How often are parents spying on their kids online?

The internet gives everyone access to information and perspectives from people around the world. Unfortunately in some cases, not everyone has the best intentions or behavior online, which is why some parents choose to track what their kids are doing with their digital lives.

The majority of parents track their children's digital activities and communications, including checking on their child's text messages, social media accounts, screen time, financial accounts, browsing history, email, and gaming history. This includes more than half of parents who say they check messaging and social media accounts frequently through tools like phone monitoring apps for kids.

The "why" behind parental monitoring brings up interesting challenges parents face in the digital world. Of course, parents want to keep their kids safe from harm, but online safety also means protecting kids against identity theft and unwittingly falling victim to scams.

For instance, popular social media and messaging apps like TikTok, Discord, and WhatsApp pose risks for all users, but especially children who may not be as practiced in identifying and staying away from common phishing scams.

While identity theft protection may sound like overkill for younger people, it's important to realize that identity thieves don't discriminate based on age: nearly one in 50 children is affected by identity theft. Though they may not have financial assets, kids do have valuable personal information like social security numbers that can be used by identity thieves to borrow money, obtain government benefits, or even be used for tax fraud.

Our survey also found that knowing children's passwords is a key element to online tracking for many parents. More than half of parents (59%) say they know the passwords for their children's social media accounts, while more than two-thirds (68%) know their children's email passwords and more than three-quarters of parents (76%) know how to unlock their children's cell phones.

Between their own digital lives and their kids', this is a lot to keep track of. By using a password manager, parents can keep a log of user names and passwords which can automate some of the login process and securely store data. Some password managers geared for families also include monitoring services that help guard against identity theft or other vulnerabilities for multiple family members.

The internet is not the only place kids can get into trouble, of course, so All About Cookies also wanted to see how many parents take advantage of modern technology to keep tabs on their children's location when they're out of the house.

The vast majority of parents say that they use some form of monitoring to track where their children are when they're apart. Two-thirds say they don't just track location but also use technology to monitor and review their child's driving history.

The most common way that parents track their kids is by using the built-in tracking functionality in their children's cell phone, such as Find My on iPhones and Find My Device on Androids. 58% of parents say they use these default programs to monitor where their children are, while a similar percentage (53%) use dedicated family monitoring apps such as Life360 or Glympse.

When it comes to letting their kids know that somebody is watching them, 39% of parents choose not to tell their children that their location is being monitored. That's a higher percentage than the proportion of parents that track their kids' online activities without telling them.

With so many parents watching what their kids are doing, how many have actually caught their children breaking the rules online or IRL (in real life)?

Between the internet and the real world, nearly two out of every three parents (64%) say they have caught their children doing something they shouldn't thanks to monitoring efforts. That includes 22% who have caught their kids breaking the rules online, 18% who have found them doing something they shouldn't in the real world, and nearly a quarter (24%) who have busted their children in both the digital and physical realms.

For concerned parents, there is a litany of tools available to keep a watchful eye. Parental control apps can monitor your child's online behavior, but also set limits on things like screen time, different apps they can use (and when), and monitor messaging in their texts or emails. There are also some solutions built into common hardware—for instance, there are built-in parental controls on iPads that can help limit screen time and manually adjust privacy settings for your kids.

Knowing that parents catching their kids red-handed thanks to technology and monitoring efforts is fairly common, the final piece of the puzzle was the impact that being tracked has on kids.

More than three out of every four parents who monitor their children in some way (76%) say that monitoring their kids has led their children to make better decisions, either because they know they're being watched or because they've been caught before. That improved decision-making is almost certainly a factor as to why nearly half of parents (49%) say that tracking their children's activities has had a positive impact on their relationship with their children.

Tips for Keeping Your Children Safe Online

There are plenty of steps you can take to make sure your children remain safe online:

• Secure their accounts with a password manager. Secure passwords make it hard to remember all your login information. If you have a lot of accounts to manage, look into using a password manager to keep everything secure and organized.
• Check out the best parental control apps. See how your tracking method stacks up against some other top brands.

Methodology

All About Cookies surveyed 1,000 U.S. adults via the Pollfish platform in July 2024. Answers were limited to respondents with children under the age of 18.