Facebook is one of the biggest social media platforms globally. It currently has over 3 billion downloads, meaning your kids are likely to have the app installed on their phones. As a parent, it is your responsibility to ensure your child uses Facebook appropriately. Fortunately, the app has introduced a parental control feature just like on Instagram. It is now easy to monitor your teen’s Facebook activities in real-time.
The Facebook parental control feature is called “Supervision on Facebook and Messenger.” As the name implies, when enabled, it allows parents to supervise the activities of their child on Facebook. Interestingly, it extends to Messenger, meaning you will see who they send and receive messages from. You can also see the AIs they are chatting with and all the questions being asked.
Everything you need to know about Supervisor on Facebook
- Your teen must be 13-17 before you can supervise them on Facebook.
- The supervision feature is only available on the Latest versions of Facebook. Ensure you and your child are using the latest version.
- Of course, you both need to have a Facebook account.
- Your teen needs to accept your invite before you can monitor Facebook on their phone.
- You will see their Facebook friends, Messenger contacts, AIs they have chatted with, and everyone they have blocked.
- You will see “some” of their privacy settings.
- You can see how much time they spend on Facebook and Messenger, and can set a schedule for breaks.
- You will not see their chats or searches on content that appears on their feed.
Meanwhile, if you are interested in monitoring their chats, there are third-party parental control apps that allow that. You will pay a subscription fee before you can install the app. We recommend the supervisor feature on Facebook as it will enable your child some privacy while you still monitor their activities on the social Media app.
How to set up Supervision on Facebook and Messenger
- On the latest version of Facebook, tap your profile picture in the top right corner.
- Under Tools and resources, click Family Centre.
- Tap on Create Invite.
- A link is generated. You can copy the link and send it to your teen using any of the available options.
- The invite expires after 48 hours. You will create another one after that period if your invite is not accepted.
- Once the invitation has been accepted, you can monitor activities on your child’s Facebook account when you visit the Supervision Center.
Meanwhile, after setting up supervision, if your teen blocks you on Facebook, supervision will be removed automatically. However, you will get a notification once it happens, and you can set it up again. We recommend turning on push notifications. When enabled, you will get notifications of what’s happening on your teen’s account.
Since you can not monitor what appears on their feed or see their messages, we recommend adjusting some privacy settings on their account. To ensure no sensitive content appears on their feed, head to Facebook on their account and follow the instructions below
- Tap on the profile picture and click on the settings icon
- Under Preferences, tap on News Feed
- There, you can add people and pages on which you want their content to appear in their feeds.
- You can snooze, unfollow, and reconnect with people, pages, and groups.
- There is an option named “Reduce.” Click on the option to reduce low-quality content, unoriginal content, problematic sharing, and sensitive content.
With these options, I believe you can ensure the safety of your child on Facebook. However, you can monitor their activities in real-time with a third-party parental control app. These apps have features not available on Facebook Supervision. In addition, you will monitor chats and see content on your child’s Facebook. Below are some of the apps we recommend to monitor Facebook, and they can work in stealth mode.
mSpy
mSpy is a parental control app with all the features to monitor your child’s Facebook account properly. The app supports monitoring other social media apps and can tell you the real-time location of your kids.
Aside from letting you in on your child’s Messenger conversation, you can use the app to monitor calls. Interestingly, you will not miss any information in the form on deleted messages, as the app keeps a copy for you. Additionally, you can create filters and get notified when certain ones are used in your child’s interactions on Facebook and other social media platforms.
Meanwhile, some of these features do not work on iOS. We recommend sticking with the in-built supervision feature on Facebook if your teen’s phone is iOS. And for every device you want to track or monitor, you will need a new subscription.
uMobix
Another Parental Control app to help monitor your child’s activity on social media. It supports Facebook Messenger message monitoring. While you can limit the time your kids spend on Facebook, that only works on the app, and they can bypass logging in with a browser. With uMobix, you can block Facebook web, and it will be impossible for your kids to bypass the restrictions.
Aside from monitoring Facebook, the app can set virtual boundaries to alert you when your kids enter or leave a particular area. It supports streaming, meaning you can remotely trigger your kid’s phone camera to monitor their environment.
Again, some features do not work on iOS. We recommend these apps for Android users, or you’d better stick with the supervision feature on Facebook. Also, you pay a subscription fee to use the app, while the in-built parental control feature on Facebook is free.
Conclusion
It is necessary to monitor your teens’ activities on Facebook. The company has made it easy for parents with the introduction of a parental control feature. However, you might need to adjust some settings on your kid’s phone as Facebook isn’t giving you all the access to their account.
With a third-party parental control app, you can monitor your child’s Facebook activities in real-time. You can see everyone your kids are talking with. In addition, you can block access to certain accounts and limit how much time your teen spends on the app.