The social media monitoring tools connected Mobicip with my child’s Facebook and Instagram accounts. In addition to categories, I can block specific apps from opening or being downloaded from iTunes. It divides all apps on the phone into three categories, Social Media, Games, and Entertainment, and I can set time limits for each category. One of the new features I like is App Limits. I was happy to see that even when my children were allowed to use their phones, I still had control over how they used them. Now I can temporarily turn off the time restrictions without having to recreate the entire schedule.
One of the great options added in the most recent update is Vacation Mode. It also has a school setting, which allows access to safe content.
The phone is locked at bedtime, dinner, and when I want them to focus on homework. I use the screen time feature to create a schedule based on my children’s daily routine. The app gives me complete control over how and when my children use their iPhones. Mobicip upgraded its iOS app for iPhone and iPad, and I am very impressed with the new and improved features.
I was really happy that Qustodio works on multiple platforms, so I was able to access the parent dashboard from my Android phone and PC and monitor the iPhone and iPad in the house. It also has a geofence feature that alerts me when they enter or leave the radius of the location. There’s no need to worry about where they’re going or where they are at any given time. I can log in to the parent dashboard and see exactly where they are, superimposed on Google Maps. One of the tools that truly gives me peace of mind is real-time location tracking. The one problem I have with the calendar option is that you can only block time in segments of 1-hour chunks, which doesn’t fit with the schedule in our house. When I was testing Qustodio, I liked the time management tools, which allowed me to set a daily time limit and set up a daily calendar of when the devices are locked. I challenged my children to find a trick or hack to bypass the filters, and after a few days, they had to admit defeat. Qustodio checks the metadata, text, and images for anything that would trigger one of the 30 categories.
It also gives me the flexibility to choose the filter’s sensitivity, based on the kid’s ages, instead of having a default filter for the whole family. For starters, the web filter is compatible with Safari (and Chrome). Qustodio was able to succeed in monitoring my kid’s iPhone, where most other monitoring apps failed.