The world has been changing for quite a long time with technology becoming the central point of an average person’s life. However, in the past decade, this shift towards digital has enhanced considerably for children and teenagers. In fact, a lot of kids these days refuse to eat their meals without their favorite YouTube video playing. Are you one of those parents who is looking for apps to limit screen time? Then you have clicked on the right link.

If you listen to the World Health Organization (WHO), then parents of kids aged between 5 to 18 years should try and restrict their kids’ screen time to less than 2 hours. This time is reduced to 1 hour for kids between 2 and 4 years of age. While this recommendation sounds fair, the real question that troubles us is how do we go ahead and implement such a screen time limit when almost everything is online these days?

The answer lies in a parental control app that allows parents to set screen time restrictions. In this post, we review one such app – Wondershare FamiSafe. Sure, there are a lot of apps that claim to ensure that if you use them, you can limit the screen time of your kids. But you need to ensure that the app you use actually works. This review will discuss what exactly Famisafe does, its features, a step by step guide to use Famisafe and a point or two on its pricing and availability.   

What is FamiSafe?

FamiSafe from Wondershare, is the most reliable parental control app that lets parents control screen time, track real time location and detect inappropriate content on kids’ devices. As the name suggests, this app ensures that not only does it restrict your kids’ screen time, it also ensures that they do not get exposed to age inappropriate content. 

How Does FamiSafe Parental Control Work?

FamiSafe parental control adopts a three fold approach as discussed below:

  1. Form Good Digital Habits – The primary purpose of FamiSafe is to ensure that young kids and teenagers form good digital habits. In today’s world, everyone is constantly glued to their phone screens. There is a need to restrict this screen time and that can be done only if the existing habit is replaced with a good habit of using screens responsibly. Moreover, features like YouTube App Control, TikTok History and Activity report allow parents to 
  2. Keep Track of the Whereabouts – Independence is something which kids these days are extremely sure that they want in their life. Famisafe allows parents to track the live location of their kids and also you can choose the feature Geofences to set a safe place for your kids’ activity.
  3. Get Away From Online Danger – The online world out there is filled with people, both good and bad. In the context of cyber bullies and sexual predators, FamiSafe will notify you whenever there is any inappropriate activity detected on your child’s devices and take immidiate actions to protect your kids from the online threats.

Key Features of FamiSafe

The whole concept behind FamiSafe is to ensure that your kids are protected in an all-round way. The following are the key features of Wondershare’s FamiSafe:

  • Screen Time – At the outset, FamiSafe tries and succeeds in building good digital habits of your kids when it comes to screen times. It does so in three steps. First, it provides you with data – how much time did your kid spend on which app. Second, it allows you to set smart schedules – how much time he or she can spend on their phones and specifically on which apps. Third, it relies on the strategy of forming a good digital habit for your kid by using the screen time restrictions. You can choose to instant block certain apps.

  • Real Time Location Tracking – One of the biggest problems that parents face is that they cannot accompany their kids everywhere. In comes FamiSafe, which allows you to track your kid’s location in real time and also lets you create a geofence, which if breached will send you an immediate alert. 
  • YouTube App Control – Video is the present rage of the internet. As we mentioned earlier, even infants are refusing their meals without the YouTube video of their favorite cartoon character being played. In such a scenario, FamiSafe helps you protect your kid from so much inappropriate content on YouTube. For instance, you can restrict or block a certain YouTube video from your kid’s watchlist and you can also use FamiSafe to set alerts for certain suspicious text searches.
  • Activity Report – FamiSafe lets you get an activity report for your child which informs you of the applications that he or she uses and the ones he or she installs or uninstalls.
  • Web Filter – While activity monitoring helps, sometimes it is important to have a filter wherein certain websites such as pornographic content are not accesible from your kids’ devices right from the beginning. The Web Filter feature of FamiSafe lets you do just that.

Step by Step Guide on How to Use FamiSafe

Here’s a step by step guide on how to start with FamiSafe:

Step 1 – Register 

The first step that you should undertake as a parent is to register on FamiSafe. You can do this either on the website or on a mobile app. You can choose to create an account with your email address or log in with your Facebook, Google account, or Apple ID, etc.

Step 2 – Install

The second step is to install the FamiSafe app on both the parents’ as well as kids’ devices.

Step 3 – Connect 

Once you have installed the apps on both or all devices, all you need to do is connect and manage all devices from either the web portal of FamiSafe or the FamiSafe dashboard app.

The process of connection can be done in two ways – first, you could simply install the app on your kid’s phone and log in using the account you created in Step 1 and click on Start to set up your kid’s device or second, you could pair the two devices using ‘pair with code’ option where you would get a 6 digit code on the parent’s phone to link the two devices.

The last step involves you providing your kid’s name and age and providing access/permissions to FamiSafe which includes Accessibility, App Supervision, Notification Access, Device Administration as well as Contact List access, among other things. 

Once you have done the three steps above you can then opt for availing of various useful features of the app.

Pricing and Availability 

FamiSafe works on a subscription based model and has three types of subscription – monthly, quarterly and annually. The monthly plan costs you $10.99 a month, quarterly plan costs you $20.99 a quarter and the annual plan costs you $60.99 a year. While the monthly plan allows you to protect 5 devices with all features, the quarterly and annual plans allow you to protect 10 devices with all features. 

Final Word

Among the plethora of apps in the field of parental control, Wondershare FamiSafe stands out as it focuses on building good digital habits and enables you to monitor your child’s online world without violating their privacy. The best part about the app is that it works seamlessly with both Android and Apple platforms. All in all, it is full of amazing features and is certainly value for money.