4 Best Child Monitoring Apps to Prevent Cyberbullying

While cell phones have penetrated school spaces, bullying at school has extended to online spaces, which is not a pleasant exchange by any means. Now, parents are not only grappling with the reality of phones being forever accessible to their children, but also the increased risks of cyberbullying and other forms of online abuse.

With every passing day, cyberbullying is taking a turn for the worse, so much so that 16% of students have experienced bullying electronically. But it does not end here. Aggressive and regular exposure to bullies in an online environment can adversely impact children’s mental and psychological well-being, too.

So, the question arises: What should parents do? Is this not inevitable? Yes, cyberbullying will continue to exist in various forms as long as technology continues to play a pivotal role in our lives. However, it does not entail that parents should give up and not take proper measures to protect their children from it.

Instead, they should proactively supervise their child’s online environment using monitoring apps to detect cyberbullying and address it immediately. Nonetheless, we understand that choosing a reliable app can be challenging, therefore, we have compiled a list of the best child monitoring apps below.

1. Xnspy

Xnspy is a child monitoring app best known among parents for the depth of monitoring it offers. Its robust features, plus its consistent performance, put it at the top. However, the way you view the app depends on your needs.

If you need to prevent cyberbullying and are in no need of its detection, then you might find Xnspy too detailed, and the activity logs might pile up over time. However, for early detection, you need the in-depth insights provided.

The app is, therefore, a reliable solution for non-tech-savvy parents who are looking for constant oversight in real-time. Moreover, Xnspy also gives uninstallation protection through its stealth mode. Further paired with only one-time access requirements, remote logging, and constant updates, the detection and prevention of cyberbullying is really made easier for parents.

However, note that you mostly have to go blind into the app, with only a demo available, and you can come across issues with its outdated layout. Regardless of its layout, though, the parent dashboard is very responsive and does not lag or glitch.

Features of Xnspy:

Xnspy is considered one of the best child monitoring apps in the market for cyberbullying detection due to its comprehensive phone activity monitoring. Through complete text message conversations and call recordings, the app ensures that no instances of bullying go unnoticed.
From phone logs, Xnspy also accesses emails and offers detailed logs on the content, subject, and addresses of all shared emails. To further add to the depth of insights provided, the app logs all sent and received media files on the web dashboard.
For social media monitoring, Xnspy offers direct chat access to over 13 social media apps. With complete list and chat views of a child’s complete conversations, parents are more likely to find out any concerning activity logs related to bullying.
On the other hand, if the child is bullied online through comments, stories, etc., the screen recorder feature takes regular screenshots of the child’s phone activity every 5-10 seconds to keep the parents informed.
Its keylogger can further provide insight into any exposure to cyberbullying by picking on online searches, captions, and text in note apps. Since the built-in keylogger records all keystrokes, no typed or removed words are missed.
Moreover, parents can activate keyword alerts on their child’s phone remotely and flag words related to bullying to ensure they receive instant alerts anytime such logs are detected by the system. Other alerts like contacts, locations, and emails can also be activated if deemed appropriate.
Since 30% of teens have been cyberbullied at some point in their lives, Xnspy not only facilitates early detection but also ensures a child’s protection. Through remote commands like phone locking, app blocking, screenshot taking, surround recording, etc., parents can prevent further exposure to bullying, both online and offline.

Visit Website

2. Qustodio

Qustodio has been active in the parental control market for over a decade and has made a name for itself in basic monitoring. The app’s primary focus is on enabling parents to protect their children against potential issues like cyberbullying while respecting their privacy.

However, it does present issues like the inability to get detailed and proper insight into the extent of cyberbullying a child is being exposed to. Regardless, the features Qustodio does offer function well and can help parents take preventive measures.

Then why is it on number two? Well, the app lacks robust uninstallation prevention and can easily be bypassed by slightly tech-savvy children. Not only that, but the use of VPN and different browsers can also render most of the blocking options useless.

Even though these issues remain a glaring drawback in Qustodio’s monitoring abilities, parents continue to opt for Qustodio as an app for cyberbullying prevention because of the consistency in its performance.

