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This might seem a strange subject for an MTB website but there are probably plenty of folk here who know a lot more about this than me.
A friend has asked me to introduce parental controls onto the mobile phones used by her 9 and 10 year old children. They each have an old Android phone and apparently use them to access videos on platforms like Tik-Tok and You Tube, and to play games like Robolox and Hello Neighbour. She doesn't have any immediate concerns that they have seen or do anything they shouldn't, but she wants to get some control in place before it becomes a problem. I could hazard a guess on how to do this on an iPhone but I know nothing about Android - what controls it has and what I might need to download.
So how should I do this for her? Is there any good guidance out there detailing the specific actions to take? Does anybody have experience of this with children of a similar age and advice on what I should do?
Thanks for your help.
Google child accounts for each child on the phone.
Family Link app
It's chuffing brilliant and dead easy to set up
App limits / content control
Stalking Location function
Bed time settings
You can make the phone "ring" on silent when the little blighters darlings leave it somewhere in the house on silent
Multiple parents can have the Family Link control/manager role.
Hope this helps. Google will give you better instructions than I can write.
Mine are 14 and 11.
In theory they have phone control at 13 unless they consent to ongoing management but it's a condition of me paying for his phone that it continues to be managed.
Because he solo road rides we can check progress and for any issues.
Other stuff I forgot...
- You get stats on app use
- You can lock devices and disable them
- Set it so they have to get apps approved before installing (so you can check permissions etc first
I really like it (can you tell) 🙂
Yep Google family link is great. Kids piss you off, turn their shit off from your phone, or just for a laugh sometimes!!
Location sharing is great.
Wait until the little sods learn how to hack them in such a way that you still think you have control… 😉
+1 for family link though I have two issues with it.
1. The location reporting is a bit hit and miss (wonder if this is something to do with the childs phone). Sometime I get the geofence notifications correctly then other days I get all 4 (left home, arrived school, left school, arrived home) as she gets home!
2. It does not work the same on Chromebooks. Some apps are rich web apps on a chrome book and the usage logging does not work for those. Same app on the phone logs time used.
Wait until the little sods learn how to hack them in such a way that you still think you have control… 😉
TBH, by the time they've got that level of computing savvy, i'll be contracting them out to GCHQ. Or the NSA probably pays better, but the commute is even worse.
(The ex and i use Family link with our kids, works well. Flexible enough for what most will need. NB: no chromebooks here, only tablets and phones, they have access to a family desktop as well, which is fairly well locked down.)
Might also be a good time to suggest your friend rethinks what she allows them to do. IMO both are too young to have a phone at all (though that ship has sailed). Roblox iirc has in game messaging with no moderation, oversight or age limiting. Tiktok is not suitable till they are much, much older. YouTube should be limited to the kids version etc.
Parental controls are not a magic bullet and will not stop them being exposed to things that are not appropriate. E.g. if they are given WhatsApp then it'll tell you that they use it but not that some random has sent them a di** pic. Similarly they won't tell you that the child has been messaging randoms in a game (where there is no way of knowing the random is what/who they claim to be). Education of the child is more important, as is creating an environment where they know they can talk to you about anything they come across while using the phone.
Thanks all. I’d not heard of Family Link so that’s very helpful.
And thanks @nixie for your comments - an especially good point about them being able to talk to their mum about unwelcome stuff they may come across while using the phone.
Family link is good. Although our middle one disabled it when he was 12 years old and Google gave him the opportunity.
But when he lost his phone and couldn't find it whilst in London the look on his face was priceless. And I got to tell him that if he'd not opted out of family link I could have found his phone in seconds. 😈