My kids don’t yet have phones, so this conversation will be about iPads mostly. I don’t have an iPad myself, as I just use my phone and my computer for the things I need. 

That said, I think we should give kudos to iPads, they’re pretty freaking awesome. I mean, seriously, they operate as a computer, mail service, a video phone, newspaper, magazine, a camera, a television, a library, a translator, a million games, all at your fingertips. I wish I’d had one as a kid. 

The good: Let’s be honest, iPads have been a godsend for parents of kids. They can be educational, and they are definitely fun. I love the app “Epic” and we can loan library books for the kids on Libby and Hoopla. There are apps that have taught our kids to type. My son creates flashcards on the go to study. He also makes amazing artwork on his iPad. I also love that we can FaceTime with our family members on a bigger screen than our phones. And it’s so nice to watch movies on iPads when we travel. 

My daughter is only now able to read well enough that she can sit with a chapter book to stay entertained, but in the prior three years, I will admit that on long plane rides and at other times when I needed her to stay occupied, the iPad has been a great helper. We also enjoy playing games together on it fairly frequently (Guess Who, checkers, Sneaky Sasquatch, to name a few).

That said, we do have some basic rules in our house. For example, no devices in bedrooms, we screen time limits, there is no access to personal iPads on school days unless homework is done, etc. And if we say it’s time to turn off the iPad, for any reason, they know better than to argue with us, or they will lose privileges for the next several days. 
But the downsides, even for the pre-teen age group, are real. The downsides for teens are a conversation for another blog (or ten).

As a child psychiatrist, I’ve cared for young kids (even under age 10), who were victims of pedophiles reached by iPads. These adults groomed their victims for weeks or months by  posing as young kids themselves. A common pattern is that they start chatting with kids in video game platforms, then move the conversation to other, less trackable platforms on iOs to continue the conversations. 

For this reason, I do not allow my kids to play any games that are interactive unless I know the child, and the parent, and we set it up together on a phone call. I also monitor my kids’ use of their devices. But, I will be honest, I don’t watch everything they do on them. I don’t really think it’s possible to do that as a parent, unless you sit by your child’s side and watch them every moment they use a device. And I don’t know anyone who does that, although we probably should.  

Recently, I walked by my daughter (she’s 6) as she was watching a video of a two men, dressed as a mermaid and a pregnant vampire. As I walked by, the pregnant vampire grabbed his belly and made a pained face and his water “broke”. I watched aghast as black liquid (Hershey’s syrup?) spilled down his white tights between his legs and onto the floor. I couldn’t hear the dialogue because she was wearing headphones, but it appeared to be some weird comedy skit. Regardless, I don’t think it was appropriate content for my child. 

At first I was surprised because she only has the YouTube Kids app with age controls on it, but then I realized she had bypassed the app entirely by typing in “YouTube” to google Chrome. Then, somehow, she stumbled on this amazing video. I am not sure if this was the first time she had done this or not. 

I have been wary of YouTube for a long time, even the kids app. When she was younger she was watching some My Little Pony video that looked legit, but they were dropping F bombs left and right. It was dubbed and placed on YouTube kids. Adult humor? I’m not sure. There was also some video a few years back that made news in which kids were being encouraged to tell their younger siblings to put metal objects into electrical outlets. YouTube is creator driven, therefore, it’s never going to be possible for YouTube to monitor all their content. Weird and potentially dangerous stuff is always going to end up there. We can’t trust it will all be safe just because it has the “Kids” label and we chose the youngest age group to screen the material. 

I was upset, but mostly mad at myself that day. I asked her to close the vampire video and told her to just use the kids YouTube from then on. She said OK and she claimed she didn’t know there was a difference. After that, I set out to learn about parental control software. This is overdue education for me, but it may be for some of you too, so let me share what I learned. 

Apparently there are several options. I settled on Bark because it seemed easiest for me and met my needs. I also had heard about their phone (a phone that looks like a smartphone, but isn’t really a smartphone). Since I know we’ll be at the point where my son will be begging for a phone in a few years, I figured getting familiar with Bark’s system would be a good way to be familiar with their phone brand, which is the one I’m most likely to use. 

For now, I wanted to block my kids ability from searching or stumbling on inappropriate content on Google, YouTube and other sites. A good way to do this on Android devices is Google Smartsearch, but since we’re on iOs, we needed another option. Bark does this and does it well on iOs, per the reviews I read, so I chose Bark. Another site I read recommended Quotidio, which I’m also trying out with their 30 day free trial.
My initial impression: Bark is slightly more cumbersome to set up. Quotidio was more user friendly. Both use Google safesearch to make your kids iOs devices unable to search inappropriate content on search engines, which is great. Both blocked YouTube and YouTube kids. Both let you set screen time limits, but I already had this with the iPad itself, so not sure it’s worth it. I liked Quotidio’s way of blocking it a little better, it has a nice calendar and it’s intuitive to set the times they can use their devices and the limits. Bark is sending us some hardware to connect to our wifi which will disable it at certain times of day. This cost extra, but I’m willing to try it if it limits my kids’ ability to change these settings. Plus, I told them we should all be doing this, I think it’s important that we as parents lead by example and stop watching shows and devices at certain times of day too. 

Quotidio lets you monitor your child’s texts (as in you can see all the messages), I haven’t installed this option as my son isn’t texting yet, and I don’t know how I feel about it. I think once kids are old enough to have a phone you need to trust them enough to not be monitoring their every text message. 

Bark, in contrast, gives you a notification if it sees any apps installed or content anywhere (SMS, email, or any social media) on the device that could be dangerous for a child. It’s pretty sensitive. It picked up “Claritin” in my shopping list in the Notes app, which was shared on my daughter’s iPad as “drug-related” conversation. 

The bottom line is that Bark and Quotidio both worked for what I was searching for. They got rid of YouTube access via installed apps or the internet. We had tried this before by uninstalling the app, but she found it in the App store. And now that I knew she could use Chrome to find YouTube, I knew I needed to up my game. 

That’s worth the price to me. 

I also feel safer with Google safesearch on my son’s iPad. I check his history often, and it’s very innocent at this point - he spends most of his time researching Zelda and Pokemon and Spider Man web shooters. Now I feel I don’t need to be worried about him accessing inappropriate content as he gets older. 

Here’s an article I found comparing these two particular options:

https://www.safewise.com/qustodio-vs-bark-which-parental-control-app-is-better/

And just an FYI, I’m not getting any kickbacks from either of these companies, just putting the info out there for all of you!

Good luck to all of you, it’s a jungle out there!

PS - also check out:

https://www.commonsensemedia.org/articles/parents-ultimate-guide-to-parental-controls

https://www.safesearchkids.com/ (You can bookmark this search page that uses Google Safesearch on an iPad and make it your landing page, but this option won’t work for older kids who can bypass this easily)