Bark - Parental Controls 12+

As a parent this app is wonderful for me
to learn what my kids post without constantly having to take their phone and it end up bring a big fight every time. It only notifies me if something bad according to their program catches something. Honestly most of the time it wasn’t anything that concerned me so I just ignored it anyway. There has been a few time things have came up and I was glad I found out. Basically if I didn’t get notification I knew everything was ok. But I found out since I have an iPhone not everything is being monitored and I have to plug my kids phone into the computer and have it backed up before it catches anything. I then find out that months ago my daughter was talking to adults without my knowledge and they were trying to send her inappropriate stuff. She was too scared to come to me about it (because of course they were nice at first and lied about their age) so she just tried to ignore them. I should have been notified a long time ago. It shouldn’t be this hard. If this doesn’t get fixed I will be deleting because I can’t pay for something that doesn’t work so I can protect my kids.

Hi there. We thank you for reaching out, and we are glad to have given you valuable insights that helped. We sincerely hope that your daughter is safe! Your iOS device should sync wirelessly and automatically every 6 hours as long as your PC or Mac is on, your Bark desktop program running, and your child's iPhone is on the same WiFi network. Please email us at help@bark.us so that we may best assist and help to investigate why your daughter's device is not wirelessly syncing; we are here for you! 💛 bark.us/contact

My 13 yr old daughter was asked for nudes by a 13 yr old boy. I had to find this boy’s father and tell him what had happened. I trust my daughter to do the right things and in this instance she swore him out (we were actually proud of her for that) and told him no. I do not trust other kids to not send her things that she doesn’t even want, or pictures of them nude, which btw a child can be prosecuted for having child pornography on their phone even if it’s their boyfriend or girlfriend.

The teenagers scoring this low are either doing things they are not suppose to do, or their parents have not explained to them that it’s the lack of trust in other kids and their parents. Let’s face it, not all parents take the time to actually teach their kids right from wrong or have the tough conversations with them.. I know my parents didn’t.

For the parents reading this review, it would be a good idea to learn about new tech and apps and look them up before allowing your kids to have them.. ex: Snapchat was literally created to send pornographic images between adults.. and it deletes the pics unless the other person saves. Your kid might not be sending nudes, but it doesn’t mean someone isn’t sending it to your kid.

Hi there Cfont79! We are so appreciative of your honest and thorough feedback! ☺️ We are so sorry to hear you have that scary experience with you daughter. 💙 We’re glad to hear all is going well, and our alerts are helping to keep you in the "know" so that you can have those important open conversations with your children when needed. Your support and feedback are extremely valuable; please don't hesitate to reach our team at www.bark.us/contact if ever we can help. Thank you! 💙

It is completely useless for older children who know how to delete an app. I wasn’t sure if it was possible for my daughter to delete it, so I tried to see if I could delete it off her phone and sure enough I was able to. I did not get any notification until 30 minutes later. When I looked at the notification, all it said was my child’s account needs attention or something vague like that. This is the same as all other notifications such as when the VPN is being spotty, so I had no idea it was complete removed from my daughter’s phone.

Thankfully I do not have any concerns about my daughter’s mental health, but in theory 30 minutes is ample time for a child to delete the app, look up how to commit suicide, and commit the act. Similarly, 30 mins is ample time to look up that photo or video or whatever that they’re dying to see that Bark would have blocked. This is a major issue and I no longer see the utility of this app for a tech-savvy pre-teen.

I understand that Bark’s suggestion to circumvent this issue is to use Apple Screen Time to put parental controls on deleting apps, but the entire purpose of purchasing an app such as Bark is because of the very well known unreliability of Apple’s Screen Time. I should not purchase an app subscription and be told to rely on an external app in order for it to do its job. Very disappointed.

Hi there! Apple does not play well with third parties. They do not allow us (and other monitoring apps and services) to add an uninstall feature, which is why parents utilize iOS Screen Time to accomplish preventing their child from removing apps. iOS Screen Time and Bark pair well together, and lots of families use the two for extra security. Please reach out to our support team any time you want to chat. 💚