this child ready phone is protected by
remote parental controls let's check it
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out Dave Taylor here and I want to talk
about phones and children generally not
a great equation so 63% of parents
believe that the time they their
children spend online is negatively
impacting their health and 66% of
children report that they have had
experiences with cyber bullying or other
harmful online activities so yes your
kid probably wants to keep up with all
the other kids and get a phone when
they're in first grade or some other
really remarkably early age but I think
it's really important as modern parents
in a digital age to set guard rails and
controls and manage the whole experience
so that you're confident and know that
your child is isn't getting up at 2:00
in the morning to play games or texting
with some adult that you don't even know
I mean there's so many alarming things
that can be happening they could just be
bullying other kids there's so much that
happens that's behind the scenes that we
don't see and with three kids of my own
I can tell you if you say I would like
to go through your phone now and see
what's going on there's a lot of
resistance so having the ability to go
ahead and manage all of that remotely is
is pretty darn slick and that's what I
have here this is the Samsung Galaxy a15
5G Android
phone with protection by mm Guardian
mobile phone parental controls so the
phone itself looks exactly the same this
came from mm Guardian with cell service
from US Mobile I'll come back to that in
a little bit and then my iPhone I
actually have set up as the parent phone
so I go into my iPhone and I get all
sorts of controls more importantly I
also get updates and
notifications so if someone I don't like
texts my child I can block that number
and see what message they sent them I
can also just monitor all this stuff but
there's also Ai and the software and it
can do the monitoring now you can
install it on iPhones or Android phones
but your best bet is really to get the
Android phone directly from mm Guardian
cuz then it's really deep into the
Android operating system and they have a
lot of tamperproof features I can't
reset this phone to not have their
software at this point in fact I asked
them I said well when we're done if I
want to just go back to having a normal
phone which maybe I would do when my
child hits a certain point in maturation
or they demonstrate that they have
really good choices that they make then
they said they still have to do that
remotely I can't do that from the parent
app that's how tightly locked down this
is and that's important because you
don't want to install an app on their
phone that's then easy for them to just
circumvent or delete that obviously is
not helpful so this lets you manage and
control the phone remotely you get
detailed activity reports you have
location monitoring that cannot be
disabled you get safety alerts about
bullying and drugs and sexting and
violence and suicide and online
predators and we parents don't want to
think about that we don't want to think
that our poor little middle schooler
who's so lovely at home or maybe really
a teenager who's very testy at home is
actually doing a drug deal or being
asked by one of their friends hey man
you want to come party we have stuff and
the AI is smart about this it can even
recognize commonly used Emoji sequences
and warn you that this might be sexting
even though it's just emoji and
especially when you get into things like
violence and suicide and unfortunately
your child might be part of the problem
not a victim so that's also stuff that
it would be aware of and it monitors all
texts and all social media interaction
for compatible apps you can check out
what they're working with today on their
website as I said it's tamperproof but
what I really want to do is I want to
show you a demo so so I have three
phones for the demo these two the child
phone the parent phone and a phone from
someone I don't like and I don't want to
communicate with my child so let's do
that demo this is the child phone this
is the Samsung Galaxy a15 from mm
Guardian this is an iPhone it's the
parent phone so I'm going to go ahead
and launch the mm Guardian app and give
me a second let me try face ID again
there we go so now I'm logged in to my
parent app I don't have to be it's
always running and then this is someone
who wants to communicate with my child
but I have blocked them so on this phone
let's go ahead and send a message to the
child and this number is blocked so I'm
just going to
say
hey and let's watch what happens so this
looks like it was delivered this doesn't
get a notification but this does it says
prohibited SM alert please tap here to
view details so it not only shows me the
blocked number but it also shows me that
actual message text meanwhile on the
child phone let's go into messages and
let's see this child actually has an
entry for this person so you can see
possibly the very first message before I
blocked it says hi Buckaroo and then all
of these other messages look like they
were delivered but they weren't now
let's have our child send a message to
this
person
hey
send maybe
send right so it doesn't send so what
happen What's Happening Here is that
this is blocked from communicating with
this person so this is ideal they think
that something's not working right it's
how it goes they never get a message any
message they send never makes it to the
child phone and the parent phone
actually gets the notification this is
exactly what you want now let's go back
to home
screens and now in the app let's just
look at a couple things so first off we
can do device usage I always start by
tapping on get update so you can see
there's five messages the phone's
already been in use for an hour and that
includes let's see one UI home which is
Samsung and weather and Samsung wallet
and call blocking or filtering no calls
have happened no use of the web let's go
back
here and where this gets really
interesting is that you can get into
things like I'm just going to lock the
phone so I could just tap on lock now I
could also specify a duration so for
example you did not clean your room you
now lose use of your phone for an hour
that would be really easy to do without
having to touch their phone and without
having to go through that but then we
get into phone rules and I can set up
time limits for the phone so we can say
let's see on weekdays from 9:30 p.m. to
6:30 a.m. we want the phone locked and
on weekends from 11:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m.
