The Bark Blog

Monitoring Your Child’s Phone? Here’s What You Need to Know

Allison Scovell | August 29, 2024

Before the age of smartphones, chat rooms, and social media, parents didn’t have to figure out how to “monitor their children.” Instead, they may have had an open-door policy when their kid had a friend over or enforced a curfew to make sure the kids were back home before dark.

Nowadays, most parents are asking how to monitor their child’s phone and the answer takes quite a bit more time and research. A big part of this is because every family is going to approach tech safety in a different way that best fits their kid’s needs — it’s not necessarily a one-size-fits-all. So if you are just starting to figure out phone monitoring and digital safety for your child, we’ve put together a few helpful tips that will help point you in the right direction to the solution that works best for your family.

What Parents Need to Know About Phone Monitoring

Here are three practical yet general tips to consider when it comes to monitoring your child’s phone.

Not all monitoring apps are created equal

When you Google how to monitor your child’s phone, tons of results will pop up. When you begin to actually sift through them, you’ll find there are quite a few different definitions of the word “monitoring.”

The most common form of monitoring is the use of a keyword logger. This means there is a list of concerning words or phrases that the monitoring service or app looks for in your child’s messages. When one is detected, that’s what you’ll get alerted for. Sounds straightforward and effective, right? But what about the situations you need to know about that don’t necessarily include one of those chosen words?

At Bark, we have a slightly different monitoring strategy. Instead of looking for keywords, we use powerful AI technology to look for the context of messages. Our AI can detect when a message is problematic versus something harmless. And after nine years of reading and flagging content, Bark has one of the most highly trained algorithms on the market.

Here are some examples of how Bark’s monitoring works:

Bark can detect the difference between the word ‘knife’ being used to cut a sandwich versus being used to harm someone.
Bark can detect new slang as it comes up and is being used in a problematic or suspicious way.
Bark can detect instances of predation in which the predator is grooming the child, by asking questions such as “How old are you?” or “You’re so mature for your age.”

Kids can still have privacy even when you monitor their phone

Monitoring often brings up the question of privacy and for many — especially kids — monitoring might as well be the antithesis of their privacy. But this doesn’t have to be the case!

Some monitoring services will give you full access to your child’s online activities — every single text message, photo, and website log-in. In this case, the child really doesn’t have any privacy. While this level of supervision may be needed for some families, others may find this more overwhelming than anything else.

Much like that old school “open door policy”, you may be looking for a phone monitoring solution that allows you to keep an eye on your child’s online world, without having to be right there with them to hear every word that gets texted or posted.

This is how Bark approaches monitoring — Bark works quietly in the background, scanning your child’s online activities. All of the harmless messages get passed over, but the ones that signal there may be an issue related to things like bullying, predation, mental health struggles, etc., get flagged and sent to you in an alert. So you’re in the know of the important things but without the stress of reading and knowing everything — making it a win-win for the parent and child.

Monitoring is best paired with conversations

One of the key components of any parental control tool is the real-life conversation you pair with it. Technology can certainly help in preventing them from encountering something harmful online or alerting you when it happens to them. However, the thing that will be most valuable to them as they navigate their highly tech-influenced childhoods will be the honest, educational conversations you have with them.

Understandably, it can be hard to know where to start with these conversations. So we’ve listed some hot-button online safety topics and accompanying resources to help get you started:

Online predators, grooming

Bullying

Sexual content and porn

Recognizing false or misleading information on the internet

Want to Try Bark Out For Yourself?

If Bark sounds like it may be the best way to monitor your child’s phone, consider starting our free, 7-day trial to see exactly how it can bring you peace of mind when it comes to your child’s online world. You may also consider checking out the Bark Phone, which is a Samsung Galaxy A series with our monitoring built into the phone. No setup needed, just instant, reliable parental controls as soon as it comes out of the box.