Bark - Parental Controls Reviews

My 13 yr old daughter was asked for nudes by a 13 yr old boy. I had to find this boy’s father and tell him what had happened. I trust my daughter to do the right things and in this instance she swore him out (we were actually proud of her for that) and told him no. I do not trust other kids to not send her things that she doesn’t even want, or pictures of them nude, which btw a child can be prosecuted for having child pornography on their phone even if it’s their boyfriend or girlfriend.

The teenagers scoring this low are either doing things they are not suppose to do, or their parents have not explained to them that it’s the lack of trust in other kids and their parents. Let’s face it, not all parents take the time to actually teach their kids right from wrong or have the tough conversations with them.. I know my parents didn’t.

For the parents reading this review, it would be a good idea to learn about new tech and apps and look them up before allowing your kids to have them.. ex: Snapchat was literally created to send pornographic images between adults.. and it deletes the pics unless the other person saves. Your kid might not be sending nudes, but it doesn’t mean someone isn’t sending it to your kid.

It is completely useless for older children who know how to delete an app. I wasn’t sure if it was possible for my daughter to delete it, so I tried to see if I could delete it off her phone and sure enough I was able to. I did not get any notification until 30 minutes later. When I looked at the notification, all it said was my child’s account needs attention or something vague like that. This is the same as all other notifications such as when the VPN is being spotty, so I had no idea it was complete removed from my daughter’s phone.

Thankfully I do not have any concerns about my daughter’s mental health, but in theory 30 minutes is ample time for a child to delete Bark , look up how to commit suicide, and commit the act. Similarly, 30 mins is ample time to look up that photo or video or whatever that they’re dying to see that this app would have blocked. This is a major issue and I no longer see the utility of Bark for a tech-savvy pre-teen.

I understand that this app’s suggestion to circumvent this issue is to use Apple Screen Time to put parental controls on deleting apps, but the entire purpose of purchasing an app such as this app is because of the very well known unreliability of Apple’s Screen Time. I should not purchase an app subscription and be told to rely on an external app in order for it to do its job. Very disappointed.

This is honestly the best monitoring app I’ve tried, and I’ve tried a few. Yes, iPhones are tricky and you have to install iTunes on a laptop and go through a whole set up. But after the initial install it has managed itself. Every now and then my laptop will unsync with the wifi and I have to link it again, but as soon as I do, I can see my daughter’s phone being backed up into iTunes. My recommendation is to go read the this app Kids reviews. They’re comedy gold. They are so angry with Bark doing what it was designed for. If only they understood that Bark actually helps maintain a sense of privacy because it only alerts when there’s something wrong so parents don’t have to physically take the phone and read through all the typical teenage angst and rants. My advice: never freak at the alerts, open and read the content before approaching your child. I once got a suicide alert and what I read broke my heart. A friend’s mother had attempted suicide and the friend was sharing with my child. I had time to process how I wanted to approach this subject with my child (we had never talked about suicide) and we had a great talk. I purchased the annual membership right away.

I feel so much better to know there is someone helping to keep my kids and their friends safe. I am a therapist and work with mental health issues every day. I believe I have a very open and honest relationship with my teen. I believe she has more insight into mental illness and many of the dangers that are out there. So having Bark has nothing to do with me not trusting her or not having an open healthy relationship and honest communication - its another way for parents to help navigate this tough world. Whether it’s my child or one of her friends thats struggling with depression or self injurious behavior or a very sick individual slowly but surely attempting to groom my child - I want that chance to be able to intervene and make aware the potential dangers. To discuss what occurred or what options there are to deal with the situation and talk it out. Beyond having Bark - I had the opportunity to speak for about an hour with one of the this app support team members and he was super helpful. All of my questions were answered and he never rushed through anything. He was kind and patient and very knowledgeable. So far I have not found anything that I would change! Thanks this app!

