Bark - Parental Controls Ratings and Reviews

This is honestly the best monitoring app I’ve tried, and I’ve tried a few. Yes, iPhones are tricky and you have to install iTunes on a laptop and go through a whole set up. But after the initial install it has managed itself. Every now and then my laptop will unsync with the wifi and I have to link it again, but as soon as I do, I can see my daughter’s phone being backed up into iTunes. My recommendation is to go read the Bark Kids reviews. They’re comedy gold. They are so angry with this app doing what it was designed for. If only they understood that the app actually helps maintain a sense of privacy because it only alerts when there’s something wrong so parents don’t have to physically take the phone and read through all the typical teenage angst and rants. My advice: never freak at the alerts, open and read the content before approaching your child. I once got a suicide alert and what I read broke my heart. A friend’s mother had attempted suicide and the friend was sharing with my child. I had time to process how I wanted to approach this subject with my child (we had never talked about suicide) and we had a great talk. I purchased the annual membership right away.

Hi there! We appreciate you taking the time to leave a review. Your support means a lot to us. We love that you are able to have open and honest conversations with your child about the alerts you receive. You can reach our team at bark.us/contact if you ever want to chat or have questions. 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. 💚

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! 💙

I feel so much better to know there is someone helping to keep my kids and their friends safe. I am a therapist and work with mental health issues every day. I believe I have a very open and honest relationship with my teen. I believe she has more insight into mental illness and many of the dangers that are out there. So having this app has nothing to do with me not trusting her or not having an open healthy relationship and honest communication - its another way for parents to help navigate this tough world. Whether it’s my child or one of her friends thats struggling with depression or self injurious behavior or a very sick individual slowly but surely attempting to groom my child - I want that chance to be able to intervene and make aware the potential dangers. To discuss what occurred or what options there are to deal with the situation and talk it out. Beyond having the app - I had the opportunity to speak for about an hour with one of the Bark support team members and he was super helpful. All of my questions were answered and he never rushed through anything. He was kind and patient and very knowledgeable. So far I have not found anything that I would change! Thanks Bark!

Hi! Thank you so much for you support and trusting us to help in keeping an "eye" out for those possible concerns. We're really happy to hear you are finding everything easy to navigate, and our staff is always here and ready to help if ever you need. Please message us any time you want to chat at help@bark.us or at www.bark.us/contact any time. :)

We got the bark app because my daughter was getting over 350 texts a day and didn’t do her school work for the entire month of October. I honestly think it was contributing to depression. We love what the app does combined with iPhone Screen Time/Downtime. I can shut off everything in less than a second. She is much happier and school is much better. And she hardly is able to use Tiktok, Snapchat, etc.
We are having so much trouble with storage - I mean 350 texts a day for a couple of weeks it has to go through. And it goes through them again and again even though we have reviewed and deleted . Weird vids and bizarre photos that the teens think is funny. It’s a ton of space. We got an external drive and thought we pointed files to it. But it doesn’t seem to be working. Now we can’t find “troubleshooting” to try to fix where the files are going. And the home computer gets angry and slow because we can’t get the bark files pointed to the drive. We are NOT going to buy their storage when we have plenty. We keep contacting help but I think they are sick of us. It seems they want to wring more money out of us. I would totally give it 5 stars if the program had a few more options to get us to troubleshooting easier and making the storage easier to manage.

Thank you for your support. And we're sorry to hear of your frustration. Rest assured, our support team is happy to help our Bark families with unlimited support, so please don't hesitate reaching out to help@bark.us anytime you need assistance. 💜 > info.bark.us/ios-help

(The fact that every single point in their comment to my review is lies is just more proof that you should not do business with this company).

This is a very dishonest company. I did not know they still owned the phone. And then when the location feature wasn’t working they wouldn’t help, just kept passing the buck saying it was Google that we needed to contact. I could not even get an actual person at a Google to help me, it’s computer generated stuff that was I credibly unhelpful. When I told Bark I either needed the location feature to work or else I needed to disconnect the phone they insisted location isn’t really very important. Sorry, but they don’t get to decide for me what is & isn’t important. When I tried to ask for help in their Facebook group they blocked me. When I demanded that they turn off the phone they turned it off, but refuses to return the unused portion for the month. We hadn’t even used it for one week yet they kept the amount paid for the whole month. And then we had to return the phone (because apparently they still own it even though they don’t tell you that anywhere until you terminate service) & even though we hadn’t even used the phone they looked & said the screen was scratched & they charged us $59 for that lie. The whole thing is such a scam & they are so dishonest & sleazy. DO NOT DO BUSINESS WITH THIS COMPANY.

