AT&T Secure Family® parent app

The app forced me to update. And the new app wants me to accept terms. Only choices are “I agree” which is greyed out or “Decline” which is the ONLY thing I can do. And when I type Decline it says I can’t use the app. Then allow me to accept. Honestly. Does anyone test these applications? Or are they outsourced to cheap labor countries that, well, you get what you pay for. Right now the app is. I longer useable. This app let me locate my son back in June. He turned off his find my phone. But he couldn’t shut off this app. And it allowed me to find him the day he tried to commit suicide and get him to a hospital and save his life. Wish it were more accurate, but it gave me an area and I found him. AT&T is charging way more than other cell companies. Can’t you pay for quality programmers? Fix this! Also this app says my son has to download some app too. Even though it said this in the past, I never did snd the tracking still worked. I think to the nearest cell tower, but still have me an idea. And now it needs a helper app? Who designed that? If a kid doesn’t want to be found, he can delete the app. If this requires an app on my sons phone for me to track him, what happens if he tries to commit suicide again and disappears and I can’t find him? My guess is the answer would be a huge lawsuit against AT&T.

This app is great for opening up conversations about what my children are doing in their digital life as well as physical life. I remember being a teenager and not wanting my parents to know exactly what I am doing at all times. There are too many temptations these days for kids. TikTok is like crack. So we can limit screen time and shut off at night without parental intervention. There is even a countdown before internet is shut down. Kids need sleep!! Reports on daily or weekly basis , I prefer weekly. I can see everywhere my kids go. I don’t give them opportunities to lie cause they know zi know, and we are not punitive so we discuss stuff. Alerts so they don’t have to call my wife when they reach their destination. Would be great if it monitored how fast they are driving but still the app gives us peace of mind. So far kids are mostly fine with it. We work together to set parameters, they like doing things other than their phone, just need a push sometimes. The Secure Family helps our growing family!

This app is probably the best we have found, however we are kidding ourselves when we think our children won’t use a separate VPN or other hidden social media on the web, we simply can’t keep up. That is where it is important that if you are willing to install this on your child’s. The app really needs to have a time limit for the screen time as well as the times of day to use. I think we all would be shocked to see that there is literally hours of screen time that once was used to daydream, read books, or play soccer. Screen time is important and needs a limit just like we had when young on amount of TV time. If possible, somehow limiting APP installation without our approval would also work well. If the user could not install any apps without first approval, it may help. The last thing would be to state “Until this program can be embedded into the actual AT&T phone or system, our kids will always be able to figure out a work around”. It is imperative you also talk with your kids to make this work. There still needs to be a lot of trust. Your trust in your child is still a better deterrent than this program at this time.