hi i have some very strict parents (mostly my mom) who decided to put this on my phone a couple of years ago as soon as i got it. i’m 16 now almost 17 and my mom isn’t letting me get it off anytime soon. in fact, Bark has made me walk on eggshells around both of them and has pretty much destroyed my relationship with them. i feel comfortable telling my parents absolutely nothing, as they are looking to be more involved in my personal life. they do not trust me to tel them if there are serious problems in my life, and downloading Bark only shows the lack of trust u have to ur kids. idk about other people, but respectfully, i hate what it’s done to me. i’ve had to buy a second phone just to text my friends in privacy. i’ve seen the comments and reviews of the developers saying “we only show certain things to monitor privacy”, but it’s not exactly true. the thing uses key words so if someone typed ANYTHING remotely concerning at all, Bark sends about 10 texts from that conversation to ur parents. look, all im trying to say is i highly don’t recommend Bark. it has destroyed any trust i’ve originally had with my parents, it shows their lack of trust in me, and it leads me to find other, more extreme ways of finding privacy. i would hate to get to this point with my kids i pray every day that i don’t. i hope y’all found this helpful

Y’all ever wonder why our kids try to hide things from us? It’s because of things like this! Things that report to you what your child is doing ruins trust in the family. Our children will want to hide more things from us with Bark than ever. A phone is an incentive and is a reliever for our children. If you feel the need to monitor your child’s actions then one, they are not mature enough to have a phone or social media, two, you’re not doing a good job explaining responsibilities to your child in order for them to mature. I’ve seen country amounts of children get outted to their parents about their sexuality BECAUSE of Bark! It really does upset me that children did not have to time to explain their sexuality to their parents and have an actual moment to explain because of Bark. As a parent I would never NEVER in courage for Bark to be put on a child’s phone. If you feel the need to monitor their phone, WHICH YOU SHOULD NEVER DO unless something extreme has come up, then you sit down with them and simply say, “Hey I just want to monitor your phone for a little bit if you have an sensitive things that you talk about to your friends with then just let me know and I won’t read through it.” ITS JUST THAT SIMPLE!! I’ve seen many LGBTQ+ youth members have their lives torn apart by Bark! This is a ridiculous thing to make!

i’ve seen plenty of parents praising Bark, just as i have seen plenty of children bashing Bark. personally i haven’t used it, nor was it used on me. however, knowing how i was when i was younger, and how dangerous some people can be, i don’t exactly blame some parents for using Bark. however, that doesn’t mean i agree with how some parents decide to use Bark. yes, Bark is great for monitoring the PROTECTION of your child, but they still deserve their own level of PRIVACY. it is not the developers fault that a parent may decide to abuse the power Bark can truly hold. in all honesty, i think this is a good app. if you’re concerned about your child being targeted by dangerous people and want a way to be sure they’re safe, i definitely encourage using Bark. but if you just want it because you want to know what all your kid talks about, posts, etc. then you’re definitely not someone i can respect. again, you can’t blame the developers because your own parents don’t respect your privacy. they just wanted to make an app that helps protect you.

teenage point of view

when our parents we’re younger they got to have fun not get tracked have freedom and learn as they grow the responsibilities of maturing. As a kid, 15 years old i believe Bark goes against everything a childhood should be apart of. I promise you if you actualt sit down and have a conversation with you child you can creat a much more meaningful influence on there decisions instead of downloading an app where there nervous about everything they do and if there parents are reading what goes on with there friends. Growing up is going through ups and downs with kids. Having them learn what is right and what’s wrong. If you just put and app like this on a kids phone i promise there going to figure out ways to get around it or override it. your not helping them be safer you just loosing there trust and make them learn different ways to talk to there friends with out being monitored through everything they do. I beg you not to get thing for your kids and look into different solutions. This will juts destroy your trust you once had with you kid. Kids deserve to have privacy just like you did when you were a kid. i know the world is different and you have to learn how society as changed it but it doesn’t mean you have to intervene into the live that is a kid and it’s friends. it’s not going to make a good difference for them only for u. and it’s juts gonna loose each other’s trust forever.

Hello!
I’m an older teenager now and I so wish my parents had something like this on my phone. I was a trustworthy kid, but so much happened online that my parents never knew about. Strange men messaging me, boyfriends asking for sexual pictures, bullying, and countless other things. I know most teenagers would tell their parents that this shows a lack of trust or an invasion of privacy, but as someone who is older I would have really appreciated it for my parents to do this. For them to actually know what was going on in my life. Sometimes adults can feel unapproachable for fear of punishment/not being believed, if they minimize how you’re feeling/tell you it’s not a big deal, or react negatively. There are so many dangers online, and so many bad things a young person can get into like pornography or worse. Knowing your child is safe is worth them potentially being upset with you for a while. Any kid who has faced the horrors online would say the same thing. Being concerned for your teenagers safety is not a bad thing, that makes you a good parent for caring about your child. Take it from a teenage girl.

