Norton Family Review 2024: Good, But Is It Worth The Cost?

Norton Family allows you to customize the web filters and time restrictions for each of your kids’ devices, track their location in real time, and see all the latest updates and alerts in an easy-to-use parent dashboard.

Here’s a quick summary of Norton Family’s features:

Web Filters — Block Access to Inappropriate Sites Based on Your Child’s Age

Norton Family’s web filtering capabilities allow you to block inappropriate websites and content categories on your child’s device. You can set this restriction manually or based on the age of the child. This way, you can be sure the child is only accessing age-appropriate content online, even when you’re not looking.

The Web Supervision feature is very easy to use

When I want to restrict my child from visiting specific sites, I set the restriction to Very High or High. Moderate and Low only show them a warning, but still let the child access the sites if they want to. You can also set a custom restriction level if you want your kids to be able to visit any site they want, but with a notification sent to you of the sites they visit.

I like that Norton Family’s web filtering feature comes with a total of 47 categories, such as news, violence, porn, suicide, alcohol, and drugs. It uses smart AI to categorize every website based on the text, metadata, and images found on these sites. You can always add additional websites to the filter.

You can also add more websites to the list of sites to be blocked

Once you set a restriction, it’s automatically updated on the child’s device, and they also get an instant notification about the change. I also like that it allows kids to request access to a blocked site, especially if they need to use it. The request shows up via email as a notification, and you can click the accompanying link to login and approve it.

The web filtering works on iOS, Android, Windows, Norton Family browser, and common web browsers like Chrome, Firefox, and Edge. Norton Family also shows you daily, weekly, bi-weekly, and monthly reports of your child’s web usage. The reports show which blacklisted site categories they tried to access and the whitelisted site categories they visited.

Time Limits — Control How Long Your Child Spends on Their Device

The Time Supervision feature allows you to actively monitor each child’s device use and enforce time limits. It has 4 default schedule categories based on a child’s age, with older kids getting more time. However, the time limit is quite general and isn’t enforced during school hours.

The default screen schedule rules are very general

But you can also set a custom time limit schedule that works best for your child’s daily routines. I find the default ones more useful for older kids. I prefer to set a custom time limit for the younger ones. You can do this by manually selecting the allowed and blocked screen hours and then applying it to as many days in the week as you want.

Green represents allowed time, while hours marked gray are blocked on the child’s phone

The settings for the custom time limit are split into 24 hours (day and night), allowing you to add or block screen time on your child’s phone in increments of 30 minutes. The only challenge with this is that it doesn’t let you decide exactly how much time you want the kids to spend on their phones.

You can access the time limits feature on iOS, Android, and Windows. Whenever you make a change, it takes effect immediately. Norton Family also allows the child to request more time if necessary. I get the notification in my dashboard and email and can grant the request easily.

There’s also an Instant Lock feature, which is accessible from your dashboard, that allows you to block all apps, including outgoing phone calls. However, you will be prompted to add at least 1 emergency contact that your child can call before you can enable Instant Lock.

Norton Family also provides a 4-digit PIN that allows your kids to unlock their devices instantly without requesting permission from you. This is useful when there’s an emergency. You can find this PIN in the parent’s dashboard at the top of each child’s profile.

School Restrictions — Ensure Responsible Phone Use During School Hours

Kids can get easily distracted from their studies, so the School Time features enable parents to ensure their kids have supervised access to their phones or tablets during school hours. This feature is different from the Web filtering and Time Supervision features. It is a combination of both, as it allows you to limit internet access to only the websites your kids need at school.

You can create a custom selection of school hours for each child

Norton Family’s School Time feature is a good addition, but it’s still disappointing since you can only block websites and not apps. It would be better if you could also restrict access to apps that might be a distraction to the child during school hours.

The websites you want to allow or block can be added manually in the dashboard. Norton Family already includes a list of 41 website categories to select from, such as gaming, drugs, abortion, alcohol, art, gambling, and cyberbullying. I tested the feature right after activating it, and I couldn’t access potentially distracting sites like YouTube and Reddit.

I can also add to the blocked site categories if it’s not already included

But Norton Family recognizes that your child needs access to certain educational sites. So, it whitelists common educational sites like blackboard.com, coursera.org, and khanacademy.org. There are up to 33 such allowed websites, and you can add more specific websites that are otherwise restricted or blocked in the “Web Categories”.

However, the feature is limited to the Norton Family browser, so I needed to block third-party browsers like Chrome and Mozilla. This forces them to use the Norton Family browser. Finally, If you don’t want to go through the hassle of tweaking the settings, you can enable Instant School Time and select how many hours (up to 8 hours) you want to allow per day per child.

