My Bark Phone Review & Recommendation

We got our two oldest kids phones back in 2019. I am not entirely sure how or why I had the instinct to monitor kids text messages but I did. This instinct is the modern parenting equivalent of wanting your kids to wear a helmet. We want to keep them safe. I quickly went down the rabbit hole of the best parental control apps for iPhones. Bark was the one that stood out the most to me. Now there is a bark phone, and this is my bark phone review.

I will say, it’s likely due to their simple visuals that made it easy to understand right off the bat. That and the fact that instead of doing multiple things like other companies such as life360 do, it exists to do one thing. Monitor devices while keeping a degree of privacy for kids, while also giving parents some control over the devices kids have.

When I looked closer though I saw that compared to other monitoring software, Bark seemed like the most intuitive to use.

Luckily, I was right.

To be honest, I didn’t even know that Bark would be able to let us have control over things like blocking apps from our kids phones, or screen time controls. We have never used it for that.

We use Bark for the content monitoring.

Should you monitor your child’s phone?

Let’s get this question cleared up right now. The rest of this bark phone review may or may not be worth your time to read.

Every parent has the right to decide what is best for their family. For us, it was never a question of whether or not we should. It was only a matter of how we would do that.

There are options here. These are the most popular that I know of.

Telling your child you will be checking their phone at any point

Pros:

Your child might fear that they will get caught in a moment. They might choose to not engage in any of the risky content online because of that.
There is a rule intended to keep your kids safe.

Cons:

Your child will learn to delete and hide the risky content they come across online. B aware, they will come across it at some point.
The most risky times for a device is when you are not around. So this method does not provide safety in the moment.
You will miss so much opportunity for valuable intervention, support and guidance for your child.

Common Bark alerts

According to the Bark Annual Report after analyzing 5.6 billion activities on children under the age of 18 devices here is what those kids experience:

67% of tweens, and 76% of teens experience bullying on their devices.
26% of teens, and 38% of teens experienced alerts for mental health ranging from mild pessimism to talking about or planning to attempt suicide.
8% of tweens, and 10% of teens experienced interactions of an online predator defined by sexual conversations and a confirmed age difference.
58% of tweens and 77% of teens have alerts for drugs and alochol that can range from prescriptions to videos of a child consuming illegale substances.
33% of tweens and 57% of teens have alerts for potential self-harm and suicide that include anything from text messages about cutting to an email draft of a suicide note.
9% of tweens and 21% of teens have alerts for disordered eating that range from mentions of dangerous eating practices all the way to discusssions of anorexia, bulimiia, and body dysmporphia.
68% of tweens and 82% of teens have alerts from violence that range from graphics in a video game to direct threats against a child.

What this means to me and one reason I chose to do this bark phone review? 100% of kids will encounter something on their smart device that warrants a parental or adult figure to step in and offer guidance, support or protection.

The case for NOT monitoring your kids’ phone

I have talked openly online in Motherhood Simplified about why and how I use the bark app as my choice of parental control for iOs for several years.

There are some commons reasons parents say they don’t want to, or don’t monitor their devices. And to be honest, when I have this conversation with my kids’ friend’s parents in real life, they pretty much always think it’s absurd. I get the “oh nice” and change of subject. It makes no sense to me. I think it’s because of these reasons they have for NOT wanting to monitor. I really feel like the only one who is doing this in my real life circle of parents.

These desire for our kids phones are noble, and still misguided. Let’s talk about it.

They want to give their kids their privacy. Many comparisons like “my parents were never able to hear my private conversations at the lunch table or at a sleepover between my friends. So I don’t want to spy on theirs”.

I would agree, but we were not kids with social media, access to literally any subject at any time, or to each other with NO limits or boundaries. It is not the same.

Not only that, but you aren’t just giving your kids access to all the corners of the internet. You are opening a door for anyone, companies and people, access to YOUR child without limits.
They think their kids to learn how to be on tech because as adults it’s going to be a part of their life.

This is true. The problem is they’re not adults yet. They don’t have the brain development to handle the endless amount of content online, or how to filter our what’s appropriate or what they should or should not engage in. Most adults can’t even do this successfully as noted by the embarrassing Facebook threads we see, and awful interactions adults have online.

Plus, screens are highly addictive. Addiction in the brain looks the same regardless of what someone is addicted to. It’s a brain pattern where the pleasure sensor in the brain gets overwhelmed.

If the goal is to get them adjusted to tech before they are adults, it makes sense to give them parameters that you can be proactive in guiding them toward appropriate use.

When it comes to monitoring kids devices there really are two paths.

1. Be proactive and takes steps to establish phone rules and boundaries from the start.

2. Be reactive and take steps to punish, restrict or take back initial freedoms and access points for kids once it goes wrong.

No one is immune to the “not my kid” mentality, or the “I would never” as a parent. If you’ve been parenting for any amount of time though you know that neither of those are fail safe.