Hi there, Fishchick72! Happy to address these false allegations after reviewing our entire history with you and our team. It's unfortunate that you seem to have misunderstood the monthly agreement of our phone subscription model; we do make our subscription model clear in our terms and also many places on our site, as we aim to be as clear and transparent as possible for our families. Regarding your issues with location, upon reviewing your correspondence with our support team and the screenshots that you sent, you showed us that the issue was in fact with your child's Google account & Samsung Find My, and is not in any way affected or affiliated with our Bark Phone Location features, which is entirely different. This is why we kindly pointed you to please connect with Google regarding Google account issues for your child; we have zero control over Google account troubleshooting as we are not Google. We are terribly sorry to hear that you had a difficult time connecting with Google's support; they can be reached at https://support.google.com/accounts (which is not a part of Bark or anything that Bark can access). No where in your support ticket did we ever say or insinuate that "location isn’t really very important"; this is entirely untrue and false. If we felt that way as a company, we would not have included full location features readily available to our families, built right in, that require no Google account connection or access at all. Your location troubles were with Samsung's Find My feature, provided via Samsung & Google, and again - we are saddened to hear they were not able to help you, but this has nothing to do with Bark's Location Features.

Regarding being removed from our parent group on Facebook, this is because you refused to follow our group guidelines and proved to be quite aggressive, slanderous, refused help, and continued to make trouble. We understand that following rules and guidelines can be frustrating for some, however we have these in place to protect our community members and for the integrity of our group's safety & security for all.

We absolutely did refund the $ portion for your unused month to ease your frustration, however as stated in our terms we are under no obligation to do so. We also do have photos and proof of the scratches and damaged that caused you to incur a repurposing fee, as the condition the device was returned in was not acceptable for us to send to another family without going through the repurposing process.

We tried to reply to your Facebook Review and help, however because you had blocked us we could not further help and engage you there. When you block someone on Facebook they cannot reply to you, so this is why we were unable to respond to your dishonest claims there.

We sincerely wish your family the best and hope that you find a service that works to meet your family's needs; we understand that our service isn't for everyone, and that's ok. However we don't tolerate harassment, and the time given by us chasing around your slander and dishonesty in many, many places here on the internet could be better spent by us helping to keep families safer online.

hi i have some very strict parents (mostly my mom) who decided to put this on my phone a couple of years ago as soon as i got it. i’m 16 now almost 17 and my mom isn’t letting me get it off anytime soon. in fact, this app has made me walk on eggshells around both of them and has pretty much destroyed my relationship with them. i feel comfortable telling my parents absolutely nothing, as they are looking to be more involved in my personal life. they do not trust me to tel them if there are serious problems in my life, and downloading this app only shows the lack of trust u have to ur kids. idk about other people, but respectfully, i hate what it’s done to me. i’ve had to buy a second phone just to text my friends in privacy. i’ve seen the comments and reviews of the developers saying “we only show certain things to monitor privacy”, but it’s not exactly true. the thing uses key words so if someone typed ANYTHING remotely concerning at all, the app sends about 10 texts from that conversation to ur parents. look, all im trying to say is i highly don’t recommend this app. it has destroyed any trust i’ve originally had with my parents, it shows their lack of trust in me, and it leads me to find other, more extreme ways of finding privacy. i would hate to get to this point with my kids i pray every day that i don’t. i hope y’all found this helpful

Hi there! Our mission is to help keep kids safer, while still giving them privacy by never showing all of their data to their parents! We sincerely hope that you have a discussion with your parents about what your family agrees is an appropriate and safe use of technology and internet. 💚

Y’all ever wonder why our kids try to hide things from us? It’s because of things like this! Things that report to you what your child is doing ruins trust in the family. Our children will want to hide more things from us with this app than ever. A phone is an incentive and is a reliever for our children. If you feel the need to monitor your child’s actions then one, they are not mature enough to have a phone or social media, two, you’re not doing a good job explaining responsibilities to your child in order for them to mature. I’ve seen country amounts of children get outted to their parents about their sexuality BECAUSE of this app! It really does upset me that children did not have to time to explain their sexuality to their parents and have an actual moment to explain because of this app. As a parent I would never NEVER in courage for this app to be put on a child’s phone. If you feel the need to monitor their phone, WHICH YOU SHOULD NEVER DO unless something extreme has come up, then you sit down with them and simply say, “Hey I just want to monitor your phone for a little bit if you have an sensitive things that you talk about to your friends with then just let me know and I won’t read through it.” ITS JUST THAT SIMPLE!! I’ve seen many LGBTQ+ youth members have their lives torn apart by this app! This is a ridiculous thing to make!