App Monitoring — Track Apps Usage and Block Access When Necessary

App Supervision gives you access to your child’s app usage. You can see all the apps on their phones, including newly installed ones. You can also see how long they spend on each app. I find this feature particularly useful for monitoring how many hours a child spends on social media every day and which social media platform they use the most.

Easily block or allow apps on your child’s device, including recently installed apps

But, I’m not particularly impressed with the App Monitoring feature because it only allows you to block or allow usage of the app. I prefer an additional feature that allows parents to set specific app usage limits, especially social media apps, per day or week. You can only see how much time each app has been used in the past 24 hours, 7 days, 14 days, or 30 days.

Norton Family app usage tracking shows you installed, uninstalled, and most used apps

So, if I notice they are using any app for longer than agreed, the only option is to block the app. App Supervision is unavailable on iOS, and app usage tracking is unavailable on Windows. Another thing to note is that Norton Family lists updated apps as newly installed apps, which can be a bit confusing.

Location Tracking — Set up Geofences and Track Your Child’s Live Location

Norton Family includes a Location Supervision feature for tracking your kids’ location and where they’ve been. The app connects to the phone’s GPS, so it provides a very accurate location. This is especially useful if your child gets lost or loses their device.

Norton Family also includes the “Check In” option for kids to share their location with their parents. Alternatively, parents can send a location-sharing request to their children to approve. I like that the feature works on both iOS and Android devices.

Location Supervision also allows you to set up geofenced zones using the Favorite Locations option. This means you can set predefined zones around the areas your child is expected to be in most days. You’ll get alerts when the child enters or leaves that zone. You can set up geofences up to a radius of 3,200 meters (10,500 feet) from a particular location.

There’s also an “Alert Me” setting that tells you where each kid is located at scheduled times. It’s a feature I find useful if you want to keep track of your child’s location at a particular time during the day, like after they leave school or when they ought to be at sports training. Norton Family’s location tracking sends you updates about your child’s location every 20–30 minutes.

But it’s disappointing that Norton Family does not support Location Supervision in most European countries, including Portugal, Romania, Iceland, Sweden, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Germany, Russia, Spain, as well as Israel and Türkiye.

Video Blocking — Monitor Videos Your Child Is Watching

The video supervision feature monitors YouTube and Hulu videos on your child’s device. It tracks Youtube directly and works on iOS, Android, and Windows. However, Norton Family does not monitor the Hulu videos watched on Android and iOS, only on Windows.

Note that Norton Family does not monitor Hulu videos on Android and iOS

The feature works really well, but like the Search Supervision feature, if your child uses iOS, then Video Supervision only tracks videos watched on the Norton Family browser. On Android devices, Norton Family will track videos watched on both the Norton Family and Google Chrome browsers.

A tech-savvy child can easily circumvent video monitoring. I blocked the apps through the dashboard, but the kids were still able to watch YouTube and Hulu videos on Firefox.

Norton Family also shows you direct links to quickly see the videos your child watched

It takes about 20–30 minutes for tracked videos to show up in the parental app. When the tracked videos appear in your dashboard, Norton Family shows a thumbnail screenshot of the video and a direct link that allows you to check out the videos yourself. It also shows you the search terms your child used in the Search Supervision section of your dashboard.

Search Filters — See What Your Child Has Been Searching on the Internet

Norton Family’s Search Supervision feature tracks all your child’s web searches on a few top major search engines. This includes YouTube, Google, and Bing. You can enable safe search through this feature, so these search engines will only list search results that are safe for your kids.

Search Supervision works on iOS, Android, and Windows devices. But kids can still use other search engines that Norton Family cannot track. On iOS devices, the Search Supervision feature only tracks your search queries on the Norton Family browser. So, they can easily circumvent the search feature if they use Chrome or Firefox browsers.

The only way to avoid this is to block the apps directly from your dashboard. This leaves them with the Norton Family browser as the only option. It’s a bit better on Android, as it tracks Google Chrome, the default Android browser, and the Norton Family browser.

On Windows, the Search Supervision works on all the supported search engines via the Norton Family browser extensions. But, your child can easily disable the extension.

Extra Features — Make the App Easy to Use, Safe, and Reliable

In addition to its core parental control functionalities, Norton Family offers a range of supplementary features for added convenience for parents:

• Uninstall Protection — A crucial feature that prevents children from uninstalling the Norton Family app to bypass parental controls.
• Instant Lock — Enforces immediate restrictions on a child’s device. When you enable Instant Lock, the child can only call an emergency contact on their device. Consider sharing the 4-digit PIN generated in your dashboard with your child for emergencies.
• Two-Factor Authentication — Adds an extra layer of security to your Norton Family account.
• Auto Logout — Logs you out after a prolonged period of inactivity in the app. This reduces the risk of unauthorized access to your dashboard.