What's your stance on parental controls and monitoring?

Screenable is a little different from other "parental control" software out there. Here's why.

We believe that kids have the best outcomes when they work together as a team with their parents, rather than feeling controlled by them. This might look different for younger versus older kids, but as a general rule it's important for parents to learn to slowly give up control. (For most of us parents, this is not easy and can even be a long process!)

The reason for this is trust. Trust is the foundation that will make kids want to open up to their parents and even seek their guidance, rather than hiding or engaging in secret activities. Many of the devastating effects of technology are due to kids venturing into areas and practices online too soon, without a trusted adult there to guide them. Trust is what delivers better outcomes.

To build trust, kids must feel that their parents genuinely want to walk the journey with them, side by side, instead of merely monitoring or controlling their actions.

Because of this, we try to make parental controls a collaborative experience, with parents working together with kids to set boundaries and then encouraging kids to practice making decisions for themselves, rather than parents making all the decisions for them. We call this "self-control, not parental control."

We also encourage parents to be 100% transparent with their children about using Screenable and its installation on their devices. This fosters trust and avoids situations where the kid later feels misaligned with their parents – or worse, spied on – which can damage parent-child relationships.

Furthermore, at Screenable we're cautious about the amount of data from kids' devices reported back to the family account, because we believe in maintaining healthy privacy boundaries even within a family. Apps that allow detailed surveillance can feel privacy invasive to kids, particularly if discovered later, and ultimately erase that hard-earned trust.

Our mission is to help parents raise tech-healthy kids. A big part of this is helping parents learn to build trust with their kids. That's why our approach is a little different. For more about what we believe, check out our website.