Parent’s Control enhanced with Family Link by Google

There is a hot debate around the topic: Internet is good or bad for your kids. It is undeniable that the development of information technology has brought back such huge changes to our modern life. However, advantages come along with a lot of threats. The safety of children while they access websites to watch videos, play games and etc. is always big concerns for parents. Kids may either spend too much time on their smartphones and other internet-access devices, which can be harmful to their health or are threatened to dangers coming from cyberbullying. To assist parents in the protection of their children, an application named Family Link has been introduced by the giant Google. This is the latest move to ease the concern of checking on their child’s usage of Chromebooks.

Google expands the availability of the parental control with new app Family Link

This is an innovative idea enabling parents to have more control over their children’s activities on smartphones or other devices that can access the Internet. This application has been active for a while and from now on, it becomes officially available on Chromebooks with more added features.

For instance, parents may list out those websites that they want their kids to access and filter on the browser in case they don’t certain whether all the things children see is 100 percent safe or not while their children enjoy surfing the internet. Good websites can be put into whitelist if parents feel them essential for their kids and screen out inappropriate those into the blacklist. With the same intention, the new Family Link application can help everyone to make their own application whitelist and filter the Android apps that parents want or don't want their children to access. By the way, this app features to help parents control all in-app purchases occurring on Google accounts that are being under supervision.

In addition, safety modes can be installed by the app to limit the time slot that your child uses the internet such as bedtime mode or even unlock and lock devices from a remote place in case they find their children spend more than the accepted amount of time they should be online.

Family Link app now can be available on Chromebooks. After parents set up a supervised account, this app will get a connection to all Android apps from the Play Store.

Not only enhancing parents’ access to make sure the right amount of time their children can use on the internet browser, does Family Link by Google export frequent activity reports, which offers parents visibility to estimate how long their children should online with the apps they use.

Supervision for Teenagers

Parents now can track smartphone activities of their children aged from 13 years and upper

Even though teenagers are considered to more mature and responsible for their behaviors in comparison to kids, supervision is still essential to some extends. Nevertheless, while children who are easily restricted from the amount of time they can spend on their favorite websites and apps, teenagers can find a way to shut down those controls. By foreseeing this situation, Family Link will notify parents when their teens disable the controls, and parents can set up several ground rules with a conversation in details to teach the app about how these rules work.

The last but no means least, children’s Google account settings may be under the supervision of parents, which can be even locked out the supervised accounts off the Chromebook. This feature is quite useful in the condition that all family is active on one Chromebook, rather than just only one child.

New features Google will be continued to add into the Family Link app to strengthen the protection for children, along with the supervision of the amount of time they can online on smart devices.