Whether you’re buying your kid’s first phone or beginning to educate yourself on cell phone safety, one of the first actions to take as a digital-age parent is setting safety measures around your child’s online activity—and that includes smartphone and app usage. There are several safety features built right into your child’s smartphone that can help you do this, and when you couple them with downloadable apps that enhance those safety features, you can feel better about giving your kid or teen the independence—and responsibility—of having their own cell phone.
The best parental control apps for iOS and Android can enable you to monitor your kid’s smartphone and internet usage with features like history logs, location tracking, and more. Here are our top picks, including Qustodio, OurPact, and Kaspersky Safe Kids, plus steps to help you set up the safety features already built into your kid’s iPhone or Android device.
How we picked the best parental safety smartphone apps
-
Easy to use
Using these won’t require help from your techie cousin; all of these are rather intuitive, allowing you to put them to use as soon as you download them. -
Affordable
While some of these selections may offer additional in-app purchases or direct towards third-party vendors, none of them require upfront payment for their basic service. -
Hands-on testing
We played around with these ourselves before recommending them, and even asked some of our parental colleagues and friends to test them and give us their objective feedback.
Best parental control smartphone apps
The top parental control apps offer features to help keep your child safe—both online and off—without breaking the bank.
Important note to remember
The following parental control apps will only work if you’ve set up a comprehensive online safety ecosystem, such as:
- Setting guidelines for your family's online behavior
- Creating separate logins for each of your kids
- Establishing control settings for each site
- Installing accountability tools for their smartphones
That, paired with clear communication and boundaries for your teens' online lives, will help you protect your whole family.
Kaspersky Safe Kids—Best value
Kaspersky Safe Kids is a great budget-friendly phone monitoring app for parents. The free version, which works on smartphones and PCs and Macs alike, allows you to manage apps, filter and block websites, and set limits for screen time.
The paid version is just $15/year, and you can track an unlimited number of devices as well as capabilities, such as:
- Monitoring social media apps and websites
- Tracking your teen’s location
- Receiving alerts if your child’s battery life is low
- Receiving alerts if your child leaves designated safe areas
- Filtering unwanted content
- Reviewing and blocking specific YouTube search history (doesn’t work on a Mac)
One of the only disadvantages of this top parental control app is that iOS users can only block apps that have age restrictions—not any app you wish.
OurPact—Best for iPhones
- Devices: iOS
- Cost: Free 14-day trial, then:
- OurPact Premium: $6.99/month or $69.99/year
- OurPact Premium+: $9.99/month or $99.99/year
OurPact is our choice for the best iOS parental control app—and with a 4.4-star rating of over 36K customers, we'd say we've picked well. There are two options and price points to choose from with OurPact, both of which offer a 14-day trial to test the app for yourself before committing. At $6.99 per month, OurPact Premium offers unlimited screen time management, 7 days of stored location history, content blocking and web restrictions, app installation alerts, and supervision of up to 20 devices. If you upgrade to OurPact Premium+ at $9.99/month, you'll get everything from OurPact premium as well as a full 30 days of stored location history, image filtering, custom content flagging, plus the ability to set up automated screenshots of your child's phone as well as pull on-demand images.
Google Family Link—Best for Android phones
Family Link is available for both iOS and Android, as it links anyone with a valid Google account, but we think it's most intuitive for a family of Android users. Some of its most helpful features are exclusive to the Android ecosystem—for example, Family Link can track your child's downloads and purchases on the Google Play store using the Play Store billing system, but not the iOS App store or any other billing system.
With Google Family Link, you can:
- Set and monitor screen time limits
- Track and share locations, including location-specific alerts
- Manage site- and app-specific permissions
- Set and change passwords
It's free to download and use, making it one of the best budget parental safety smartphone apps as well.
Bark—Best for older kids/teens
If you want to give your child some privacy and independence, while still having a few guardrails in place, we think Bark is a good choice. Bark operates on the premise that you and your child have already established trust between you around internet use—as such, we recommend it for parents that have older teens who have learned (and earned) the responsibility of safely using a smartphone. Unlike Quostodio, for example, Bark doesn't allow you to monitor your child's activity on demand, nor can you set and track time limits. Rather, you'll receive an alert when specific actions trigger one, such as your child creating a new social account or searching for concerning trigger words.
