For my book project I searched my moto E test phone (Android 5.1) user guide for “child” and “restriction” and “parental”. I found “products are not toys and may be hazardous to small children”.
Ooookaaay. That’s not too encouraging. My iPhone User Guide has an extensive discussion of restriction options.
Next I tried “restricted profiles” (Android 4.3 and later). Oops. They’re only for tablets, not phones. So it was time to look for 3rd party options [1].
Google found me some lousy references and two useful ones: Five parental control apps for Android devices - Pocket-lint and 10 Android Parental Control Apps - Yoursphere for Parents [2].
From these I picked up MMGuardian, Funamo, AppLock, Kids Place, Screen Time, Net Nanny, Norton Family and a few others. Between the set of these Android, for a technically sophisticated user, can have advantages over built-in iOS restrictions (iOS security models limit the value vendors can add).
I’m most interested in products that work for teens and/or adults with atypical minds, so that eliminated a few options. Next I looked for good quality companion web sites with clear pricing — that criterial took out both Norton Family and the (not-really-free) AppLock.
I ended up with four options:
- MMGuardian: app usage, time use, texts including driving. $35/year. iOS solution from same vendor.
- Screen Time: $48/year
- Net Nanny: browser restrictions, remote access. $60/year - primary focus on browser control.
- Funamo: $20 one time purchase.
Funamo is the value option, with a more limited and geekier web site than the competition. For my target users I think more support is needed. Net Nanny has the highest pricing, which may reflect longer tenure. MMGuardian and ScreenTime seem (hey, information is limited!) to have a good balance of price and value.
ScreenTime and MMGuardian both have well done blogs with working RSS feeds. ScreenTime is Android only, MMGuardian has an iOS product too. Both have a 14 day free trial. ScreenTime has 7,600 Play Store reviews, MMGuardian has 1,200. Both have well documented uninstall procedures[3]. They are well balanced competitors.
I’m going to have to test both of them — since MMGuardian also has an iOS product I’ll start there.
- fn -
[1] Android reminds me so much of Windows; only geeks can truly use it. Why hasn’t Google bundled even minimal functionality into their OS? The sort-of-free AppLock has 3.3 million reviews. There is a need.
[2] There’s something broken in the info-sphere. Exactly two useful reviews?!
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1 comment:
I can't understand why Kidslox is not in the list( I use this app and can say that it is very effective. It perfectly fits my needs as it has daily limits and content blocking features. I activated time limits for every day (1 hour for week days and 2 hours for weekend days). For now works fine for our family. In addition, I 'sleep safely' knowing that he has no access to adult content))) Naturally, we talked to him and explained why we started using the app. Seems like he understood.
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