we want the phone locked so we're going
to do both and now super important
send and send success so now this phone
will automatic Ally lock on those times
and it's different on week nights and
weekend nights now ideally you would
remember to go ahead and say oh it's the
holidays let me change this a little bit
but that would be up to you to decide if
you want to do that and then here you
can see like Candy Crush Saga which is
my child's favorite game I have it
blocked so they can't play it at night
so that would be if I decided not to do
a full lock I could do that and then if
we go down here hair salon is just like
this massive time sync so now on the
child phone let's try to launch hair
salon and it's blocked so the kid sorry
can't play that whether they're at
school or at home or whatever time of
the day it is have to close this so
that's blocked but I can also block
things by time like I said so Candy
Crush Saga I could block by time cat
escape I can just say you know what no
that's another one you're spending way
too much time on again send it to the
phone it's successful and so cat escape
is also blocked sorry sorry sorry honey
whereas other games like yatsi hey you
want to play yatsi you can play yatsi we
don't have any problems with that yet so
that's good now let's see what else we
can look at
here so that's app control you can
specify your own time limit so you can
manage what you consider is a reasonable
device bedtime you can do web filtering
so I can turn on web filtering and I can
specify categories or I can specify
websites I don't want my child to see um
I'm going to turn that back off we're
not going to send it because I'm not
changing that setting and contact block
that is blocking this phone so that's
easy enough to set up and that might be
something where if there's some cyber
bullying or anything like that that
would be where I'd set that up and then
and here's textt monitoring so text
monitoring is monitoring for things that
are common phrases that a predator might
ask or a bully might say um and it can
also do things like picture analysis so
let's say that my son has a little
girlfriend and she likes to send
pictures of herself when she's just in
her underwear which is obviously
inappropriate and sexting and illegal
and the app can actually notice that and
actually you can block that but it will
also save a copy of the photo in the
parent app so I could then go back and
review that and then say yeah we need to
talk to her parents too cuz this is a
bigger issue and it's not okay and then
we get into individual apps and you can
specify even more with lock settings and
then there's location history and most
importantly the child can't block any of
this they can't can't reinstall the
Android OS on the Samsung Galaxy a15 or
A35 so that it doesn't have any of these
filters or anything and again the goal
here is to keep your child safe this is
all about safety so that they could just
use their device and not have to worry
about it and it works when it needs to
work and then there are some things that
at certain times if they get up at 2:00
in the morning they can't like jump on
to fortnite for half an hour so all that
just seems fantastic it's really really
great now let me jump back on camera I
will admit that the user interface is a
little bit tricky to figure out and I
even made errors as I did the demo
because I haven't spent a lot of time on
it but they have a lot of parents
protecting a lot of children on their
mobile devices through their software
and as you spend a little more time with
it you'll get the basics down pretty
easily they also have a web- based
interface but I can tell you that
probably could do with a facelift and
they're aware of that so it's not the
most beautiful user interface it's
probably better just to stick with your
parental phone for management but as you
saw it's really easy to just say this
phone needs to be locked between 11:00
p.m. and 7: a.m. or it might have apps
that like you can't play any games
during school time and it will also C
you know capture things like oh well you
just installed a new game G but it's
automatically still in that category so
it's automatically still blocked so
really they've spent a lot of time and
they've been in this field for years and
years and they've really understood a
lot from user feedback of how kids try
to circumvent and sidestep all of these
features and their goal is not to take
away autonomy and agency from a child
their goal is to give you the ability to
decide how wide a horizon you want your
child to have and this is something
you'll change over time if I have a
child in elementary school and I give
them a phone which we didn't do for the
