Bark - Parental Controls

Bark Technologies, Inc.

About this app

Bark provides families with the tools they need to raise kids in the digital age. Our comprehensive service lets you monitor content, manage screen time, and filter websites so you can get peace of mind while your child is online.

CONTENT MONITORING

Bark monitors your child’s text messages, email, YouTube, and 30+ apps and social media platforms for issues like cyberbullying, suicidal ideation, adult content, sexual predators, profanity, threats of violence, and more. Parents receive alerts only when something potentially problematic occurs online. You won’t have full access to everything on your child’s phone — just the things you might need to know about.

SCREEN TIME MANAGEMENT

Families can set healthy time limits and create schedules for when their children’s devices can connect to the internet (through both cell service and Wi-Fi).

WEB FILTERING

Our web filter lets you select which websites your child can access on their devices. You can allow or block specific sites — or even whole categories like streaming services, online gaming, sexual content, and more.

BARK HOME

When you purchase Bark Home, a small device sold separately that connects to your Wi-Fi router, you can use our app to manage screen time and filter websites and apps on all of the Wi-Fi-connected devices in your home, from smart TVs and video game consoles to laptops and tablets. Bark Home requires an active Bark subscription.

PRICING

Bark, our comprehensive online safety solution, includes content monitoring, screen time management, and web filtering. Bark is $14/month — or $99 annually.

Bark Jr provides screen time management and web filtering for $5/month or $49 annually.

SETTING UP BARK

After you download the Bark app for parents and guardians, you’ll need to download the Bark for Kids app to your child’s device to enable monitoring, screen time management, and more. Visit www.bark.us/android to install it.

Ratings and reviews

UPDATE: Trying this app again and all I get are nonstop "(your child) has account issues that need to be fixed" messages. The app says devices are connected but I hardly get alerts. And if a device is an iPhone, forget about it. $14/m for all these issues? I can't even sign up for the free trial as my unexpired cards keep coming back as expired. If the system doesn't even work when starting a subscription then there isn't much promise for the rest of the app.

Sadly Bark falls short when it comes to actual control features. It is a fancy VPN so it only controls internet traffic. It does nothing for games or apps that do not require the internet to run. It doesn't block installation of apps. And because it's just a VPN it doesn't always start with the phone, and a clever child can easily bypass it and search whatever they want.

The service is a valuable tool for parents, when it works. Unfortunately it usually doesn't. It loses connection with my son's phone and computer on a near daily basis and this is the second time we've had this occur in two years with different devices. We have updated, troubleshot, and reinstalled things repeatedly, and it still has the same problems. We may try the service again pending more positive user reviews that don't reflect similar problems to what we keep encountering.