Miserably failing to enforce digital ground rules in your house? There's an app for that.
Google Family Link was launched last year and recently became available for use in South Africa.
It puts parents in charge of their children's smartphones, allowing them to manage apps (approving or blocking apps they download), manage their screen time (tracking how much time they use on apps and even set daily limits for them) or disable their device by locking it - remotely from theirs.
Here's how the Google Family Link app works
Setup
The parent has to download Google Family Link for parents while the kid(s) download Google Family Link for children & teens - both available for free in the Google Play store for Android devices or the iOS app store.
Both parent and child will be prompted to sign up for the apps with Gmail accounts - following which both parties will have to agree to the supervision. The child's acceptance of this officially appoints the parent(s) as administrators of the smartphone.
Choosing apps
By allowing supervision, you give your parents the ability to manage and monitor your Google account and supervisable devices.
Next, you'll activate Family Link Manager, which requests several permissions required for Family Link to work. Parents won't be able to use these permissions to erase your device, reset your password or see what's on your screen.
The next step will be to agree on which of the apps on the child's smartphone the parent is allowed to supervise. The list of apps is comprehensive and contains almost all apps on the phone (all apps are selected by default).
Tracking phone usage
After both devices have been linked, the parent can monitor the child's use of their phone - and it gets pretty deep.
Thus far, the child had spent 12 minutes reading a book in Google Play Books and listening to music on Spotify for 7 minutes.
The parent was also able to check the day before's activity of an hour spent on Netflix, 23 minutes surfing the net and 16 minutes of news reading. Parents can also check up to a month's worth of phone activity.
Tracking phone usage
Parents can decide on which websites to allow the kids to visit by either blocking matured content, listing them or having the child seek approval to enter them. Parents could also turn the SafeSearch feature to bar sexually explicit and violent results from appearing after the child does a Google Search.
A live location map showing where the child's device is, appears on the main dashboard of the app at all times, making it easier to track whereabouts of the child.
Setting screen and bed time
Parents are able to set how much phone time the child gets for every day of the week (for example, allowing for more flexibility on weekends). For instance, the parent can set phone time to be between 17:00 to 19:00 on weekdays. Outside these hours, the phone will remain locked.
Bedtimes could also be set and for each specific day of the week. If the parent sets bedtime hours from 21:00 to 07:00 the following morning, the phone will be locked and unusable until sunrise.
Locking the phone
The parent becomes the alpha and omega with this feature. It places so much power in the hands of parents by allowing them to take the phone away at any time and any place - without touching it. Parents can render the child's phone completely useless with the push of a button.
After a parent locks the phone, as we learned the hard way, the device virtually becomes useless except to make emergency calls.
Google says that the app falls part of the company's commitment to building tech that's helpful especially in addressing the need to reduce the amount of time spent on smart devices to make way for more balanced living overall.