Facebook is one of the biggest social media platforms in the world. It currently has over 3 billion downloads, meaning your kids might have the app installed on their phones. As a parent, you must ensure your child uses the app correctly. Fortunately, the app has introduced a parental control feature like Instagram, and you can monitor your teen’s activities on Facebook in real-time.
The Facebook parental control feature is called “Supervision on Facebook and Messenger.” As the name implies, when enabled, you can supervise your child’s activities on Facebook. Interestingly, it extends to messenger, meaning you will see who they send and receive messages from. You can also see the AIs they are chatting with and all the questions being asked.
Everything you need to know about Supervisor on Facebook
- Your teen must be 13-17 before you can supervise them on Facebook.
- The supervision feature is only available on the latest versions of Facebook. Ensure you and your child are using the latest version.
- Of course, you both need to have a Facebook account
- Your teen needs to accept your invite before you can monitor Facebook on their phone
- You will see their Facebook friends, Messenger contacts, AIs they have chatted with, and everyone they have blocked
- You will see “some” of their privacy settings
- You can see how much time they spend on Facebook and Messenger and can set schedule breaks.
- You will not see their chats or searches on content that appears on their feed.
Meanwhile, if you are interested in monitoring their chats, third-party parental control apps allow that. You will pay a subscription fee before you can install the app. We recommend the supervisor feature on Facebook, as it allows your child some privacy while you still monitor their activities on the social media app.
How to set up Supervision on Facebook and Messenger
- On the latest version of Facebook, tap your profile picture in the top right corner.
- Click the settings icon under your profile icon
- Under Tools and Resources, click Supervision
- Tap on Create Invite
- A link will be generated, copy the link and send it to your teen using any of the available options.
- The invite expires after 48 hours. You will create another one after that period if your invitation is not accepted.
- Once the invitation is accepted, you can monitor activities on your child’s Facebook account when you visit the Supervision Center.
Meanwhile, after setting up supervision, if your teen blocks you on Facebook, supervision will be removed automatically. However, you will get a notification once it happens, and you can set it up again. We recommend turning on push notifications. When you enable push notification, you will get notifications of what is happening on your teen’s account.
Since you cannot monitor what appears on their feed nor see their messages, we recommend adjusting some privacy settings on their account. To ensure no sensitive content appears on their feed, head to Facebook on their account and follow the instructions below.
- Tap on the profile picture and click on the settings icons.
- Under Preference, tap on News Feed.
- You can add people and pages you want their content to appear on their feeds.
- You can snooze, unfollow, and reconnect with people, pages, and groups.
- There is an option named “Reduce,” click on the option to reduce low-quality content, unoriginal content, problematic sharing, and sensitive content.
With these options, I believe you can ensure the safety of your child on Facebook. However, you can monitor their activities in real time with a third-party parental control app. These apps have features not available on Facebook Supervision. In addition, you will monitor chats and see content on your child’s feeds on Facebook. Below are some of the apps we recommend for monitoring Facebook, and they can work in stealth mode.
Apps to monitor Facebook on your child’s phone
These parental control apps support monitoring other social media apps. You can set virtual boundaries and get an alert when your kid enters or leaves a particular area. In addition, you can track real-time location and many other stuffs.
mSpy
mSpy is a parental control app with all the features to efficiently monitor Facebook on your teen’s smartphone. The app supports monitoring other social media apps and can tell you the real-time location of your kids.
Aside from letting you in on your child’s Messenger conversation, you can use the app to monitor calls. Interestingly, you will not miss any information in the form of deleted messages, as the app keeps a copy for you. In addition, you can create filters and get notified when certain words are used on your child’s interaction on Facebook and other social media platforms.
Meanwhile, some of these features do not work on iOS. We recommend sticking with the built-in supervision feature on Facebook if your teen’s phone is an iPhone. And for every device you want to track or monitor, you will need a new subscription.
uMobix
Another Parental Control app to help monitor your child’s activity on social media. It supports Facebook Messenger message monitoring. While you can limit the time your kids spend on Facebook, that only works on the app, and they can bypass logging in with a browser. With uMobix, you can block Facebook web, and it will be impossible for your kids to bypass the restrictions.
Aside from monitoring Facebook, the app can set virtual boundaries to alert you when your kids enter or leave a particular area. It supports streaming, meaning you can remotely trigger your kid’s phone camera to monitor their environment.
Again, some features do not work on iOS. We recommend these apps for Android users or you better stick with the supervision feature on Facebook. Also, you pay a subscription fee to use the app, while the built-in parental control feature on Facebook is free.
Conclusion
It is important to monitor your teens’ activities on Facebook. The company has made it easy for parents with the introduction of a parental control feature. However, you might need to adjust some settings on your kid’s phone as Facebook isn’t giving you all the access to their account.
With a third-party parental control app, you can monitor your child’s Facebook activities in real time. You can see everyone your kids are talking with. In addition, you can block access to certain accounts and limit how much time your teen spends on the app.
