Monitoring kids phones..

[k3am]

I have heard many good things about Bark. We're coming up on the end of our free trial and I hate it. I mean.. I like it when it works. But it doesn't work!

DD is on an iPhone, which seems to be the problem. We've removed her lock code to try to help things along. I have to manually sync it from our desktop, I have to enter in a passcode to trust the computer 9-10 times, and the sync restarts constantly. 

When it works, it's great. It picked up tons of issues that were what lead to us putting monitoring on the phone in the first place, she's been managing the phone appropriately ever since. The only alerts we've gotten since adding it were sexual harassment (me telling her to soak her toes when she got home, but Siri decided to say "suck" her toes), and medical issues that may need to be addressed (DD complaining that her toes hurt). 

I really want this to work. Is there another app that is similar that actually works on an iPhone? I have ZERO desire (or time!) to read through hundreds of tween texts to ensure she's managing the responsibility appropriately, but also no desire to buy her a new android or the Bark phone for $40/month. 

[jinkies]

So. This isn't perfect either, but we have an ipad that is mirrored to her phone. I read her texts on the ipad, but give her the illusion of privacy by never, ever mentioning anything I've ever read, except in two instances that absolutely required intervention.

I briefly tried Bark but didn't even get as far as you did with it. It just wasn't going to work for us.

The downside to the ipad is that it only mirrors imessages. I don't see texts from android devices. but the vast majority her friends have iphones, and those are the texts that are most likely to be problematic.

At some point we will transition off of monitoring her so closely, but we aren't there yet.

[k3am]

jinkies unfortunately I don’t have another device. The iPad I have is from work.

I’ve really liked Bark.. when it worked. DD knew it was there, what it was doing, and we had some good conversations about what it found (probably made easier by the fact that everything it found was from weeks before, we knew about some of it, and she’s since parted ways with the “friend” that seemed to be involved with all the issues.). It’s a bummer that Apple makes it useless.

[waverly]

I don't know what we are going to do with DD. DS got a Gabb Phone in 6th grade and moved to an iPhone this Christmas in 7th grade (13). He seems to be handling it well with no real issues. I do just look through it once a week, but there aren't as many texts as tween girls. Screen time seems to be working well, and we set his age to be lower so we can still limit his access. He never had his own iPad.

DD is not mature enough to have a phone. She has an iPad, and we frequently take it away due to her behavior. I know the answer isn't getting her an iPhone, but I am not sure what we will do. She can chat with her email address, so I just look through her iPad as well. DH says just let it play out which is code for her doesn't want to think about it right now. Gabb Phone also doesn't flag text messages anyway. Maybe I will get her the Apple watch that makes calls, but it still requires looking through the text messages manually.

[twinmomma]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who absolutely hates Bark! It felt like all it did was break DD1's ipad constantly. I was always trying to reconnect things and mess with it to get it to work correctly.

I'm back to just locking things down on the ipad with screentime controls. I manually flip through texts on the ipad and on her Gabb phone to see what's going on. I don't have a good solution for flagging things unfortunately.

[liverandonions]

Well shit. We were about to get our daughter a phone and had fully planned to put bark on it

[waverly]

liverandonions , an iPhone? I gather that Bark works much better with Androids.

[k3am]

liverandonions, if you haven't already bought a device, Bark offers their own and it supposedly works great, with the added benefit of kids can't delete or edit messages. It is also good on android. It's just Apple that's an issue. (FWIW, it works perfectly with the kindle fire we installed it on - not that she uses the fire much anymore, but it's at least a data point).

I figured out how to change my subscription from annually to monthly, so I'll give it a full month and make a decision then. I've wasted money on worse things.

The other monitoring programs I've found seem *really* invasive. I don't WANT to read all of her text messages. But she has proven that she needs more supervision than me spot checking can provide.

[liverandonions]

May 13, 2024 15:32:46 GMT -5 waverly said:

liverandonions , an iPhone? I gather that Bark works much better with Androids.

Yes an iPhone

[vasc]

Are you only wanting to monitor texts?

We have a “family” iPhone that DD (5th grade) took on the class overnight field trip back in February. I’ve gone through all the settings to completely block YouTube and Safari. She’s not really texting anyone other than me and her Dad at this point. But I’ll be honest, we haven’t opened her up to corresponding widely with friends other than the few she’s connected to on FB Kid Messenger.

[k3am]

vasc, more than just monitor texts. A lot of it we can control through apple parental settings, but texts are basically the only thing we couldn't get Bark to work for, which was the main reason we had it.

[k3am]

As a side note update, we were able to get Bark to work. Their customer support is horrendous (aka non-existent).

I completely disabled all the apple parental controls and that seems to have done the trick. It's annoying because DH's computer has to be turned on and DD has to enter her password a few times to get it to trust this computer, but she's been very proactive about doing it because (a) it's a condition of her having a phone, and (b) it means we are not snooping in her text messages.

At this point, we're happy with how it's working.

The good news is that since she broke up with former BFF, all alerts we've gotten have been 100% miscategorized as inappropriate. I wish we'd had the monitoring and realized what a shitty situation the two of them were in much sooner. It's possible adults could have stepped in a helped salvage the friendship, but worst case scenario, we would have put an end to it sooner.