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General discussion

Parental Control: Do It or Not?

May 1, 2017 6:34AM PDT

Hi Guys,

I am a newbie here. I have two children and I am very concerned about their whereabouts. But Parental Control is rather a controversial issue nowadays so I am not quite sure whether to track and monitor their mobile activities and other stuff or not.
Lately, I came across a parental control app which I liked very much at first sight but I am not quite sure whether to go a step ahead and install it on my 12-year-old daughter's phone. Please have a look and let me know your thoughts about this parental control app

Discussion is locked

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Always your choice.
May 1, 2017 6:44AM PDT

The thing is that you can use a GPS tracker (more about in a moment) if you need to locate them. Part of parenting is letting them go. Your choice there.

OK, you said whereabouts. I used Real Time GPS Tracker from https://www.greenalp.com/RealTimeTracker/ but for another reason and it worked great. Price is right.

I was on the road and wanted to let my family see where I was. So this was my solution.

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The link doesn't work.
May 1, 2017 6:47AM PDT

But if it had worked, I'd probably removed it.

Ideally, parental control should be discussed between parent and child, certainly if the child is 12 year old and thus starting to become independent of her parents on her way to being adult. It's starting to become spying (on teenagers and adolescents) in stead of caring (for toddlers and children on primary school).

Since nobody here knows your style of upbringing, and you didn't tell what you particularly liked in that app, it's hardly possible to give any comment on how good that particular app would be for the this particular parent and child.

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I think my daughter needs more control
May 1, 2017 11:55PM PDT

I am talking about monitoring your child, especially a teen. One never knows where your child is and what is she up to. So, lately noticed some unusual behavior that is why I want to know more about her whereabouts to keep her back from "the wrong crowd". I am in a very unusual situation and I need more control over my daughter, just I am still not quite sure which method to use.

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Tracking is easy.
May 2, 2017 7:14AM PDT

Too easy. The rest, not so much.

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there are many who don't
May 2, 2017 7:58AM PDT

Overly permissive. Some of them later were sorry they hadn't. The news is full of such misfortunes. They are your children, protect them, even from their own foolishness at times.

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Do it
May 2, 2017 7:56AM PDT

I used a keylogger on my youngest daughter in her teens and discovered some creepy guy was trying to get her to meet him at the end of our road, to avoid meeting parents first. Another was some boy her age sending an erect crotch shot. I contacted parents of both young men. One I went through an uncle to locate him, turns out his uncle was a policeman. That ended it immediately. Do it.