7 Apps to Care for Your Children and Your Family
Social networking is an invaluable tool, but we must care for our children and prevent its misuse.
Protecting the family in the era of social networks is more complicated than ever, but definitely not impossible. These applications are easy to use and help.
If you want to keep your communications between the family, you can use Life360. It is a private social network where you can see where your loved ones instantly on a map and report you got somewhere with the function of check-in. If there are problems, the application has an alert button that makes all family members receive mail, voice and text. It also serves to send text messages between family.
Qustodio is a free application with very advanced monitoring functions that can be installed on computers and phones. Control includes a portal which categorizes and blocks Web pages visited and monitor the activity of social networks like Facebook and Twitter. In case of a prohibited or dangerous place, parents are alerted immediately. The paid version costs about $ 50 a year and can monitor calls and text messages, the location and even the pictures that your child is sharing online.
In the end, there is no better solution than educating our children and be confident that they will make the best decisions, but in the meantime, it's good to know what they're up to. It is better a problem early intervention to deal with unpredictable consequences.
Apps to care for your children and your family
Today there are multiple apps, both free and paid, that allow care for your family through the smartphone.
Here are some applications available to achieve better control over what our children and families through technology included in smartphones. This is a brief list of some of the existing apps that could make a difference in the lives of their loved ones.
Security
In all cases we must keep in mind that like any other app that handles sensitive, personal and confidential information, we must take proper care with our mobile devices even more than our wallet.
They usually carry a lot of information that in the wrong hands, could be used to harm so it is important that we protect both the software needed as well to ensure that it never goes out of our control that is used indiscriminately by others .
Free Apps
Of course, the free apps are the most accessible to the general public although by their nature tend to be very basic, but can serve perfectly to locate your smartphone and, by extension, to its owner.
Find my iPhone
The venerable Find my iPhone is a popular application among users of the Apple iChécheres not only lets you block a stolen device so that it is useless without your password, but also lets you delete your sensitive information remotely. Which can work very well for a family is in the way that can be used to know, at any time, the location of who bears the device whenever you have a WiFi signal or 2G / 3G / 4G available.
There is no cost and can be verified from any web browser if they have the password iCloud not without saying that should not be an easy password. It can also be checked from the mobile App available free on the App Store.
Find my Friends
The other free Apple application called Find My Friends allows those families where everyone has iPhones and iPads settle at any time easily without draining the battery unnecessarily by the theme of GPS, as only active if someone makes request to place a family member. It is also available in the Apple App Store.
Life360
This free app is available for iOS and Android, so for a family that has devices of both brands can be very useful. The free version allows you to designate two important places for example, home and school, or house parents and grandparents house to allow a parent to know exactly when the child arrives or leaves the location. It can also be mapped at all times to members of the family, which is very useful especially for children who may be at risk of abduction or elderly people or disabled who might need help.
Paying $ 5 a month per family or $ 50 a year can add more locations like office, home of other relatives, friends house, authorized sites banned sites which instantly alert parents when their children are arriving or departing from those places. Even parents can alert each other when they come home or office, to give an example.
Both the pay and the free version also allows internal and instant messaging; the paid version even allows you to send SMS messages (depending on coverage). Both versions also have information about ex-offenders living in their neighborhood, if the police has provided this information for the moment, we understand that is only available in the United States.
BlackBerry?
Although the popularity of this platform has fallen and with it has also reduced the number of applications available, we can count on this platform with some options that might give us peace of mind when it comes to knowing where our family is.
BlackBerry Protect
BlackBerry Protect allows, among other things, locate your device or any member of your family whenever you have the username and password you designated. You can locate equipment on a map, making it sound, lock, reset the password or put a message on screen.
Windows Phone?
Windows Phone there are few applications of this kind compared to other platforms, but by FollowMee GPS Tracker is one of the most recommended. It is also available for iOS, Android, Kindle and BlackBerry! The free application allows you to monitor in real time the location of the device but the paid version adds the ability to view the history of 7 days to 90 days according to plan.
For teenagers we recommend the Canary App. This canary "sings" every time our children speak or chat on your iPhone or Android while on the move more than 19Km/h, and warns us when passing speed limits or geographical perimeters that we determine. The app does not lock the phone, but it tells us when these situations occur and enables us to talk to our children about their behavior. The app is free, but the service is available for a fee of $ 14.99.
As you can see, there is a lot of applications many of which are free to support parents who wish to care for their children even when they can not physically be with them. Used responsibly, these applications can even save the life of a family; we recommend you explore every option before settling on one in particular.
We must also remember that using GPS smartphone battery will wear out faster, so it will be advisable also to use, where possible, a holster with extra battery or charger have on hand for any emergency.