Parental Control for Android

2017-07-28

Today every parent knows: when a child grows up, an important moment happens in life - the purchase of a mobile phone, this happens either voluntarily or because "everyone in the class (kindergarten or another child's circle) has one, and I don't!". On the other hand, adults need a constant connection with their children - perhaps this is the main reason for buying it when kids grow up.

Today, the choice is huge: in shops and electronics supermarkets you can buy a good smartphone for an affordable price, you also want to buy a more reliable model that would "work for a long time". Obtaining the means of quick communication, entertainment, games is wonderful, but since we live in the age of access to information, there is always the problem of protecting the younger generation from rubbish information, bad examples, and inappropriate content. Phones provide access to the entirety of the Internet and if before we were hiding to listen to prohibited music, now it is enough to just press a couple of times on the screen, write your request, and find whatever you need. In this article, we will talk about the review of parental control programs for Android phones. By the way, this feature is preinstalled in Apple devices. The most common operating system for phones in the world, unfortunately, did not add such functionality. Fortunately, there is a big choice of apps for "parental control" in the Play Market.

The working principle of programs for parental control

The basic principle of such programs is the principle of the "pyramid": out of all programs installed on the device, parents can specify the ones that are safe in their opinion and will be allowed. As a result, the child will only get access to these applications. Access to the program will be password protected, I advise you to set a strong password from the beginning. It is also easy to configure access to calls, sending messages, and other paid services.

If a child wants to use the Internet, the most important thing is to block unwanted sites in the browser, this is not as simple. Most programs put the browser to the whitelist and allow it to launch. It is necessary to completely block the browser and its installation or set a list of allowed sites, it is a time-consuming process.

Pay attention to the most important feature of the apps for parental control: when the phone is turned on and rebooted, the app must start automatically. If there is no such feature, after every reboot the child will instantly have access to everything and further setting up and limitations will be a waste of time.

The list of programs for child protection is large. Before the installation, I suggest being guided by the number and quality of the ratings and user comments. Let's talk about the most popular of them.

Parental Control apps

When searching through a web browser, the Play Store Market does not provide a complete list, there are trusted software shells, applications, developers, and reviews.

Kids Place

This application contains the software shell we mentioned earlier. After the start of the system, the already configured shell with the desktop and icons selected by the parents will start. The child cannot turn it off or stop the process without knowing the password.

Touch Lock

This application in comparison with similar competitors received an excellent rating according to users. Its disadvantage is that to install and run it you need a version of the system 4.0.3 and above. But according to the developers, it has a huge set of useful functions. We list the main ones:

- 100% blocks phone buttons (home/back/recent/menu)

- Blocks access to the screen while children are playing with the device.

- Data on your phone or tablet will be protected. So you can install on your phone when the child asks to play. He or she can play if you turn on this function.

- During watching a video, it locks and unlocks the screen (the parameter is set separately in both ways).

- The program is made for the use of children and it protects the screen from unnecessary touches. It is a measure against the situation when kids accidentally open many unnecessary apps which slow down the device.

- Both on the tablet and on the phone it is tested and works, it is compatible with many devices.

- It locks the screen with a slight touch of your finger.

- The volume settings are blocked and you will always hear calls.

- Easy to use and configure. It is for those who do not like to dig into the settings.

- It turns on and off protection mode with one touch.

- Suitable for watching cartoons with a screen lock, you can put cartoons and movies which are up to you and the child will not be able to stop or interrupt the viewing.

- While watching YouTube, you can lock or unlock the screen.

Parenty Control Parental

It is an excellent app according to the user rating. You can try to install and test.

Kaspersky

Kaspersky Lab has released its own version of Parental Control, which is designed to protect children from "adult" sites. The principle of this program: it limits or denies access to "adult" resources, but you cannot edit or add to the list of websites. The application works with its own "list", and more sites are added every day to it.

Almost all these programs require Internet access to work at full capacity, but there is a huge plus, through the online interface you can access and see which apps your the children ran, which Internet pages they visited and whether they used the device during lessons or instead of doing the homework. Another app that has such capabilities is The Norton Safety Minder. It is a program from a well-known company in the sphere of information protection Symantec.

There are also a number of useful features: setting a time period when children can use the phone, setting a lock that activates when the child needs to go to bed and the phone goes into "sleep mode". It is necessary because children use devices constantly.

I hope in this article we have covered the most necessary aspects of information protection for children and answered the question of how to put the parental control on the Android phone, in the future we will write about parental control on computers and laptops.