Bark can monitor searches, text messages, and over 30 social apps—especially critical for teens whose lives are lived more and more on social media. It can detect triggers like hate speech, self-harm words, medically concerning content, violent, harmful or inappropriate images, and more. There is real-time location monitoring, and you can create custom blacklists and whitelists of websites, though you'll need to manually change these in the app settings should you wish to make adjustments. While there may not be screen time limits, you can set parameters to restrict or allow certain apps or sites within specific times of the day—like during school hours, for example.
While Bark offers more freedom than some of our other picks, there are still fail-safes in place: if your child tries to circumvent the app by creating a new account, or signing up for an app that Bark doesn't monitor, you'll receive an automatic alert.
Qustodio—Best premium safety app
- Devices: iOS and Android
- Cost: Free (limited features)
- Basic plan: $54.95/year
- Complete plan: $99.95/year
Qustodio is a versatile phone monitoring app for parents. It’s compatible with iPhones and Android phones, as well as PCs, Chromebooks, Macs, and Amazon Fire tablets. Its free version is pretty basic, offering just the bare-bones parental controls and only for a single device.
If you want comprehensive cell phone safety controls, you’ll want to opt for one of the premium versions: the $54.95/year Basic plan or the $99.95/year Complete plan. The Basic plan covers up to five devices and includes parental monitoring features, such as:
- Pausing the internet
- Monitoring your child’s location
- Filtering content
- Setting daily time limits
- Blocking apps and games
- Receiving 30-day activity reports
The Complete plan covers an unlimited number of devices and includes all of the Basic features, plus:
- Monitoring calls and text messages
- Setting time limits for apps and games
- Creating custom alerts
- Receive blocked website alerts
- Monitoring YouTube search and viewing history
Qustodio is one of the best parental control apps out there, but it’s also one of the most expensive. Although there is no free trial, they do offer a 30-day money-back guarantee if you are dissatisfied with this app.
Switch to a "dumb" phone for your child
If you have a younger child, sometimes the best parental control app is simply giving your kid a basic “dumb” phone or getting them a no-data cell phone plan. Alternatively, some phone plans for kids may include perks for parents, like Verizon’s Unlimited Welcome plan, which includes call and text limits and parental controls.
Android and iOS parental control features
Both iPhones and Androids come with built-in parental control features that you can use for free to ensure your child’s safety. Pair these features with one of the apps above to cover all of your bases to keep your kid safe on their smartphone.
Parental control features on an iPhone
Apple iPhones provide many different ways for you to practice cell phone safety and monitor what your child does online. Here are the iOS safety features you can use to monitor your kids' phone usage.
- Set up a passcode—just make sure both you and your teen know the code.
- Use Touch ID or Face ID, depending on the iPhone model, and have both yours and your teen's biometrics saved.
- Create an Apple ID with a specific email address you have created for your teen.
- Set up Family Sharing and enable features like "Ask to Buy" for app purchases.
- If your child is 12 or younger, set up a Child Account, which includes parental controls like content restrictions, Screen Time tracking, and other controls.
- Enable location sharing in the Find My app. You can also do this through the Family Sharing setup.
- Set up Content and Privacy restrictions for your child from your Screen Time settings. You can also set communication limits, set up sensitive photo and video protections, set time limits for apps, and more. Then create a passcode for Screen Time settings that only you know, so your child can’t change them.
Parental control features on an Android
You can set up parental controls on Android devices through the Google Play Store app and the Google Family Link app.After setting up a phone passcode and fingerprint/facial recognition, here’s how to go through the Google Play Store app:
- Open the Google Play app.
- Select the profile icon in the top right-hand corner.
- Click on Settings > Family > Parental controls.
- Turn on Parental controls and set up a PIN to prevent your child from turning them off.
- Choose the apps you want to block or filter.
After setting up your kid’s smartphone, you can use the Google Family Link app (outlined above) to create a Google Account for your child under age 13 or add parental controls to your kid’s existing Google Account.
Using parental controls on websites and apps
For popular apps and sites like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, there are ways to set up parental controls directly in the app.
YouTube parental controls
YouTube offers Restricted Mode, which allows you to screen and block mature content on a specific browser or device. Here’s how to turn it on through your child’s smartphone:
- Open your child’s YouTube app.
