Safer Internet Day: Five parental control apps for Android devices

The internet is a fantastic source of information. Whether you use it for social media, researching or cheating on the pub quiz, you can discover nearly anything you need to know these days.

But while you might be happy to have unlimited access to all this information, you probably don't want your children to, so as part of Yahoo!'s Safer Internet Day advice, here are five apps to help you control what they see and do on Android devices.

To enable restricted access to iPhones and iPads, you need to go into your settings, go to 'General' and scroll down to 'Restrictions' where you will find a range of options.

MM Guardian Parental Control - FREE

The MM Guardian Parental Control app allows you to block incoming calls and texts, monitor alarming texts and control which apps can be used and when.

In more extreme circumstances it also lets you locate and lock your child's phone using a text message, as well as set time restrictions to limit their use.

You'll be able to get a daily report on your child's phone usage, so if their bill is high, you will be able to find out why.

Funamo Parental Control - FREE (at first)

The Funamo Parental Control app allows you to not only monitor devices but filter internet sites too.

Contacts, calls, SMS, websites, applications and locations of the device will automatically be logged and history data is uploaded to the Furnamo server each day. As a parent, you will then be able to view this data from any browser whenever you want.

You can also enforce safe search for Google, Yahoo, Bing and YouTube, as well as set up keyword or phrase filtering - which lets you ban specific topics that might be seemed safe by the search engines - and time limits for applications.

Kids Place - Parental Control - FREE

You will have to set up a pin when you first log into Kids Place that is then needed to exit the app, but once logged in, it will protect your personal data and restrict your children to only use apps approved by you.

Kids Place will also make sure your kids can't do anything on your device that will cost you money, such as making phone calls, texting or downloading new apps.

In addition, you can block incoming calls when this app is running and disable all wireless signals, as well as have multiple user profiles.

AppLock - FREE

AppLock has over 30 million users and supports 24 languages. It allows you to lock SMS, contacts, Gmail, Facebook and any other app to protect your privacy.

You will be able to control photo and video access, meaning you can set selected pictures to disappear from your photo gallery that only you can access with a code.

AppLock also allows you to lock your settings and Google Play so you won't have to worry about your children accessing new apps or changing your settings.

Screen Time - FREE

Screen Time is a parental control app that is less invasive than others and geared towards families with older children and teenagers.

It will let you monitor and manage the time spent on devices and allows you to set time limits on selected apps, as well as bedtime curfew, lights out and school time curfews.

It can be controlled via any browser and the app itself runs in the background, providing you with an easy way to check up on usage.

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