I honestly wish this was something I had to keep me safe when I was younger, I’m 18 now and most of the 1 star rating are from young, easily to manipulate teens who haven’t seen the bad thing in the world that will hurt them. Bark is wonderful and helps parents know what’s happening so they can know what they may need to discuss with their kids. Bark help protect children from bullying, death threats, child grooming, and pedos, which none of these younger teens most likely don’t understand what that’s like. I Bark will help not only your kid but parents too! Parents will know that a grown man who’s 43 is talking to their 11 year old and is asking for inappropriate things. There have been cases of children meeting online friends and are found dead or kidnapped! There are sick and twisted people out there and Bark protects children from them. Thank you for making such an amazing app!

You younger teens can be upset that you’re being monitored but your gonna be thankful that your parents helped you not be manipulated by a stranger. The internet is very dangerous and do not trust online strangers no matter what.

Bark only teaches kids how to hide, it teaches them not to trust their parents. I know from experience putting all these excessive limits on kids teaches them to not use their phones and use other more dangerous methods to do whatever they want. It destroys any trust between parents and children. I understand you were once children but the world is so different now. This isn’t helping anyone, all it does it control your kids. And as soon as they leave or no longer have eyes on them 24/7 they’ll go and do all the things you tried to avoid. Bark is so problematic for so many reasons. Parents I hope you realize this isn’t the way to help your kids, this will only cause them to hate or resent you. They will be bullied at school for having Bark , people wont want to talk or text them because they know you’re watching. Forget protecting them from bullying online, it’s awful in the real world. And you can’t control them there. I’m begging you as a parent don’t do this to them. Imaging everything that’s on your phone becoming visible to your parents, you’d never use your phone again. This is extremely invasive and horrible to do to children. They will learn nothing from this, and they will only find more dangerous ways to do things. I wouldn’t wish Bark on my worst enemy.

Downloading Bark and making your kids put it on their phone will only make them sneak around more. You should be able to trust your kids to do the right thing and if you can’t, then something isn’t going right when your parenting. I get it tells if something inappropriate is happening then you want to be alerting, but you should trust your child to come and let you know. Bark violates privacy and if you lets say cuss and your child mimics you, it will alert you over a word that it finds inappropriate. It’s ridiculous how many of you can’t trust your children enough and if you can’t, then you should have never given them phones or allowed them to have social media. There are plenty of other good apps that let you watch your child’s behavior without violating every ounce of privacy they have. It will be your fault if you child ends up sneaking around or feeling like they are walking on eggshells around you because all you do is keep adding apps on their phones that make them believe they aren’t trustworthy and they are immature and childish. Not only will Bark make your child feel bad, but it will also make them feel like they can’t talk to you about anything even though you are the parent and you are supposed to be the person they trust most in the world.

I know kids don’t like apps where parents can spy on them, however Bark doesn’t just let your parents read all your private chats. Bark only picks up “alerts”. Alerts work by picking gaps of dangerous texts by categorizing them into areas such as “depression”, “suicidal thoughts”, “violence”, “sexual content”, etc. I am a kid writing this, and my parents have used this on me and my sister. As a 15 year old, you would believe myself to be mad at this, but Bark is supposed to help you and your parents. To let you see what you yourself are doing, and letting your parents help you through any problems you have. My parents agreed not to read any texts without my permission. This tactic of approaching matters helped me to be a lot more honest with my parents and I had more trust in them. Instead of snooping and forcing their way into my private life, my parents let me bring it to them.

Overall, I think Bark is really helpful. I know kids will automatically believe their parents are spying on them, but that’s just not the case. Kudos to the maker of Bark!

