Google Family Link gets a makeover and comes with a few new features that will give even more controlling parents an even better view of their offspring’s online activity. Not sure kids will enjoy this degree of parental control over their digital lives for very long.
Google Family Link, the parental control app launched in 2017 by the Mountain View giant, allows in the company’s own terms, to understand how your child spends time on their device, share their location, manage their privacy settings, set screen time maximum or what content is appropriate or not. Google’s goal is to empower parents to instill healthy habits in their children’s use of technology. To do this, the account of each family member is connected to Google Family Link.
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Google announced on the company’s blog that in addition to having changed the interface, the most important features, screen time and type of content, are now centralized in a Controls tab (Controls). The new Highlight button (highlights, available by clicking on the bell at the top right) allows you to have a synthetic view of the digital activity of all family members.
Google Family Link allows you to follow the digital movements of each member of the family
Through the accessible content setting, parents can define which programs their children can or cannot use (and for how long) and receive appropriate authorization notifications. It is now possible to adjust permissions more granularlythat is to say that the exceptional “extensions”, when the children finish watching a cartoon on Netflix, for example, are easier to grant without upsetting the rules established in the long term.
If you have several children, you can now see their geographical location on a single map or even receive notifications when they arrive at a predefined place (at home, at school or at their judo court, for example). It is also possible to ring a device from Google Family Link in order to find it more easily. Google Family Link is available on Android, iOS but also in a version for the Web.
