Net Nanny Review 2024: Good App, but What's the Catch?

Unlike other services, such as Qustodio, Net Nanny has apps for both parent and child accounts. The child can open the app and see how much screen time they’ve used and how much remains, which is an excellent way for them to learn how to budget their time. However, it also gives the child the opportunity to turn off the parental control restriction by selecting the Enable Unrestricted Mode option. The child will need to enter the account username and password in order to change this setting.

All of the parental controls can be accessed either via the mobile app or from a PC or Mac. When you first log in to your dashboard, you’ll get a quick overview of your kid’s app usage and a tabbed interface that allows the parent to check Searches, Screen Time, Blocks/Alerts, YouTube History, and Location. You can also pause their phones (which means that all apps, except for the phone, are blocked) or turn off the internet from the dashboard.

Basic Tools Needed to Monitor Your Kids

• Family Feed: I found this to be a handy tool since it gave me an overview of what all my kids are doing, without having to go to each of their profiles individually.
• Searches: This feature is supposed to show you what your kids are searching for online. However, I discovered a major flaw with it. I tested this on my son’s Android phone, and none of the searches done through the Google app showed up on my dashboard or Family Feed. I was only able to see searches done in Chrome or the pre-installed browser in the Searches tab, but none of the searches done through the Google app showed up. In comparison, when using Qustodio, all searches appeared in the activity summary.
• Location: I never had to wonder where my kids are, the GPS tracking shows me on a map where they are. There is a geofence option, although to be perfectly honest, it can use improvement. It works based on location history. This is great if I want an alert that my kids either got to school or are leaving, but it doesn’t help if I want to set up alerts for places they haven’t been to yet. The one flaw I found with the location tracking is my son was able to turn off the GPS on his phone and change the Location permissions in the Net Nanny app. Therefore, it does require a level of trust between you and your kids for this to be effective. I didn’t have this problem with Qustodio, because it has a feature that locks the device settings, so my child was unable to turn off the GPS.
• Screentime: I like that I can see how much screen time my kids have used each day. This feature would be even better if it gave a breakdown of how much time was spent on each app, like Qustodio does.
  
  
• YouTube Monitoring: The way this feature is supposed to work is that any searches and views on the YouTube app will be recorded in the Dashboard, but it won’t block or restrict any videos. When using YouTube.com the YouTube Restricted Mode, which blocks videos based on meta titles and descriptions, is enforced. As I mentioned earlier, this wasn’t the experience I had. I didn’t see any of the searches or viewing history from the YouTube app and I was only able to see searches made from YouTube.com, without a viewing history. Qustodio has a much better YouTube monitoring tool. All searches are included in the activity alerts, and it includes links and thumbnails of all videos that your child watched.
• Blocks & Alerts: This section is a bit different than the Family Feed because instead of getting an overview of the entire family, it’s separate for each child. At first, I was annoyed when I saw that it said several websites and YouTube videos were blocked when I knew for a fact they weren’t. I did a little digging and found the answer in the Net Nanny FAQ section. It seems that it blocked trackers and ads that were associated with the page.

How to Set Filters and Limits with Net Nanny

Net Nanny allows you to set filters for specific apps, websites, and to create custom filters, plus setting limitations for daily screen time. To get started click on the Preferences icon in the Parent Dashboard to start personalizing the monitoring and limitations on your kid’s devices.

• Daily Screen Time Allocation: I can choose, down to the minute, how much screen time my child can have.
• Restricted Times: In addition to a daily limit, Net Nanny allows you to create a daily or weekly schedule for when the device can be used. The calendar works in time increments of 15 minutes. This allows me to restrict access during school hours, homework time, and after bedtime.

• Net Nanny Content Filters: There are 15 different categories that Net Nanny can filter: Porn, Mature Content, Adult Novelty, Anime, Nudity, Abortion, Strip Clubs, Provocative, Death Gore, Tobacco, Drugs, Weapons, Gambling, and Suicide. You can set each category as either “Allow,” “Alert,” or “Block. The web filter is not as comprehensive as Qustodio, which has over 30 categories, and uses AI and machine learning to understand context, which improves the accuracy of which sites are being blocked.

• Create Content Filter: In addition to the default web filters, you have the option to create your own keyword-based filters:

• Block or Allow Specific Websites: Net Nanny allows you to select specific URLs to either block or whitelist if you’re finding a site is being incorrectly flagged by the filters.

• Block or Allow Specific Apps: Net Nanny compiled a list of over 80 popular apps, plus the apps currently installed on the phone or tablet, and you have the power to block them.

• Mask Profanity on Websites: If this feature is activated, Net Nanny will place #### over common curse words.

• Force SafeSearch: This will use Google’s Safe Search feature to filter all out inappropriate results from searches.I was surprised to see that even though it says “Force SafeSearch” there were still steps I had to take to actually turn it on. Net Nanny can only apply Safe Search on the browser. It can’t filter searches done through the Google app. You can manually turn on Safe Search through the Google app.Click on the More on the bottom of the screen > Settings > General > Make sure SafeSearch is toggled on.

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Before you download the app from the App Store or Google Play, you should get a Net Nanny subscription and set up your account.

Installing the Parent App

To get started, you can acquire the Net Nanny Parent app via Google Play or the App Store. After installation, sign in using your account credentials, the ones you used during the account creation process. Once logged in, a welcome window will guide you with helpful tips and highlight the various features available on the dashboard.

Installing Net Nanny Child App

There are a few additional steps to take when installing the child app, because you will need to make some changes to the phone settings to allow Net Nanny to run in the background, access the location, filter apps, and enforce the time management feature.

Download the Net Nanny Child App from the App Store or Google Play and create an account for each child. The app will walk you through each of the changes it will need to make in the settings in order to properly work.

You will have to give Net Nanny admin permission on your child’s device. This will allow it to monitor the phone or tablet accurately. Click Let’s Do It and then on the next screen click Activate. Depending on your device, you may receive warnings from the OS about granting the app Admin permissions. The permissions are needed to allow Net Nanny to work.

Once all the settings are adjusted and you’ve given Net Nanny permission to access the phone’s GPS, pictures, contacts and more, the installation will be complete and Net Nanny will instantly start monitoring the devices.