Great concept but I found Bark very complex. It takes awhile to set up but then syncing the kids phones nightly or however one chooses to download the data to the this app app for monitoring is another hurdle. I found the downloading takes up A LOT of data so best to use an external hard drive as another device besides just your cell phone is needed with this app. I learned both devices had to be on the same operating system (as for Apple devices) to work optimally. Also, turning off a social media platform on the this app parental controls doesn’t necessarily mean the kids can’t access. It may block the use thru Bark directly but logging on thru the internet directly was an easy work around. The this app monitoring on the kids phone was easy to shut on and off. Even when one used the iOS controls that supposedly prevented deleting things didn’t work. I could never feel confident using this app. The company only gives you a short period of free time to evaluate Bark before they charge the full annual subscription fee - be aware of this! It is not enough time based on the complexity of set-up. After months of trying to get the monitoring to work, I gave up. I wouldn’t spend my money on this app.

ok listen Bark is stupid. the reason why is because your literally deciding every single little thing your child is doing and choosing things for them instead of giving them freedom. my parents don’t have Bark on my phone and they trust me and i don’t do anything bad online and if something weird goes on like predator or bullying i handle it myself and report it. also i am safe and responsible of my own actions and behavior online.

what i have to tell Bark is that it’s not a good app like look parents are suppose to protect their kids but not like this far. if your kid is 6 years old with a phone that makes sense but if they are 14 years old and have Bark tracking them that makes no sense. i don’t know why these apps even exist like yes the internet is a disgusting,nasty,toxic,harassing place but common like your kids can protect them selves. i completely disagree with these types of apps

one thing why the heck does Bark have a screen time limit. hey i think your child can track and be responsible with their own screen time. one last thing if your kid is a teen then they are responsible enough to not be tracked every little thing they do on the internet and have a FrEe time or pause time like fr this is so dumb.

Don’t get me wrong, this is a great app, but not for older kids. We understand that we need to stay safe online. All you need to do is talk to us about it and that’s it. You don’t need an app to monitor what we do! I see most kids say that it invades privacy, and yes slightly. I also believe that the age rating should be changed. I think it should be 7yrs and younger. Why? At a younger age, kids don’t understand that people want to harm them. Parent’s, there is no point in downloading Bark if you can just talk to them! Plus you should give your child device’s if they have shown that they are responsible. Plus, kids can have a weird sense of humor and it couldn’t tell when my friends were joking. It always feels like I’m walking on eggshells! It doesn’t even let me comment anymore on videos and some things get blocked/restricted, even though the YT video is fine. The worst part is Even if I get my mom on my side, she’s not going to cancel bc she PAID for it. Parents, LISTEN TO YOUR KIDS, They aren’t going to open up to up to more if you download this. You are losing your kids trust, and it feels like you don’t trust us. It’s bad both ways. Please, Please don’t use Bark.

As one can see, this app has a bad rating due to kids/teens who have submitted reviews because they don’t like their parents monitoring their phones. Parents—do NOT let this dissuade you from purchasing this valuable parenting tool! We are parents and it is our job to teach our children how to responsibly use technology. this app is an invaluable tool for me as a parent. It has opened up the lines of communication between me and my teen to discuss how to make good choices, what is appropriate and how to be a responsible user of technology. Many times my teen has expressed relief and gratitude for this app allowing me to help him navigate technology. Bark is a must have for any parent!! I cannot express enough how thankful I am that this app exists. Bark is so user friendly and easy to set up. We have experienced no slowness and use it on multiple devices. I have the iOS app and my son has the android—not are simple and easy to use. Thank you so much this app!

We installed Bark as a way to monitor my 13 year old daughter’s online activity. I wanted her to be able to maintain some privacy while also being able to be alerted to items that I needed to see. No parent truly wants to read all of the messages between their teen daughter and her friends.

Bark allowed me to monitor what I needed to see and have very honest conversations with my daughter. Unfortunately, my daughter was targeted by a predator and began the grooming process. this app alerted me to the issue and we were able to address it and file a police report. this app has worked directly with the detectives providing much needed information to them. Bark has allowed me to focus on getting my daughter the support she needs while this app could provide the information needed for the investigation. It has given our family peace of mind. Although the annual cost may seem steep, it is definitely worth the cost for our family!

hey! as a 14 year old, i think Bark is a great idea. it keeps kids safe and lets their parents know if anything is wrong. i also appreciate the privacy for the teen as well. i have two concerns tho. one, how do i know that yall dont use data collected from my phone and sell it online, or have people look through my text and web history? there is a privacy concern there that i have an issue with. secondly, i think the software is slightly too sensitive. i know that this kind of app is difficult to develop and hone, but i wish that my parents would stop getting alerts for random memes and my friends and i talking about people we “like”. its slightly annoying 😒. but other than that, keep up the good work protecting kids!