‪We appreciate your feedback, peastoch! ‬Thank you for taking the time to voice your concerns to us about our service—we’re happy to offer some insight! We fully support LGBTQ+ children and would never purposefully out children to their parents. We only sends parents alerts to issues such as online predator, cyberbullying, violence, profanity, abuse, suicidal ideation, sexual content, drugs/alcohol etc. Parents who use our service to help monitor their children are never able to access all of the content and activities of their children devices. As former children and teens ourselves, we understand how some children may feel concerns about our service, however, we want to make it clear that we work diligently to provide children with as much appropriate amounts of privacy as possible! If you’d ever like to reach out to our team, please contact us at any time at help@bark.us or www.bark.us/contact. Thank you! 💙

teenage point of view

when our parents we’re younger they got to have fun not get tracked have freedom and learn as they grow the responsibilities of maturing. As a kid, 15 years old i believe this app goes against everything a childhood should be apart of. I promise you if you actualt sit down and have a conversation with you child you can creat a much more meaningful influence on there decisions instead of downloading an app where there nervous about everything they do and if there parents are reading what goes on with there friends. Growing up is going through ups and downs with kids. Having them learn what is right and what’s wrong. If you just put and app like this on a kids phone i promise there going to figure out ways to get around it or override it. your not helping them be safer you just loosing there trust and make them learn different ways to talk to there friends with out being monitored through everything they do. I beg you not to get thing for your kids and look into different solutions. This will juts destroy your trust you once had with you kid. Kids deserve to have privacy just like you did when you were a kid. i know the world is different and you have to learn how society as changed it but it doesn’t mean you have to intervene into the live that is a kid and it’s friends. it’s not going to make a good difference for them only for u. and it’s juts gonna loose each other’s trust forever.

Hi there. We absolutely understand that kids need privacy (we were kids once, too). Our parents also had other methods of making sure all was well given the potential concerns and dangers "back then", we assure you. Our service does give kids privacy by NOT showing parents all activities or texts; we ONLY alert parents if something concerning is found so that they can have an open conversation and address as needed to help keep you safer and make smart choices. Even the most involved parents who have open communication with their children still have children who won't or don't come to them when needing help or in a difficult situation. Our service helps to alert parents of those concerns that may not be seen by them or brought to them by their child. We absolutely encourage families to have open & ongoing discussions, and to discuss how using Bark helps to keep them safer. Your parents are involved because they care about your well being. We hope that you are able to bring your concerns to them and discuss. Message us any time we can help. :)

i got in trouble for having inappropriate content on my iphone at 15 in june of 2022 in turn i got grounded for 6 months then this app was installed. at first it was smooth and didn’t seem to bother me. But as i got older and my teenage problems grew this app stunted my family’s growth. This app gives no space of privacy or independence from parent it even stalks your notes app where i personally write in a dairy and my parent was able to see this. My life’s been in shambles and i blame this app my parents don’t trust me and they feel the sense of security is in this app, i even started paying for my own phone so i could get rid of the app but they won’t budge i’ve been kicked out and we’ve had huge arguments and this app sometimes is at the root of the problem all because my family refuses to see me as my own person with my own privacy and boundaries. if your kid is under the age of 14 then this app is for you so you can keep your child safe but anything above that age is just down right disrespectful to there space. i’m only rating this app one star not for the hate of the devs or anything like that but for the sheer way that these “boundaries” and “protection” that parents put on there kids is a crippling feature to home life and beyond and you will have no trust with your child

Hi there! Our mission is to help keep kids safer, while still giving them privacy by never showing all of their data to their parents! Parents are only alerted to potential concerns. We sincerely hope that you have a discussion with your parents about what your family agrees is an appropriate and safe use of technology and the internet. 💙