Facebook Parental Controls: How to Use In-Built Settings and Third-Party Apps

Facebook parental controls are available in the form of supervision tools enabling parents to oversee and limit time spent on the app and Messenger, monitor content access, interactions, and privacy settings.

With over 3 Billion users, there’s no telling what kids can encounter on Facebook. Even though Facebook has an age restriction of 13 years, it does not verify details. Thus, kids under 13 can sign up with a fake date of birth.

The potential risks of Facebook include cyberbullying, where 59% of US teens have been threatened online or cyberbullied. Children can encounter inappropriate content, online harassment, fake news, explicit images & language, and sexual solicitation.

Facebook parental controls support teens and families by making managing the time teens spend on the app easier.

Nevertheless, parental supervision tools from Facebook don’t cover everything regarding your child’s Facebook account, so we’ll review some third-party monitoring apps in comparison too.

How to Supervise Your Child’s Facebook & Messenger

Facebook has the option of supervising your child’s Facebook account and Messenger app. The Supervise tool offers parents features that support teens between 13 and 17 years old. You can see how much time your teen spends on the app, set daily limits, schedule breaks, and see their contacts.

Facebook and Messenger supervision requires consent from your teenager. The app lets them know what you can see, meanwhile Facebook sends you a notification if your teen changes the settings.

To set up supervision on your child’s Messenger and Facebook:

1. Open your Facebook Messenger app on your phone. Tap the three Menu icon in the top-left corner.
   
2. Choose the gear icon. Scroll down to [For Families] and tap [Supervision].
   
   You can do the same through your Facebook page > Settings.
   
3. You will see the Family Center and a [Create Invite] option to send a link to your child’s phone.
   
4. Click [Create Invitation] and select a way to send the link, like WhatsApp. Once they accept supervision, you will receive notifications about the supervision activity.
   

When a child follows the link, they will see the supervision features and should allow it to start.

Parents can then view all connected children’s accounts in the “Supervision” section of the Facebook page online or in Messenger.

What You Can Do With FB Supervision

With the Supervision feature on the Facebook account, the parents can see time spent by a kid on the app and manage daily limits, see their new friends, and check privacy settings.

Manage Time Spent on Facebook

Due to this feature, you can see the time your child spent on Facebook across devices.

Choose the account of a child you want to supervise and manage time of app usage with daily limits.

You can make the same limits for every day or customize them for each one.

Daily time limits may vary from 15 minutes to 23 hours 45 minutes.

In the Scheduled breaks option, select days when a child isn’t allowed to use Facebook.

See New Friends

In the “Friends” section, you can see your child’s friends, ordered by the most recently added.

Tap on the name to check who your teen is befriending with.

Check Settings and privacy

With Facebook Supervision, you can see your child’s settings and privacy: their profile and audience (who can see and interact with their content), blocked list and content preferences.

If you select one of the options in “Profile and audience”, there are detailed settings, but only a child can edit them.

The same with the blocked contacts: you can see who your child blocked, but you can’t block someone from their contacts by yourself.

Content preferences are also allowed to be changed only by a child.

Parents can only see the child’s content preferences and settings on low-quality content, unoriginal content and problematic sharing, and sensitive content.

If you want to remove the supervision, select the corresponding button below.

What You Can Do with Supervision on Messenger

The Supervision options on Messenger are similar to those on the Facebook account. Start with choosing the child’s account on the Messenger app.

Time Limits on Messenger

The parents can see the time a child spent on the Messenger app and limit it for each day, like for FB.

See Their Messenger’s Contacts

The contacts your teen is messaging with are also visible here in the “Contacts” section.

Check Their Messenger’s Settings

The “Privacy & safety” option lets you see the message delivery settings: whether their message requests go to their Chats list, Message requests folder, or whether they receive them at all.

Story controls show the settings about stories visibility to the people online.

Note that only your teen can edit these settings, and you are notified when they do this.

See Blocked Contacts

Again, the Supervision feature doesn’t let parents to block someone from their kid’s contacts by themselves. You can only see who your teen has blocked and when it was.

The last option in this section is removing of the supervision.

How to Make a Child’s Facebook Account Safer

To be honest, Facebook parental controls through the Supervision feature are not sufficient. Thus, we recommend managing privacy settings inside your child’s account as long as you can do it or explain the necessity to your teen.

The good thing is accounts registered by teens from ages 13 to 17 years are automatically set to private, and their location is off. If your child’s Facebook account is set to private, only their friends and friends of friends can view their profile.

The Facebook Messenger Kids allows kids to communicate with only the people they know.

Some restrictions you can put on your child’s account include:

• block inappropriate content;
• block inappropriate users;
• restrict chatting functions;
• limit social interactions.

Restrict Who Can See What They Share

1. Go to Settings on their Facebook profile page.
   
2. Tap on the round icon with three dots in the center. Choose Facebook Privacy from the menu.
   
3. From here, you can change various privacy settings.

Tap the Privacy Checkup tool and click Who Can See What You Share.

A drop-down menu will appear with features your child has shared, like their phone number, birthday, and who can see the people, pages, friends, and lists they follow. You can set all these to “Only Me.” This way, you can prevent identity theft by protecting their information.