EDIT: so i got a dev response to my questions, and im pretty satisfied with the answers, the data purge option and the sensitivity settings. thank you! i will now bestow on thee five stars! yall are awesome!

The this app app has been very helpful in flagging topics for my wife and I to be able to discuss with our daughter. The software is very helpful and picking up on potential issues. Bark sometimes flags items that may not be relevant but I prefer getting more notices then less and it is still much more efficient and can point us in the areas to focus on. This is Especially true when we are not able to completely review her usage. We are trying to find opportunities to help teach and have an open dialogue with my daughter and I think the ark app is a great tool and a way to bring things to the light. I would highly recommend it for families that are trying to navigate our current communication and social media. My suggestion for families would be to help explain to our kids why we use apps like this and to take the extra steps to talk through why with them. Thank you.

This is the worst app known to man and the fact that you people would make Bark is so dumb. I’ve read your replies and they all consist of “it creates privacy and gets children and parents closer” and “only if it’s concerning the parents will see” now you people tell me, would you enjoy this if you were a teen? Would you like it if you parents were constantly keeping tabs? Who’s this? What happened? Why didn’t you talk to me about this? Oh and concerning the parents would see!? Are you kidding me? Let the child have fun. Think about all the dumb and ‘concerning’ stuff you did when you were a teen. Was it fun? I bet it was? Did the mistakes you made help you figure out the things you know aren’t gonna work? Well darn, I bet it did. Now that you’re making are parents watch us like a hawk we can’t learn from our mistakes BECAUSE OUR PARENTS KNOW EVERYTHING AND WONT LET US FIND OUT WHAT THINGS ARE! How tf are we gonna learn are way around this terrible world if we get shielded from it? Anyway toodles I hope your happy with ruining every kids dream of LIVING. Toodles. P.S if you hit me back with “ Bark is meant to create privacy and keep a good relationship” or “it only gets sent to the parents if it’s concerning” don’t even respond back.

Why can't you just trust your child to tell you about "concerning things"?? I get that it only alerts them if something concerning happens, but why can't the kid just tell you themselves. If I was assaulted online, I would tell my parents and so would any other sensible teen in this world. If you hide away the horrible things in this world from your kid, they won't be ready for adulthood. Think of all the concerning things you did as a kid, did they help you create a better view of how the world works? Did they teach you a life lesson? Probably. Now, kids can learn those lessons even sooner if you'd just let us do what we want! What we do when we're 13 to 15 probably won't matter when we're older. My parents have said, "Colleges look at your social media accounts." But not stuff from when I'm TWELVE. You all need to calm down with this "bad stuff happens online" spiel. Even though we're younger than you, we're still sensible. We know what we're doing and we can navigate the internet better than you, most likely. We know how to protect ourselves because we're growing up in the age of technology. Adios.

P.S. I would give this zero stars, but it doesn't let me.

I was concerned about the reviews and then realized almost all the negative reviews are from teens. Of course... I’ll tell you what I tell my kids, parents are only caring about you by getting Bark. No privacy? It does the the exact opposite and lets you have privacy, but only alerts parents about things they should know about. This is an amazing tool to have as a parent in a digital world. Only the kids doing untrustworthy things are the ones flipping out over this. I will always trust my kids until they break my trust. And sorry, but you are still kids. You don’t need 100% privacy. Parents have every right to make sure you are safe, it’s called good parenting and I hate to sound like every other parent out there, but “you’ll understand one day when you are a parent.” I am so glad Bark exists so I can be a non invasive parent, but also a loving and caring parent.

how about you just TRUST your kid. everything we do doesn't need to be monitored. we have common sense okay. if you have to watch everything your kid is doing on their phone, just take the phone away. it's not worth it. the world is becoming more and more digital, and everyone needs to know how to navigate it. but you can't when you have parents hovering over you SO MUCH that they see every conversation. we are entitled to privacy. it's a basic human right. parents don't need to see every conversation that their kids have. it isn't fair. how would you feel if your kids could see everything one YOUR phone? i understand that you want to protect your kid, but this isn't the way. the more you trust your kid, the less they'll have to be sneaky. and that's all Bark does. teach kids how to be sneaky. i know you think you're doing your kid a favor by shielding them, but in reality, you're closing them off from 'the real world'. the world that you spend 18 years preparing them for. so do them a favor and back off a little.

