Best Parental Control & Mobile Monitoring Apps 2026

Parental control software gives you the ability to monitor, control, manage, or restrict your kids' online activities on a network, device, or app level. Most parental control programs let you limit their screentime, block specific content or websites, and even monitor your kids’ social media networks. Other tools are even more comprehensive, with features like geofencing, keystroke logging, and remote device locking, to name just a few.

For our kids, the internet is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it has helped promote education and learning, provided hours of entertainment, and might have helped them pick up a language. On the other hand, it has also opened a can of digital worms: pedophiles, cyberbullying, online predators, inappropriate content, and more. Now, it is up to the parents to straddle the fine line between giving their kids digital freedom on the one hand, whilst also protecting them from the pitfalls of the Internet.

Parental control apps will let you do just that, and then some.

The most basic parental controls include features like screen-time limits, app blocking, web content filtering, and location tracking. Depending on how old your kids are, there are a few useful features you might find extra valuable.

Geofencing, for example, lets you create a virtual boundary using GPS or RFID and then get notified when your kids leave or enter the designated areas. In practice, it enables you to mark safe zones like home, school, or a relative's house while marking "unsafe" places like video arcades, bars, clubs, casinos, and the like.

If you think your child is spending too much time on TikTok, Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, KiK, or Viber, some parental control apps offer a "social media monitoring" feature. Want to know what your teenager is up to without asking too many questions? A good parental control program provides a keylogging functionality so you can see their most-used apps and websites, frequent contacts, searches, and more. Some apps will even let you block Wi-Fi, see what's saved on their phone, read their texts and chats, or check their social calendar — all without being detected!