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Monitor Teen Driving with the MamaBear Driving Monitor App

Teen Speeding

According to the California DMV, “the greatest risk of traffic crashes is among teenage drivers. Traffic crashes are the leading cause of death for teenagers across the United States.” The tragic death of Fast and Furious star Paul Walker, who lost his life November 30th in a fiery car crash believed to be caused by high-speed driving, has put driving safety in the spotlight. While speeding-related car crashes can happen to any person at any age, teens are perhaps the most at-risk group for car crashes and car deaths.

Just as you give children a world of freedom when you hand them their first smartphone, their world expands even more when you give them the keys to a car. Providing this kind of independence is a proud parenting moment – but is also likely the scariest.

See Also: The Ages at Which Children Receive a Mobile Phone

We like to think – wishfully, perhaps — that our kids are as fearful of the awesome power of “two tons of rolling steel” as we are and therefore drive safely and conscientiously. Realistically, though, teen drivers are beginners, and their lack of experience behind the wheel combined with their undeveloped risk-taking sense can add up to disaster.

The Need to Speed

Whether teens speed to keep up with traffic, because of peer pressure or for the sheer thrill of going fast, recklessly-fast driving can have deadly consequences. According data compiled at TeenDriverSource.org, teen drivers are “more likely than older drivers to speed and to allow shorter headways.” When a teen driver was behind the wheel, speeding was to blame in more than half of the crashes involving fatalities.

Be Aware of Your Kid’s Driving Habits with the MamaBear Driving Monitor App

The MamaBear Family Safety App sends parents notifications about how fast their kids are driving or riding and where.  This unique feature puts  information in the hands of parents and provides kids with freedom to ride with friends or drive themselves but with a little accountability to ensure  safety.

Giving parents the power of knowledge helps prompt discussion for consequence and safety. These necessary conversations can plant a seed of awareness in your teen’s mind that might curb dangerous future behavior, as well as how to stand up for what’s right in the face of peer pressure.

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Comparing Family Safety Apps: MamaBear and Find My Friends

Choosing the right family safety app isn’t easy. We’d like to help you by comparing the features of the MamaBear app with a few other apps out there for Android and iPhone.

In our last comparison, we looked at Life 360. Now let’s check out the similarities and differences of MamaBear to Apple’s iPhone app Find My Friends.

Related: Comparing Family Safety Apps: MamaBear and Life360

Find My Friends is primarily a tracking app. With Find My Friends, users request connection to people they want to view location. Once a friend accepts the request and installs the app, a user can see their friend’s location and vice versa with the option to turn off location sharing.

MamaBear and Find My Friends share a few similarities.  

Users can:  

  • View current location of people
  • Proactively send location. Find My Friends calls it “Notify Friend” and MamaBear calls it “check in.”
  • Set arrival/departure alerts

There are also a few key differences.

Here’s a the breakdown:

  • Who it’s targeting. MamaBear’s emphasis is on family safety, whereas Find My Friends is marketed in part as a social app for use by adults and their friends and companions.
  • Location history.  MamaBear offers a view of historical location points up to 7 days.
  • Message feed.  MamaBear presents all alerts and messages received for up to 7 days.
  • Social media monitoring. MamaBear notifies parents when their child makes a new friend on Facebook, follows someone new on Instagram or uploads a photo, gets tagged or @mentioned, receives a message that includes inappropriate words, bullying language or any other restricted words the parent sets.
  • Driving speed monitoring. MamaBear offers alerts when kids drive or ride over a preset speed limit including how fast and where.
  • Optional location sharing. Find My Friends allows all user to turn off location sharing. Families using MamaBear can’t turn of child logged in location sharing from the app, though the parent’s location sharing is optional.
  • Temporary sharing.  Find my friends offers a group of invited friends to share location for a pre-set timeframe.

There are many great apps that offer a variety of fun and useful features! MamaBear strives to offer parents concerned about their children’s safety peace of mind and comfort.

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Is Vine Safe for Kids?

When Twitter released the Vine app, it was greeted with a lot of controversy pertaining to its safety and usability among kids. Just like any social media tool, parents became aware that this app could lead to online security problems such as identity theft and cyberbullying. But, what can a parent do? | MamaBear App

The following post is a guest blog from Allie Cooper, a tech enthusiast who’s very passionate with her volunteer work; educating kids about responsible mobile device usage both locally and internationally. She also loves to cook and to travel. Despite her busy schedule, she updates herself with the recent parental control technologies.

When Twitter released the Vine app, it was greeted with a lot of controversy pertaining to its safety and usability among kids. Just like any social media tool, parents became aware that this app could lead to online security problems such as identity theft and cyberbullying. But, what can a parent do?