Restrict Who Can Contact Your Child

1. Go Back and Click “How People Can Find You on Facebook”.
   
2. This will open the friend requests page.
   
3. Click on “Who can send your friend requests” and change it from “Everyone to Friends of Friends”.

Restrict Who Can See Their Posts

Still on Privacy Settings and Tools, scroll down to Your Activity and change “Who can see your future posts” from “Public” to “Only Friends.”

Change Other Settings to “Only Me”. These include:

1. “How people can find and contact you”.
2. “How you get message requests”.

Blocking

You can block inappropriate users if your child reports suspicious people or behavior.

To block inappropriate content on Facebook:

1. Click Settings & Privacy by tapping the profile photo in the top-right corner.
2. Tap on Settings and then Privacy on the left drop-down menu.
3. From the menu, select Blocking.
   
4. Add people to the restricted list, block users, block messages, and block app invites. The Blocking feature can also block event invites and pages.

Check the Activity Log

If you don’t use a parental control app like mSpy, the only way to see what your child is doing on Facebook is to check their activity log from their account. Go to Settings on your child’s profile > Privacy and click on Activity log.

Check out the posts they have shared, videos they have searched for, search history, comments, stories activity, and pages they have visited. However, you will need to have your child’s Facebook account password.

Can Kids Bypass Parental Controls on Facebook?

Kids can bypass Facebook parental controls quite easily. Facebook itself gives them such an option — to remove parents’ supervision.

If you manage the settings inside a child’s account, to prevent this, they can just change their password. They can go ahead and change the various settings you have put on. Facebook parental controls work as long as the parent and the kid agree regarding their online safety.

Invest in a parental control app to ensure your child’s safety on the Facebook app.

Best Apps for Facebook Monitoring

Thus, Facebook parental controls are not enough, since kids can bypass them. It’s best to consider third-party parental apps.

uMobix – Best Overall

uMobix is an effective Facebook monitoring tool. It can enhance healthy digital habits, since children behave differently when parents monitor their digital activities. uMobix has a 4.47-star rating on Sitejabber, indicating that most parents are satisfied with the service.

What It Can Do:

• see who kids chat with on social media;
• provide daily usage reports;
• regulate screen time on each app;
• detect secret apps on a child’s phone.

User Experience:

uMobix allowed me to see all my child’s posts, likes, pages they interact with, and searches using screenshots on my son’s Android. I was able to manage my son’s account and restrict unwanted content.

The app provided full access to my daughter’s Facebook account on her iPhone. It allowed me to navigate the news feed, see the people my daughter follows, view posts from pages, and block unwanted users. I also restricted access to inappropriate content.

uMobix was easy to set up, and my kids have never bypassed it, since it runs in stealth mode.

Try uMobix

mSpy Facebook Tracker – Best Monitoring App for Android

mSpy is an incredible app for monitoring Facebook Messenger on Android devices. It is compatible with iPhones too, but has limited features for them. mSpy has a 4-star rating on Sitejabber. Many users find tracking social media, text messages, and location helpful.

What it Can Do:

• look at Facebook Messenger activity;
• see videos and pics shared;
• run in the background;
• access Facebook if parent and child are not friends on Facebook;
• track dozens of social media apps.

User Experience:

mSpy is a great Facebook tracker for Android. It showed me all the shared pics and videos on the online dashboard. I used the keyword tracking feature and got alerts whenever those keywords were used.

In addition, the screen recorder allowed me to look at my son’s Facebook activity by showing me the public posts he had shared, the posts he liked, the pages he follows, and his searches.

After experimenting with mSpy, I found it effective for Facebook Monitoring. It helped me restrict content, and I could block both the Facebook app and the Facebook website on my child’s device. My son could not uninstall it since it was not on the list of apps on their device. Therefore, it’s difficult for kids to bypass it.

Try mSpy

EyeZy – Best Option for iPhone

EyeZy works as a parental control app on a target iOS device. The service is 100% legit and scores 100% on the Scamadviser trust score.

What It Can Do:

• capture every Facebook activity with screenshots;
• read Messenger;
• monitor other social media.

User Experience:

Eyezy app is quite similar to mSpy, but based on our testing, it works better for iOS. Nevertheless, for better result, you may need to jailbreak an iPhone.

To install Eyezy, all I needed was my daughter’s iCloud login and password. Within a few minutes, the service started to show my daughter’s phone activity, including everything from her Facebook.

Eyezy works in stealth mode, thus it will be difficult for a kid to notice such a parent control.

Try EyeZy

Facebook Parental Controls vs. Monitoring Apps

Let’s compare the features of parental controls on Facebook and of monitoring apps.

Conclusion

Facebook parental controls are great when it comes to changing various privacy settings inside a child’s account. They can go a long way in protecting your kid’s safety. With settings like changing who sees their Facebook posts and who can request to be friends with them, you keep unwanted users at bay.

Still, Facebook supervision is available if your child allows you to enable it. You will need third-party monitoring tools if your child denies access to their account.

uMobix can help you access your child’s Facebook without their Facebook logins. mSpy is great at tracking Messenger and keywords, while Eyezy is an excellent alternative for accessing all the Facebook features on an iOS device.