In the digital age parents seem to have a lot more to worry about compared to two decades ago. The age of the internet and the advancement of technology has given everyone, kids included, a lot more information and all forms of media entertainment to consume. This is a good thing in some ways and could be a bad thing in others. Some think that kids spend too much time on their smartphones these days, watching videos, playing games, and browsing the internet just to name a few things.
If you’re a parent who worries about how much time your child spends on their phone, then something like Famisafe may be an app you want to look into. As the name of the app suggests it’s designed to help you keep your family safe from what you may feel is a danger, or simply a hindrance. Whether it be how much screen time your kids have or what sorts of websites they’re visiting, or who they’re talking to. Famisafe is a parental control tool that is built to help you manage your kids device use.
To get started with Famisafe you’ll need to head to the Famisafe website to create an account, and then from there install the Famisafe app onto the device your child is using by downloading the app from the Play Store.
Once you have the app installed on the device, you will need to go through the setup to link it to the account you created, which requires you to sign into the app on the device it’s being installed on, before going through and giving the app all the permissions it needs to activate all the parental control features like location, screen time management, web filtering and more.
One of the first things you’ll see on your Famisafe account online once the app on the phone has been set up, is the home page. Here you can see a summary of various details, like the location of the device, when it was last used, and even the battery level that the phone has left, which could be helpful in keeping tabs on how close they might be to being unreachable should the phone battery die. The home page also shows you other details like the most used app, how much screen time they’ve had for the day so far and the ability to add a notification when they arrive at a certain location.
If you’re worried about the kinds of photos your child may have access to then you can toggle an option that lets you get alerts once a suspicious photo has been detected. If they end up looking at or receiving photos that the app labels as suspicious then it will let you know.
If you’re more concerned about app use, the app usage and blocker feature allows you to block certain apps from being accessible and once you enable this toggle you can set time limits for usage. In turn if an app is blocked, the child has an ability from the app on their phone to request access from the parent, in which case you can decide whether or not to grant it, and how long they can use it before it locks back up. This feature also lets you see how much they have used each app so you can decide which are a priority for blocking if any.
If you end up locking access to certain apps, your child will have the ability to request access to a certain app from their end. If they end up sending a request this is the dashboard for messages where you can see those requests. Clicking on any given message takes you to the page where you can open access to the app they want to use. The request will also show how much time they are wanting for use.
Once you have granted access to the app for your specified amount of time, you will be able to see a “dealt” tag that shows you have dealt with that request and your child is now able to use the app. There are Allow and Deny buttons on this screen which enables unlocking access or leaving it blocked.
If you want to see a more broad view of what your child has been doing on their device the Activity Report section shows you some of those details. You can see what apps they’ve been accessing and what areas of the phone they’ve spent time in and for how long during each activity. The report is also split up by date if you want to look at multiple days.
With Famisafe one of the features it offers is filtering the kind of web content that your child is able to view and browse. To manage this, you can open the web filter dashboard and enable toggles for tons of different topics like drugs, adult content, deceptive phishing content, religious content, content with violence and more. Many of these are toggled on by default so you can disable the toggles for the ones you’re not worried about at your leisure.
There’s also an option for viewing browser history so you can see what sites your child is visiting and at what time they visited those sites. Like the activity report the browser history is listed by date so you can flip through and see specific days.
Another useful feature, if you’re not really worried about blocking certain content and just want to ensure that your child isn’t spending too much time on their phone, is the ability to limit their screen time. You can set a specified amount of time for how long they are able to use the phone before it locks up, which is handy if they’re staying up past their bed time and you want to make sure they’re getting enough sleep.
Ratings
- Speed (5/5) – Setup was pretty fast and navigating through the app as well as the website dashboard took really no time at all.
- Theme (4/5) – Both the app and the website dashboard are clean interfaces with little to no clutter so you aren’t bogged down with too many options.
- Features (5/5) – The Famisafe app actually does quite a lot. Parents have loads of management tools here, many of which are likely to be very useful.
- Overall (4/5) – It’s a great app if you have a child that you feel spends too much time on their phone, or if you want to manage what sort of content they have access too.
Pros
- Lots of features for parental control tools
- Easy setup
- Ability to keep track of phone location for safety purposes
- Ability to see web browsing history
- Uninstalling the app normally isn’t possible without parental approval
Cons
- App can be uninstalled from the app sub-menu within the phone settings, making it possible for kids to uninstall it when they shouldn’t be able to. Patching this could fix the issue.
Parents have enough to worry about these days without having to worry about what their kids may be getting into on their phones. The nice thing about Famisafe is that parents can manage what their kids do on their phones and how long they spend on them, which might give you some more peace of mind.
It also allows for the location tracking so if your child is younger you can keep tabs on them going to and from school and other places so you know that they’re safe. If these are tools you might find useful then Famisafe could work very well for you.
To use Famisafe there is a monthly fee associated with the website dashboard login, which is $13.99 a month or you can pay an annual fee of $70 which breaks it down to about $5.83 a month instead of the $13.99. You can also pay a three-month fee which is $30 ($9.99 a month) and save some money by using the coupon code SENFSO