The case for monitoring your kids phones

Every parent wants what’s best for their kids, that’s why you’re reading this bark phone review. And every parent right now is raising kids with a huge generational gap, larger arguably than any generation ever before because we have NO idea what it’s like to be a child in a tech based world.

Some of us middle of the road millennials (1989 mom here) do know loosely what it’s like to be excluded from a Myspace top 8, or to see the photos of the previous weekend uploaded on a Tuesday.

We know the pangs of fomo.

The feelings of inadequacy due to comparison of really bad photos of videos.

We don’t know what it’s like to be a teenager (or younger) with access to everyone in real time, with filters and on demand faux presentations of their life.

The generational gap is way too big for us to comprehend what it’s like to be a kid in the tech era. We must stop thinking the way we were raised with tech is good enough for today.

We also know loosely the risks that can happen for young kids online if we were born 1989 or after. Internet chat rooms that were sketchy, but at least on a desktop in our living room and didn’t not include easy and instant ways to send and receive photos, or share locations in real time.

I remember in 6th grade there was a girl who like the boy who happened to like me. I was oblivious to all of that. She sent me an email degrading me, telling my how ugly I was and what a w**re I was. I deleted that email account and never looked back. It’s not that simple now for kids. It’s group chats via text and endless social apps, email, google drive, and who knows what else pops up daily.

We had landlines where we left messages and always ran the risk of interference from a parent or sibling. We did not have phones in our rooms where people can call or text or access via endless apps throughout all hours of the day or night privately.

Monitoring your kids phones is not oppressive, restrictive or an invasion of their privacy. When done correctly it is freeing, empowering and keeps their privacy in tact for the things that need privacy.

The case for monitoring your kids phones

I made the mistake of getting my kids iPhones. If I could go back I would get androids at the bare minimum, and now I would get the Bark Phone – and not just so I could create a bark phone review.

Apple does not value a parent’s responsibility to protect their kids. They value robust privacy for it’s users which they say aren’t meant to be for kids – but we all know they inadvertently market to kids similarly to the way Big Tobacco and now Big Vape target kids.

COPPA also deems your 13 year old child an adult when using a smart phone. Which means if anything were to happen to them with the aid of a device, too bad, they’re an adult and technically responsible.

What is COPPA?

COPPA applies to websites and online services directed to children that collect personal information from kids under the age of 13. This includes social media platforms, online games, and any other website or service that directly targets kids.

COPPA also requires websites and services to place restrictions on targeted advertising to kids under 13. This means that these websites and services cannot collect personal information for the purpose of targeted advertising without parental consent.

Where this gets really concerning…

Personal information under COPPA includes a child’s name, address, email address, phone number, social security number, and any other identifier that could be used to contact or identify the child, including photographs or other files that include a child’s image or voice.

Meaning your child can have information about them collected online that puts them at direct risk at the age of 13. They are not required or offered protection online at that point legally, and unless you are a proactive parent in this regard there is nothing in place to help you protect them.

All Social Media apps are similar to apple. They don’t care if your kids are safe on their apps, because they don’t have to. These companies will make their money legally regardless of your child’s best interest. They will be allowing their advertisers to target kids 13 and up. And that’s just the mild aspects of their apps. They will also not make sure the content they have access to is even safe or age appropriate, and they don’t have to.

As a parent YOU have to do that.

My experience with Bark

I am not tech savvy, so initially the set up was overwhelming. Their tech team was available to help me set up out initial monitoring which I was very happy with.

Because I have iPhones for my kids all of my frustrations have come down to Apple. They make it very difficult to have any monitoring on a device due to their privacy agreements. Great for an adult with something to protect, unless that something is a child.

The process of monitoring an iPhone with any software is clunky. It requires you to be on the same wifi, at the same time, and to have a real time backup done to your itunes account.

Android devices do not require this and can be monitored in real time. This is a step up from an iPhone.

The next best step up would be a Bark Phone. An Android device that looks like a regular phone, but has Bark installed on it directly. It cannot be bypassed or removed like an android or iPhone can.

Outside of that I have had no complaints, only gratitude for Bark as it has allowed me a way to monitor my kids’ phones for 5 years now.

Is Bark parental control worth it?

To me, yes. I do not rely solely on Bark though. From the start we have established ground rules for the expectations of the device use. We have told them we have the software on it, not because we don’t trust them but because as parents we feel it’s our responsibility to have that safety measure in place.

There have been times of push back from our kids, of course. They often feel like they’re the only kids without social media or were convinced they would have no friends without social media.

The opposite has been true. We guided them toward being the one who has to work a little harder to make time with friends via tech, and we’ve kept them protected them from a lot of drama and heartache on Snapchat for sure.

It has allowed us to have countless proactive conversations with our kids that have laid a great foundation for the times we have needed reactive conversations. Bark is not a substitute for parenting or a guarantee for kids who never push the boundaries.