their child to get acquainted with the Internet and not worry about excessive content consumption and more.

“More” refers to location tracking, for instance. Every iPhone comes with the Find My app, which allows the device owner to share their location with others from a trusted circle. To do this, you need:

1. Open Find My on your device and click on People.
2. Click Start Sharing Location.
3. In addition, you can add items that need to be tracked in the Devices section.

Besides, families can use the Family Sharing feature, which allows them to use certain services together, approve or reject a child’s purchases, limit their time on the gadget, find, send a signal, or remotely block lost devices.

Depending on the child’s age, parents may want to take advantage of the free option to determine which websites they can open instead of looking for a free parental control app for iPhone. For this:

1. Go to Settings > Screen Time > Content & Privacy Restrictions.
2. Activate Content & Privacy Restrictions and click Content Restrictions. Then select Web Content and suggested websites from the list or manually add the URL.
3. You can also check Limit Adult Websites and create a Never Allow list.

If you are concerned that your child is constantly playing games or scrolling social networks, you can limit the time spent on these applications separately. To do this:

1. Open Settings, Screen Time, and App Limits.
2. Here, you may select apps, categories, or websites to limit and the total time limit for them.

Advanced Parental Control Apps for iPhone and Their Specifics

Despite their proven usefulness, the built-in functionality of mobile devices often turns out to be insufficient in some instances. Firstly, these settings can be easily deactivated by a more or less tech-savvy kid (which most of them are nowadays), and secondly, they were not specifically designed or include all the features that may be important to concerned parents.

Parents interested in the best parental control app for iPhone, a real game-changer that would regularly update them with information about their child’s activity and would not be so easily identifiable to them on their gadget, often turn to the services of paid online monitoring applications. Some people frown at the mention of this option – they find it too difficult to configure. But this is not the case, especially because this will require only one detail: iCloud details of the child’s device, which you, as a parent, most likely set up.

Let’s take uMobix, for example, an app with many unique features compared to its counterparts, to demonstrate how these solutions work. This product operates on a hidden basis and comes with a user-friendly dashboard where all input data is grouped. To get started, the user purchases a subscription and links the child’s device to the service using the above-mentioned iCloud credentials; it is also possible to connect Android, allowing you to track even more information from the gadget without rooting. Once connected, the app will regularly retrieve data for you in the following categories:

• calls and SMS and related data
• geolocation history and current location
• messages and their media content from such messengers as WhatsApp, Viber, Instagram, Facebook, etc.
• Browser history entries and bookmarks, and much more

In addition to the above, this parental control app for iPhone and similar solutions are equipped with video and audio streaming features, can record deleted information using screenshots and a keylogger, remotely block and delete programs, websites, and WiFi, and provide other controls. This significantly advances the experience of parents interested in remote monitoring and allows for a comprehensive assessment of the child’s situation and behavior.

Summing It Up

Whether you’re willing to spend a penny on multi-functional tracking apps or looking to use an iPhone parental control app for free, it is important to proceed from the need for certain features and, probably, not to consider this as a long-term approach or a panacea. Certain settings and apps can and do save lives, find lost phones, etc., and are therefore good in moderation.