Bark is perfect when having teenagers. I want to give them space while also being involved. With this app I can leave them alone and allow Bark to let me know when there are problems. You can look for vulgar language, violence, depression, anything. Bark can detect words on top of images as well as emojis and context. Pretty amazing stuff. My daughters like it too because they feel a sense of privacy, but also know they need to make right decisions because I will get alerted.
I had an issue with the desktop app and Breanna from this app was very helpful. She kept offering help until my issue was resolved.

My child’s personality had changed significantly over the past few months. Between therapy and utilizing this app (which we, of course, discussed ahead of time) we discovered there were several kids that were not only actively aggressing our child but also asking for nude photos! We were able to gently confront our child with what we found and how proud we were that they had declined forcefully to send any pictures. It opened up even more avenues of dialogue which we are so grateful for. Thank you so much this app! I can’t say enough good things about Bark.

Most aggravating set up of any app I’ve ever tried to use. I’ve been working on this “easy” set up for over an hour now. Still not done even though it said “All Set”. I’ve tested it by using my daughter’s phone to send test messages with bad words. No alerts even though I have it set to the maximum level for profanity. At this point, I’d have to say it’s a waste of time and money. Also a definite test of ones level of patience. I absolutely hate Bark. It says I have the wrong email or password but I KNOW it’s right. And when I put in my email and try to reset the password it says my email can’t be found in their system yet they send me twenty emails a day. Don’t subscribe unless you’ve prayed for patience because this will definitely test it!!

I’m not a very techy person but I went after it and tried to figure out this app. I had a few snags along the way but I would email the help email and they got back to me so fast. They would even follow up with me if I hadn’t responded! After I couldn’t figure out one thing I had a zoom call with Leslie. Oh my word!!! Incredible! She knew allll the things! She helped me set all of the things I was having issues with! It was flawless and so so so helpful! Super thankful!! Thanks so much this app! Customer care is amazing! ❤️

So grateful for Bark! It has been extremely helpful in monitoring my children’s activity with their devices. I thought I was doing everything I could to keep them safe, but this app made me aware of some things I never would have caught. The initial set up is time consuming, but it is so worth it. Once you have everything set up, it is super easy to use. I had one issue and their customer service went above and beyond to help me fix the problem. Thanks!

I wanted and needed Bark/software to protect my daughters. I contacted customer support for some specific help and Adam and Renee were wonderful. Never have I ever had better customer service than I had dealing with the 2 of them. They went WAY above and beyond my expectation and I will forever be a this app customer and refer any and everyone with young kids and teens to use this service. Thank you so much for everything you have done and continue to do!

I was recommended Bark from a friend to help deal with my kids being online at all times. I have tried limiting screen time to keep them safe but I can’t control that when they go to friends houses. My daughter recently started talking to a few strangers and giving critical information, Bark helped me sit down and talk with her about the dangers. I will for sure recommend to all my friends.

As someone who has worked with young adults for years I can’t say how thankful I am that this app exists. There are far too many experiences our teenagers are having online that go completely undetected and you have only to look at the statistics to see it is becoming more and more prevalent and correlated to online activities. Thank goodness someone is pioneering safety online. 👏

1. Not having to read all of my child’s communication apps a few times a week. HUGE timesaver.

2. Laughing with my daughter over what gets a this app alert (“The cross country team is going to kill it at the meet !”) and using that as an easy way to talk with her about how great it is that something truly concerning would be flagged for a kid’s family. She gets it.

Love how awesome and thorough this app is. Not only the program but their staff. There was some self harming going on with my son’s friend and the text thread was triggered and we were notified not only by the automated system but we had two employees reach out to ensure the issue was reviewed and that we were aware of this situation!! I recommend this program to anyone and EVERYONE... worth every penny!

Bark is amazing. It monitors your child’s phone, email & social media accounts. It also lets you know when they set up an account using their registered email. When there is a problem, this app’s customer service is available to help you get the problem fixed. I am very impressed.