Similar to Instagram, the video-hosting tool exposes kids to a number of multimedia content. While it can be used for educational purposes and certainly some laughs and entertainment, some users tend to abuse the tool to spread malicious content.

Related: Is the Introduction of Video from the Instagram App Dangerous for Children?

Here are  tips  to ensure children’s Vine usage is safe and secure.

Parental Controls

Preventing kids to land on spiteful content, parental monitoring software is ideal to limit only the appropriate app and websites that the child can view. There’s no need to keep it a secret. Rather explain to them the benefits and reasons for employing it, to retain a certain trust.

Smartphones

Before providing a device, ensure that it has a mounted security feature. The good thing is that mobile service providers are spearheading this move. In 2011, O2 has installed an 18+ filter on mobile web browsing, preventing minors to land on adult and malicious content.

Knowing a Kid’s Network

With the absence of concrete privacy settings, users can easily browse all available profiles of their network. It’s advisable to be well-versed with how the app works as well as  the type of people the child interacts (friends, followers, and the people they follow). As a parent, it’s also best to make sure that the people and content you post are accepted online. Always show a good example.

Social Media Monitoring App

From a modern parent perspective, many are now utilizing social media monitoring tools to keep an eye on their young ones. Ideally, these allow you to receive an email alerts or push notification, which details how the child behaves online. Moreover, some tools are able to predict and give reports when a restricted word has been uttered online, and even when a questionable person mentions your kid. One of the most favorable tools is the Mamabear app. For example, Mamabear’s Instagram notifications allow parents to be updated when the child has been tagged in a photo or video, including recent followers and newly-followed profiles.

Watch Out for Signs

Due to peer pressure, kids easily share videos that may incur a negative effect on a kid’s emotional and psychological upbringing. Parenting expert Michele Borba suggests to watch out for signs to prevent the future attacks of cyber predators.

Social withdrawal

Social withdrawal happens when kids have deactivated all of their social networking accounts. According to Social Wellness, this type of social isolation may lead to a severe case of depression.

Fear of Social Networks

The fear of social media normally happens when a kid encounters a cyber predator. This fear leads to occasional anxiety attacks, especially when social media alerts pop up on their mobile device.

Is Vine Safe for Kids?

Vine, despite its flaws, can be a safe haven for kids. All it takes is a smart and educated parent, especially instilling good values to their children. Aside from relying on your wisdom and experiences, use technology to  remedy the blunders of social media.

Will you allow your kid to join this video-hosting tool?

 

Image courtesy of: Aulia. M.

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Parental Control iPhone – Using iPhone’s Parental Restrictions

iphone restrictions

One of the hottest mobile devices on the market – especially with tweens and teens — is the iPhone. Kids everywhere are clamoring for it. If your child has an iPhone or you plan to give them one soon, you’ll be reassured to know the popular mobile device offers a number of parental control features limiting access to potential dangers when the world is at their fingertips.

The release of  iOS 7 comes with improved parental control features that will be of interest to responsible parents taking action to appropriately monitor their child’s iPhone. Let’s explore some of the new parental control options and how to complement suggested restrictions with a family safety app like MamaBear.

Related: Using MamaBear with Apple’s new iOS 7

What Parental Controls are Available on iPhone?

Apple’s support page shows details on how to access the parental control features enabling parents to set restrictions to:

  •  Prevent access to selected device standard apps such as Safari, FaceTime, the iTunes Store and Siri.
  • Prevent access to content including music, podcasts, movies, TV shows, books, apps and more that aren’t age appropriate.
  •  Adjust the time before a password is required to purchase content or always ask for a password.
  •  Prevent changes to privacy settings, including location services, contacts, calendars, reminders, photos, and outside app access to social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, etc.
  •  Prevent changes to settings and accounts including Find My Friends, cellular data use, background app refresh and volume limit.
  •  Restrict features within Game Center, including use of multiplayer games, adding new friends and more.

Using iPhone Parental Restrictions to Complement Family Safety Apps

Parental restrictions on Apple devices are extremely helpful to responsible  parents providing their children with arguably today’s most powerful and accessible device to content and people. But don’t rely just on these restrictions.  Monitoring is still very important.

An added worry-free layer is a family safety app like MamaBear to proactively receive news about your child’s daily activities. Mamabear uses alerts to notify you about location, social media activity and driving speed. Parents use their MamaBear news to start relevant, daily conversations with their family about safety.

Apple’s mobile devices come with some very useful parental control features that should be used to their greatest potential. When put in use they offer the perfect complement to the safety features offered by family safety apps like MamaBear.

 Image Credit: Apple