Kytephone brings its popular parental control features to a new Android compatible app of the same name.
With smartphone and tablet users getting younger and younger, new apps can help parents of 13-to-17-year-olds monitor and control their children’s use of the Internet. Recent studies show that more than one-third of American teenagers own a smartphone, up from more than a fifth in 2011. For nearly half of these users, the phone is their main way of getting online, making it difficult for parents to supervise behavior.
The trend has even seen a spike in younger users from app and internet use through their parent’s tablet and smartphone devices. With a smartphone, your kid basically has the Internet in their pocket wherever and whenever – away from a parents’ eyes.
Kytephone was initially released as an Android phone that allowed parents to block calls from strangers, manage game playing time, and offered easy phone locating. Kytephone’s Parent Dashboard allows parents to control the apps and sites their children use and the people they receive texts and calls from on their phone or desktop.
On Monday, the company released Kytetime, which is aimed at providing parental controls for 13-to-17-year-olds. The new app has many of the same features as Kytephone but does not include the ability to block calls. The apps dashboard lets parents schedule when teenagers can use popular apps like SnapChat or Facebook. This helps teens focus on what matters, like school or their sleep.
Likewise, Kytetime’s Parent Dashboard has been updated to give insights on your teen’s smartphone activity in real time as well as receive periodic email reports on phone use activity. The company has also improved the popular locating technology; the feature can now find your teen for you as well as let you know where they’ve been [GPS your kid!].
The new Android app can be downloaded for free from the Google Play store to your child’s smartphone and offers a 14-day free trial to the Kytetime Parent Dashboard. After the initial free trial, the subscription can be extended for $40 for the year. The account even supports multi-phones for no additional charge.
Kytetime is compatible with all Android smartphones and is currently only available for the Android platform. The company is looking into expanding Kytephone to other platforms like iOS (iPhone), Windows Phone, and BlackBerry, in the future.
