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It seems very soon internet access will take the status of being among a child’s basic rights. Almost every child as young as 3 watches kids’ programs on laptops or PC monitors. Some even watch it on a mobile screen. The internet has become a cheaper form of a nanny. Parents find it worth their money to get good residential internet and TV services, like the latest Spectrum cable package. This may include a few kids channels, some family channels, with a small number of adult channels thrown in. This post covers the top five parental control apps for Windows 11, including Microsoft Family Safety, Qustodio, Kidlogger, Fenced.ai, and Zoodles.
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Most mothers are busy in the house or office and children enjoy open access to these channels. They may watch content on PC monitors or large screen plasma TVs, sometimes unattended. However, kid-friendly content is only a small part of any entertainment lineup. All these screens have one thing in common and that is an internet package. And as a parent, it is your job to ensure your child uses it safely. This is where parental control apps can be useful.
5 Useful Parental Control Apps for Windows 11
Where there are plenty of advantages of the internet, there are some disadvantages as well. From the parents’ point of view the disadvantage of internet and internet-based entertainment including cable TV are mainly as follows:
- Possible exposure to undesirable content.
- Long hours spent on screen.
The one required solution to the above problems: Parental control! Many responsible software providers have addressed this problem. In this article, you can learn about the 5 top parental control apps for your newly upgraded Windows 11 system.
Microsoft Family Safety
The main features of Microsoft Family Safety app are that it allows the parents multiple ways to block unwanted websites. By doing so parents can make sure that children don’t get access to these sites even by accident.
Another feature that compliments the above feature is access to computer history. Parents can check and decide to keep or block websites that they find there. They can use specific keywords to control the kind of content that they don’t want to appear in searches.
This app helps parents to set a time limit for their children to use the internet. It helps create a healthier balance between on and off-screen time.
Qustodio
This has many features that concerned parents would love to have on their Windows 11. The first important feature offered by the app is that it allows parents to set Time Control on the devices. Once the time expires it automatically signs out of the user. With this feature, parents have the liberty to decide how much time they want their children to spend on screen.
Secondly, it allows adults to block gaming and control apps that they find inappropriate for children. Furthermore, this app allows control over the type of website you want your child to be protected from. It also helps parents in developing healthy digital habits for their children by controlling the time they spend online. This allows children to use their minds more creatively by making off-screen games for themselves.
A unique feature in Qustodio is the panic button. If you activate this feature, children can raise an alarm when they feel themselves to be in danger or panic situations. This feature is only available in Androids.
Kidlogger
Kidlogger is the third-best parental control app on this list. It’s like a digital detective that monitors every move that your child makes digitally. It also protects children from online predators.
It has a feature that takes a screenshot whenever your child opens the webcam. This tells you with whom they are interacting on a more personal level and logs all the texted conversations. Not many apps offer control apps over Skype calls. This one records all the skype calls made from the device.
Like all the other parental control apps, this one also allows predefined keywords and websites to be blocked from searches.
Fenced.ai
It is a notch above the others. With it, parents can have remote access to check what the kids are doing or watching online. It keeps the children safe from online threats by monitoring and alerting parents if children try any predefined parameters on alert. It also notifies parents if children try to uninstall the app. There are many pop-ups that prompt children to uninstall such control apps to give them open access.
Fenced.ai monitors social media platforms like Facebook, Viper, and Instagram. It also tracks calls made from the device. Additionally, it has geofencing capabilities, showing the child’s location at any given time. Finally, it notifies parents or guardians if children switch Wi-Fi networks.
Zoodles
This one creates a subspace on the net for the children. It only allows children to watch and read the content predefined by their parents. It tends to block mostly all other content from the children’s reach. Parents can periodically review and edit the content list.
It has an interestingly descriptive tagline “designed by parents, made for children”. Lastly, it creates and sends reports to parents of children’s daily activity online making it the perfect monitoring tool.
