7 Apps and Programs to Help Protect Your Family From Pornography and Other Digital Dangers
The average age of exposure to pornography is about eleven-years-old. With the explosion of internet use, phone technology, and apps, people have access to pornographic material like never before. Some may even come across pornography accidentally by misspelling website names because some pornographic sites use common or generic website domains. Access to pornography is literally a click away. Needless to say, access to the internet in today’s digital world can be a scary thing, especially for parents.
While there should be no substitute for talking to your kids early and often about sex, pornography, and smart internet activity, there are many apps out there that can give you peace of mind. Whether you’re trying to overcome a pornography addiction or a parent trying to protect your family from the degrading online material, here are seven apps that can help you safeguard your family from pornography and other harmful internet activity.
Net Nanny 
Website: www.netnanny.com
Pricing: $39.99 for one device; $59.99 for five devices; and $89.99 for ten devices.
Net Nanny is considered by many to be one of the top parental monitoring programs out there. Its software helps parents to track, monitor, and set up alerts based on customized settings. This means that parents can set up their own keywords to keep kids from online access to things like drugs, cyberbullying, and pornography. When someone tries to access a suspicious web page, that page is immediately blocked and the parent or owner immediately receives a notification that informs them who tried to access the page and what kind of content he/she tried to access.
Qustodio 
Website: www.qustodio.com
Pricing: $49.46/year for up to five devices; $87.26/year for up to ten devices; $124.16/year for up to fifteen devices.
Qustodio is a great option for digital monitoring. Its smart filters help protect kids from inappropriate internet content; parents have full visibility of their children’s internet activity; parents can even set a screen time schedule and limits for games and apps. With Qustodio you can track calls and texts. It also allows location tracking.
Ever Accountable 
Website: everaccountable.com
Pricing: Individual Plan is $69.99/year; Family Plan is $99.99/year.
Ever Accountable focuses on helping those overcoming pornography addictions through accountable web use. It can also be used to help monitor website use for children. The neat thing about Ever Accountable is that it doesn’t block you from accessing pornography, but it sends reports of your online behavior to an accountability partner. This allows you to train yourself to develop safe online behavior habits even when the temptation to look is there. It also promotes honest conversation with your accountability partner if you do mess up and view pornographic material. The biggest knock on Ever Accountable is that monitoring on iOS is complicated and sometimes inconvenient.
Circle with Disney 
Website: meetcircle.com
Pricing: $45.99
Circle with Disney is actually a physical product you can buy. It hooks up to your WI-FI and helps you monitor and control the internet your family uses in your home. It helps you do so many things such as filter inappropriate or pornographic material, set limits on apps and internet usage and lets you customize monitoring for each family member. It allows you to schedule an internet bedtime for kids that turns off the WI-FI. It even allows you to set time limits for things like Netflix. Disney with circle helps keep your home safe from pornography while, at the same time, promotes healthy online behavior.
WebWatcher 
Website: www.webwatcher.com
Pricing: $10.83/month; $59.95/3 months; $129.95/year.
WebWatcher allows you to view texts, calls, photos, website usage, and GPS. With WebWatcher, recorded data is sent to a secure account allowing you to monitor remotely from any device. WebWather helps you protect your kids from pornographic material, online predators, cyberbullying, sexting, drug and alcohol use, and even helps with suicide prevention.
Covenant Eyes
Website: www.covenanteyes.com
Pricing: Personal Protection is $11.99/month; Family Protection is $15.99/month.
Covenant Eyes is a program designed to combat pornography. It is similar to Ever Accountable in that an accountability report is sent to a trusted friend. But Covenant Eyes will block pornographic material if you want it to. Covenant Eyes believes that ultimately relationships help people overcome and prevent pornographic use. It promotes conversations with trusted accountability friends so that powerful, healthy relationships help you free yourself from pornography.
WebSafety 
Website: www.websafety.com
Pricing: $5.99/month
WebSafety is one of the leading parental apps for mobile devices. It aims to give parents an open window through which they can monitor potentially harmful content or predatory exchanges occurring on a child’s mobile device. It monitors SMS messaging, mobile apps downloaded and used, websites visited, social network activity, geo-fencing, and mobile device location tracking throughout the day. At $5.99 a month, it’s one of the cheaper monitoring options.
Some Additional Choices:
Mobicip
Website: https://www.mobicip.com/
Pricing: Pricing starts at $49.99/year for 5 devices
Protect Young Eyes, recently released an exhaustive review of over 13 parental control apps (http://bit.ly/2ERcKFU), in which Mobicip was ranked as the overall best parental control solution for kids in pre-school, elementary school, and middle school. Mobicip has evolved into a holistic parental control tool. With Mobicip, parents can limit/schedule screen time; filter internet access on all browsers; block all kinds of inappropriate content; view videos watched, social media usage and browsing history; block apps & games; track the location of their children; supervise videos & streaming services; monitor & track online activity 24×7; and invite parents/guardians to share parental control duties.