- Click on the profile picture in the top right-hand corner.
- Select Settings then choose General.
- Turn on Restricted Mode.
To turn on Restricted Mode on your kid’s computer, do the following:
- Go to youtube.com.
- Tap the profile picture in the upper right-hand corner.
- Find Restricted Mode: Off and toggle it to On.
Instagram parental controls
Instagram offers Supervision, which is a set of parental control and monitoring tools for guardians of teens between the ages of 13 and 17. However, you can’t set up Supervision without your teen’s permission, and they can remove it at any time, though you’ll be notified if they do. You must also have an Instagram account of your own to utilize Supervision.
Supervision allows you to set time limits, schedule breaks, view time spent on the app, see which accounts your teen follows and that follow your teen, as well as accounts they have blocked.
Here’s how to set up Supervision on Instagram:
- Click the More button in the bottom left.
- Select Settings, then choose Supervision.
- Click Create invite in the menu.
- Review the information then press Continue.
- Select Copy invite then share the invitation with your teen.
Your teen needs to then click the invite link you sent, and choose Allow.
TikTok parental controls
Like YouTube, TikTok has a Restricted Mode guardians can utilize to block inappropriate content for their kids. Here’s how to turn it on:
- Open the TikTok app and click Profile at the bottom.
- Click Settings and privacy.
- Select Content preferences.
- Tap Restricted Mode.
- Follow the steps to set or enter a passcode to turn this setting on.
You can also take advantage of TikTok’s Family Pairing, which allows you to filter video keywords, set daily screen time, get notifications about your teen’s activity, turn search mode on or off, set your child’s profile to private, and more. Here’s how to set that up:
- Open the TikTok app and click Profile at the bottom.
- Select Menu and choose Settings and privacy.
- Select Family Pairing.
- Tap Parent.
- Follow the steps to link your account to your teen’s.
Why smartphone safety is critical
Smartphone safety boils down to creating manageable guidelines and holding your kids accountable to those guidelines. Using the existing settings within the technology and parental control apps, which were created to help you with this task, makes that process easier so you're more successful, too.
A teen-proof smartphone at a glance
- Education
- The first step to achieving anything as a family is communication. It's important to teach your teen how to use their smartphone responsibly–and tell them why they need to do so, too. As you set your smartphone rules: make sure to clearly define your guidelines.
- Settings
- Set up a password (that you know as well) and go through their settings: disable social media check-in locations, set screen time limitations, and more.
- Set up Controls
- Create a family sharing account (whether you're on iOS or Android), block in-app purchases, set age limits for app purchases, and more.
- Monitor
- Everything you've done thus far won't be nearly as effective if you're not setting up ways in which you can hold your family accountable to your online rules. There are tons of apps that will give you as much control over your teen's phone as you need—just pick your method and stay consistent.
You can't protect your kids from threats you aren't aware of: so it's incredibly important to educate yourself about the dangers that exist from posting personal information irresponsibly. Even as an aunt, I'd sit down with my nieces when they were teenagers and scroll through their social media profiles with them. I'd find images of school IDs, live check-ins, and more. You'd be (very) surprised to find that what seems like common sense to you, isn't to them. Which is why it's important to talk to them about their posting behaviors.
Some important statistics
The dangers:
- Internet safety ranks 4th amongst the top ranked health issues for American children
- Nearly 47% of young people have received a threatening online message
- 22% of all online obscene-content consumption (in the 18-years or younger category), is consumed by a child 10-years-old or younger
- 42% of sexual extortion victims met their abuser online
- 54% of teens reported that if their parents knew what they did on social media, they'd be a lot more worried
- Human trafficking is a nearly $32 billion dollar industry—21% of those trafficked are children and about 70% of transactions take place online
It might surprise you to know:
- 89% of teens have a smartphone, and 70% of them are on social media several times a day
- 41% of teens use Snapchat, 22% use Instagram, and 15% use Facebook
- 20% of teens have used a private browsing feature to hide their online activity from their parents
- 14% of teens report that friends have invited someone they met online to their home
- 46% of teens clear their browsing history
- 49% of teens claim that their parents monitor their browsing activities
- 39% of parents use parental controls on their teens' devices
Source: Enough.Is.Enough
Marisa Crane
Staff Writer
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