Digital Safety
Parental controls and screen time — the one department here where the risk is not chemical, and where the tools only work if the conversation happens too.
What makes this department different
Most families need less software than they think. The controls already built into the phone, console and router cover the common cases, and the paid tools are worth it for narrower reasons worth knowing before you subscribe.
An environmental risk score for your ZIP.
Water quality, radon zone, air quality and wildfire risk for every major metro and ZIP code — pulled from EPA SDWIS, AirNow and the USFS, not estimated.
Tell me when it launches
One email when the ZIP lookup goes live. Nothing else.
Why this department exists
Numbers worth knowing
AAP's guidance gives no universal screen-time cap - it asks what the screen replaced instead
AAP Center of Excellence on Social Media and Youth Mental Health - screen time guidance, 2016
What actually mattersthe age below which a site must get verifiable parental consent before collecting a child's personal information
FTC Complying with COPPA: Frequently Asked Questions
Controls you already ownEvery figure here links its source. We don't cite a statistic we haven't read in the original.
Start here
What's in Digital Safety
Parental Controls
Device-level controls and the apps that layer on top, compared honestly.
5 guides · 2 products
Free change first: Open the settings you already own before you buy a subscription.
- ReviewQustodio review: strong on Android, restricted on iOS
- ExplainerParental controls on iPhone and iPad, set up properly
- ExplainerGoogle Family Link parental controls, set up properly
- ShoppingParental control apps, honestly assessed
Screen Time & Online Safety
Age-appropriate limits, what the evidence supports, and talking to kids about what they see.
1 guide
Free change first: Watch it with them — co-viewing changes outcomes more than the hour count.
The full screen time & online safety guideKnow the risks
Room by room
The same products, sorted by where they actually sit in your home — what tends to be a problem in each room, and the swap worth making first.
Worth reading
Related
Try the built-in tools first
Every major phone, tablet, console and router ships with parental controls, and for most families those cover the situation without another subscription. The guides below start there, because recommending a paid app to someone who has not turned on the free one is the wrong order.
Where a third-party app genuinely adds something — and some do — the guide says what, specifically, so the decision is about a feature rather than a feeling.
Software is a floor, not a plan
Filters and time limits are useful and they are also easy to route around, at an age that arrives sooner than most parents expect. Treating a control as a conversation-starter rather than a solution is the difference between a tool that helps for years and one that stops working the week a child finds the workaround.
Age is the whole variable
Guidance that is right for a six-year-old is usually wrong for a thirteen-year-old, in both directions. Where our answer depends on age, the guides say which age, rather than offering one recommendation for everyone under eighteen.
Every source we cite is checked against our criteria first — see how we check our sources.