There are many social media platforms available today and navigating through them might be hard for parents in ensuring the safety of their kids on these platforms. While the likes of TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat have a built-in parent control feature, Twitter don’t. It makes it difficult for parents to monitor the activities of their children on these types of platforms. Luckily, there are parental control apps that can monitor the activities of your teens in all these social media apps simultaneously.
Unfortunately, there are many parental control apps on the Internet which makes it difficult to pick the right one. However, we will, in this post, explain why you should look at these five best-performing parental control apps in 2014.
These apps have sophisticated features that help parents monitor the activities of their teens in real time. You have an idea of what your teens are up to and their real-time location at any given time. They allow the creation of virtual boundaries to alert parents when their children leave and enter a particular area. Below are the five best parental control apps we recommend for parents in 2024.
The best parental control apps in 2024
Parental Control apps are designed for parents to monitor the activities of their children online. There have been cases of kids being bullied online which can lead to depression and suicide. As a parent, you must oversee your child’s use of these apps and ensure they are being used the right way. To help you do that, here are the apps below.
mSpy
mSpy is still the best parental control app in 2024. The app is designed so that you don’t miss out on anything happening on your teen’s social media apps. It allows parents to track their kid’s real-time location and set virtual boundaries to never lose track of them.
The app works on Android and iPhone but seems to have limited features on the latter. An example is the Keylogger feature which allows parents to see what their kids are typing. This feature requires rooting your Android phone, and hence, isn’t always enabled on many phones.
Nevertheless, the app takes screenshots when it notices changes like messages being deleted. You will not miss anything as you can read deleted messages, photos, and videos. There are features for keyword alerts that notify you when a specific word is used during your child’s conversation with someone.
In addition, mSpy works in stealth mode, meaning your child will not know the app is running in the background. However, we recommend discussing it with your child or partner before installing the app on their phone.
You can visit the official site to get started but you will pay $69.99 for a monthly subscription. If you decide to purchase a three-month service, you will be charged $40 for each month. We recommend the yearly subscription that sees you pay just $16.68/month. Meanwhile, you will need a separate subscription to monitor every new device.
uMobix
Another great parental control app for parents who wish to monitor their teen activities on Social Media. Interestingly, uMobix is capable of accessing contacts on the target phone, reading messages, and can block calls.
The most fun part is that parents do not have to worry about deleted messages as uMobix keeps a copy. Parents can track their children’s activities with the app even when they switch to incognito mode on their browser.
The app helps parents monitor the social media usage of their teens. You can restrict, block, or schedule specific app usage. Also, you get an alert when your child uses any social media platform.
If you are worried that your child might have renamed some of their contacts, uMobix can help you detect that. The app supports keylogger, but you might need rooting or jailbreaking to get the feature working.
Meanwhile, we understand some features are not available for iPhone users. In addition, the app has been said to drain the battery, but that is expected as it continuously works in the background.
To get started, you need a monthly subscription at $49.99 or a quarterly plan at $27.99. Their best deal is the yearly plan for $11.66/month.
Qustodio
If you are looking for a parental control app to monitor your teen’s phone and computer, consider Qustodio. The app understands you might want to track more than one device at a time, which is why it includes plans for multiple device tracking.
You can track up to 15 devices simultaneously using one subscription. The app lets you monitor your child’s social media account. It makes it easy for parents with keyword filtering. When enabled, you get a notification when selected words are used in your child’s conversation.
Interestingly, the apps allow blocking apps even the web version to make sure your kids do not bypass your restrictions. You can schedule times your kids are allowed to use some social media apps. It helps parents ensure their teens are not on social media when they should be in class.
Aside from social media tracking and monitoring, the app can locate your kid’s real-time location anytime. You can use the app to monitor incoming and outgoing calls. In addition, you can block contacts and websites you don’t want your kids to visit.
Meanwhile, some features do not seem to work better like web filtering and you might need to reinstall the app each time you update it. To use the services of Qustodio, you can purchase a one-year plan at $4.58 ($54.95) that supports up to 5 devices. There are medium $8.08 ($96.96/year) for up to 10 devices and large plans for $11.50 ($137.95/year) that support up to 15 devices.
CocoSpy
While you might need to jailbreak your iPhone or root an Android phone to experience the full functionality of some parental control apps, CocoSpy is different. In addition, the app subscription plan is priced competitively and still gets the job done.
Most built-in parental control features on social media apps have some limitations. For one, when a parent blocks an app, the teen can bypass the restrictions by switching to a web version. With CocoSpy, it is not possible, as you can block the website version of any site.
Also, the app can track and monitor text messages, including iMessage on iPhone. Of course, it is capable of monitoring messages on other social media platforms.
Interestingly, there is a feature to mark contact as suspicious so you get an alert on any communications with your kids and the person. There’s a free demo to check out the app or you can pay $1 for a whole day of testing.
If you opt for CocoSpy, there’s a $49.99/monthly subscription that goes down to $29.99 for quarterly plans. The best deal is the annual offer of $12.50/ month.
Bark
Bark is a great tool for parents to monitor their children’s activities on the Internet. The app supports monitoring of over 30 Social media apps. In addition, it tracks activities on web browsers, emails, messages, and other activities.
To ensure your child is safe on the Internet, Bark uses advanced AI to scan texts, social media, images, videos, and audio for threats like cyberbullying, pornography, and stalking. There are over 15 categories and when enabled, upload an overview of the message to your app.
The app helps parents to manage their child’s screen time. You can create a custom schedule for apps to ensure your teen isn’t on social media when they should be in the classroom. In addition, you block apps and their web version to ensure the restrictions cannot be bypassed.
Aside from monitoring social media, Bark can track your child’s real-time location. You can set virtual boundaries and get notified when your teen enters or leaves a particular area. Meanwhile, you need a subscription to ensure all these features, but you can leverage the seven-day free trial.
Bark has three subscription plans with the most sophisticated being the “Bark Phone” plan. You will get a phone with the custom controls built in. It starts at $39/month while the Bark App starts at $14/month. There’s a Bark Home plan that starts at $6/month.
Conclusion
It is necessary to monitor teen’s activities on social media to ensure they are using it properly. We understand some of these apps have a built-in parental control feature, but the features are limited. We recommend using any of the parental control apps mentioned in this post to monitor your children’s activities on the internet. With the app, you can monitor all the social media from a single account.