Advantages of Qustodio:

Qustodio has recently introduced social media monitoring for apps like Instagram (only for Android), WhatsApp, and Line. The app scans the message content on the mentioned platforms and triggers an alert if it comes across bullying. Moreover, parents receive a snippet of the conversation that triggered it for proper insight.
Since cyberbullying among children is the highest on YouTube at 79%, Qustodio also takes proactive measures to monitor YouTube and provide parents with usage details. Though the provided logs can be limited in nature and may not enable parents to recognize cyberbullying.
Qustodio, however, redeems itself by offering message and call monitoring. While the call logs are just a list of different types of calls with contact details, the message monitoring takes the cake. It allows parents to directly access their child’s text message conversations since school bullies tend to reach out to children on their personal numbers.
Lastly, since Qustodio is better known for its parental controls, it does give parents the ability to block, allow, or allow with alerts various apps and websites. It further offers controls for parents to block phones entirely or disable internet access when the exposure to cyberbullying becomes too much.

3. Bark

In all honesty, no one does ethical monitoring like Bark. Parents who do not want to be invasive but still need to stay on top of any serious concerns, namely cyberbullying, can install the app on their child’s phone. However, they must remain wary of the uninstallation protection provided by Bark, since it is not as reliable as the rest of its features.

Moreover, if you, as a parent, require constant oversight, then you should opt for other apps like Xnspy instead of Bark. Not only that, but if your child is not aware of online safety to some extent and is younger, then the kind of ethical monitoring provided by Bark might not suffice.

Nonetheless, Bark can be exactly what you need because it does offer monitoring to some extent and includes advanced remote controls that are absent in some of the competing parental control apps in the market.

Why Bark?

Bark uses advanced machine learning algorithms to scan 30+ social media platforms for sensitive topics like cyberbullying on a child’s phone. However, parents need to note that the app only has direct access to TikTok, Kik, Skype, Discord, and Snapchat. To monitor the rest of the social media platforms, parents need to log into their child’s account on the parent dashboard.
Once the app comes across activity on social media platforms that relates to the concerned topic, cyberbullying, then an alert is triggered for the parents, alongside the particular content that requires their attention. Overall, every alert is received in around 10 minutes and can, at times, be a false positive in case of high sensitivity.
The app also scans text messages, emails, photos, and videos to detect potential risks and send alerts. But, be mindful that the app and alerts are only available in the US, Australia, Guam, and South Africa.
As far as controls in Bark are concerned, it enables parents to filter apps and websites based on predefined categories. However, parents cannot outright block any apps, which is limiting. Instead, they can disable the internet without restricting offline apps to reduce exposure to bullying.

4. Net Nanny

Net Nanny is the last app in our list of the best child monitoring apps, and after reading this, you will know why it is at number four. While Net Nanny is good and offers reliable monitoring, it cannot be deemed the best because of its lack of uninstallation protection and unavailability on Android devices.

Not only that, but its lack of specific activity details also puts it at a disadvantage. However, if this were all Net Nanny was about, it would not stand where it is today. Regardless of some drawbacks, the app continues to excel due to its ease of use and effective command execution.

Plus, Net Nanny offers compatibility with devices that are otherwise unheard of in parental control apps, like iOS, Windows, and macOS.

Benefits of Net Nanny:

Net Nanny is known for its web and app filtering. In web filtering, the app has over 10 categories, and parents can even create custom filters for cyberbullying to block apps that are exposing the child to any form of verbal abuse. They can further add keywords on their own to ensure proactive detection of bullying.
On the other hand, parents can also filter over 120 apps, out of which 7 are social media apps. Regardless of offering social media app filters, the text analysis in Net Nanny does not extend to chats. Moreover, some marked apps can slip through. But, overall, the app does enable parents to block, allow, or get alerts on various apps.
Another app that Net Nanny monitors separately is YouTube. With proper insight into its usage, parents can ensure that their child has a safe environment and is not exposed to bullying.
Even though its inability to monitor texts does not work in its favor, parents can still choose to use the app because of its ability to disable the device or pause the internet on the target phone.

In Conclusion

With the whole discussion at hand, it is pretty evident that parents must invest in the best child monitoring apps, the same way they do in other online tools. However, it is equally important that the app you, as a parent, choose is the right fit for your child and fulfills your needs simultaneously.

However, solely relying on these apps for cyberbullying detection and prevention would not suffice. Parents must also find ways to communicate properly with their child and improve their self-esteem to prevent any instance of cyberbullying from going unreported.