record but if I were to give them a
phone I would lock it way down just so
they don't have to make that decision
they just know their phone is their
friend and it's safe and it's okay and
they can text Mom and Dad anytime they
want and they can text Uncle Joe but
that guy Mike who's a friend of a friend
of a friend yeah they just don't show up
and they can't seem to communicate with
them and that's okay and then as your
child gets older and they become more
mature and they are more able to make
smart decisions you can start taking off
a lot of these controls and maybe still
monitoring things and then at a certain
point you might turn off all the
monitors and alerts and you might say
have at it and I would like to sit down
with you occasionally and talk about
what you're doing on your phone and
that's exactly what we did with my
children we didn't give anyone a phone
until they were a tween actually no
until I think 13 that was like the big
thing when they turned 13 is they got a
phone and then we just had an agreement
that we would sit down with them and go
through their messages and go through
their social media and talk about person
by person who is this person how do you
know them and why are you communicating
with them and every single time our
children especially at the beginning
they had friend of a friend of a friend
who was someone they had no idea who
this person was and why they were in
communic a with them so we would shut
those people down together they would
understand what had happened and then
over time I realized that my children
were able to do this themselves and to
self-regulate as therapists would say
and so then they had less and less
controls until finally it was like do
your thing and hopefully it'll go okay
and I'll tell you it didn't always go
okay and we definitely had some issues
and there was one time I had to hack
into one of my kids' phones to find
something that was very alarming that we
had to deal with immediately and had I
not have done that had I have had
something like this that would have been
much easier and I would have caught it
much earlier so uh just like adults our
kids have this extraordinary device in
front of them but it's up to us as
parents to make sure they are using it
safely and that's exactly what this is
about so definitely something you should
seriously consider and check out for
your children's mobile devices so we
should talk price before we get there
I'm going to ask you to subscribe to my
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notifications give me a thumbs up if you
found this valuable and I hope that you
did so they have two phones that have
the MMG Guardian app built in and this
is the less expensive of them this is
the Samsung Galaxy a15 5G Android phone
as you can see it is an entirely capable
phone with a big bright screen you can
watch movies on it you can play your
favorite games there's so much you can
do it's really fun and they certainly
are not going to feel like a second
class citizen whenever all their young
friends put down their phones on the
table and theirs is like wow yours is
Big it's cool right so it there's
nothing that makes it obvious that they
have this monitoring software which is
great so the a15 through mm Guardian
with their software installed is
$229 if your child needs or you want to
get them a more capable phone they also
offer the Samsung Galaxy
A35 at 339 and that's a faster phone
it's a nicer phone but again you know if
we're talking like a fourth or fifth or
sixth grader how much phone do they
really need to be able to be functional
in their young lives something to
consider and then the mm Guardian
service is $9.99 a month in addition to
the cost of the hardware you can learn
about all of their pricing and options
at MMG guardian.com I do want to also
mention that this phone has cell service
through US Mobile which is a MM Guardian
partner and it is $10 a month for cell
service that includes unlimited text
talk 4G and 5G access and two gigabytes
of data per month which is a whole heck
of a lot less than I'm paying with AT&T
so all told that this would be a 229
investment and then 20 bucks a month for
my child to have sell service and for me
to have the Peace of Mind knowing that
I'm able to Monitor and keep track of
what the heck they're doing and that is
worth a lot and in this day and age it's
up to us to keep our children safe
because you don't want to be one of
those stats you want your child to go
blissfully through their childhood
without any major stresses so that's all
I got I hope this was a value to you and
I'm happy to see you in my next video
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