App is easy way to monitor ‘Screen Time’

Editor’s Note:
In this second article from Awareness Technologies, we look at how parents and grandparents can use this 2019 National Parenting Product Award-winning technology to help kids learn how to acknowledge and balance their screen time.

By Jillian Kennedy
Awareness Technology, special to Prime

Life has certainly changed since most of today’s parents – and especially grandparents – were children.  For example, did you know today’s children are spending more than seven hours a day on their smartphones? This is significantly more than the recommended healthy amount of two hours a day, and leaves little time for other types of play.

Guiding children to make healthier choices when it comes to technology is critical, but also a challenge.  Fortunately, technology itself may provide some help in the form of an app that enables parents and grandparents to monitor and set limits on children’s device usage.

Screen Time is an award-winning parental control app designed to help parents and grandparents ensure their children are discovering all that childhood has to offer, online and off. The Screen Time app provides simple monitoring and management tools to achieve a happy balance…argument free!

What can Screen Time do?

Here are some of the ways parents and grandparents can utilize Screen Time:

• Time limits – This app lets an adult automatically limit the amount of time a child spends on selected apps each day. Setting limits is quick and easy for the parent or grandparent, and helps children avoid excessive usage. You can let Screen Time be the bad guy and take one for the team!
• Establish tasks – Parents and grandparents can encourage positive habits by setting tasks for children, and then reward them with additional screen time when complete. This is a great way to encourage them to do chores or tasks that they don’t usually like doing. When there is the reward of more screen time, their attitude can quickly change…
• Instant pause – Parents and grandparents love this one! Remotely block all activity on your children’s devices instantly until you say so. A great way to get your children off their devices when dinner is ready or when they have to get out the door to go to school.
• Free play – Screen Time recognizes that sometimes you need your children to be distracted; the app lets you override all settings temporarily when the need arises. Great for car journeys.
• Set schedules – Screen Time lets parents and grandparents establish schedules for things such as homework and outdoor time and restricts specific apps during these periods. Setting schedules like this help kids to avoid distractions when they need to focus on something important.
• Web history and search history – Screen Time lets parents and grandparents keep an eye on a child’s web history and search history, so you know they’re staying safe.
• Geolocation – Geolocation allows parents or grandparents to see where a child (and their device) is at any given moment. By tapping a button in the parent’s app, you will be able to see on a map the location of your child’s device. This feature gives you peace of mind when children are growing up.
• Web filtering – Web filtering lets parents and grandparents choose which websites children have access to, across all browsers and even in private mode. With Screen Time, an adult can block specific websites and choose categories of websites to be blocked, for example website that are related to illegal behaviors.

Getting started with Screen Time

There are two Screen Time apps: one is the Screen Time for Kids App, which you install on your child’s device and allows you set up limits and block apps. This app is free, and you can use it for as long as you need. You can download Screen Time for Kids on the Play Store for Android devices and on the App Store for Apple devices.

The other app is the Screen Time Parent App; this allows you to control the Parental Control App from your parent Android device, Apple device or from a browser and is free to try for 14 days with full monitoring and managing functionalities. After the 14-day trial, if you want to keep using the managing functionalities you have the option to subscribe to Premium, or keep monitoring for free.

To start things off, download and install the Parent App on your parent Android or Apple device and sign up – you can also sign up and log in through a browser.

Jillian Kennedy is the Marketing Coordinator for Awareness Technologies, owners of digital monitoring services including Screen Time Labs. For more information on the services they provide visit https://screentimelabs.com/