Your guide to Verizon Smart Family Parental Controls

With the current advancement in technology, certainly, it’s okay for parents to be concerned about their kids’ online safety. Verizon is a well-known cell phone service provider offering amazing products, such as smartphones, tablets, and wearables, among other accessories. To help parents protect their children from accessing inappropriate content or spending too much time online, Verizon Parental Controls are designed to help you ensure that the safety of your kids is not compromised when they learn and get entertained online. In this article, you’ll learn how to use Verizon Smart Family Parental Controls on your account at length.

What is Verizon?

Verizon is a popular cell phone service provider offering Verizon products, e.g. smartphones, wearables, tablets, and other accessories. If your family or your kid uses a Verizon device, then it’s time you understand how to use the apposite-in parental controls and keep your kids safe online.

What are Verizon Parental Controls?

Obviously, Verizon Parental Controls is a set of tools that help parents protect their kids online. The app includes various parental control features such as location tracking, time limits, apps, and content restriction, all to help parents control and manage kids while they’re online. By using these features, you’ll certainly have peace of mind knowing that your kids are safe and secure while surfing the web.

What are the pros and cons of using Verizon Parental Controls?

Although various features are only functional if you link up your account to the kid’s account, those features still do not require account linkup.

• View text and call activity.
• Set data usage, time restrictions, texts, and calls.
• Set data limits.
• Set call and text purchase limits.
• Access the kid’s current device’s network location (Network location accuracy may differ by a few miles).

Features that you have to pair the accounts.

• Setting up content filters.
• Monitoring app or web activity.
• Restrict internet access.
• Locate a family member and set up location alerts with high location accuracy.
• Use the location check-in feature that allows kids to send you their precise location.

Cons

• The app is slow when identifying locations.
• The app is not accurate when finding the location.

How to set up Verizon Parental Controls?

In light of setting up Verizon Parental Controls, it’s a straightforward task that doesn’t require much of your time. First, you’ll need to log into your My Verizon account; from there, you’ll be able to select which type of control you’d like to enable, such as blocking certain types of content or setting daily time limits for device usage. You’ll also be able to manage all of your family members’ devices in one place, allowing you to apply the same control settings to each. Additionally, you’ll be able to assign different control settings to each family member so that your children can enjoy appropriate content while still being protected from inappropriate material. Finally, you’ll be able to keep track of your family’s internet activity with detailed reports that show which sites they visited and how much time they spent online.

Setting up your Verizon Smart Family

1. To activate the service, kindly log into your Verizon account. Go to Verizon Smart Family page > Get it now at the top of the page.

2. Get the app configuration and monitoring service. Enter the phone number > Submit. Alternatively, you can download the Google Smart Family app from the play store.

3. Choose a plan > Sign up > Agree with Consent Agreement > Pick the lines to manage > Name them to identify the individual family member.

4. Once you’re connected, you’ll have a display for each family member. At the top of their page, tap the letter of the first name.

5. You’ll see a map on each page at the top with a clear picture of their current location. The middle shows their app activity and a bar graph of their phone call volume. At the bottom, there are various options to manage everything on Verizon Parental Controls.

Setting up different features

6. Track a cell phone location > Get location update alerts > Location alerts.

7. To get alerts of Places& general alerts, tap places and alerts.

8. Set Schedules alerts. Check up on your child’s location at a fixed time > Add an alert > Use the configuration option to enable alert details.

9. On the main screen > Limits to customize data usage, time, purchases, calls, and texts usage. Tap restrictions to customize sleep or school schedule to prevent the child from staying on the screen for too long when they should be on other tasks.

10. Other limits you can set include, Purchase limit. Purchase limit > Text limit to set a numeric limit comprising the total text the kid should send on a given month. Set the “Call Limit” > “Caps” > Assign a numeric limit that limits the number of minutes, the phone can last.

11. On the main screen > Contacts to help control the child’s mobile communications. Tap Blocked contacts when you want to list a number you don’t want to communicate with your child.

12. Tap “Trusted Contacts” to set a list of numbers that your child can communication with at any time.

13. Tap “Top Contacts” to review the most frequent contact numbers.

How to customize notifications and manage family?

Verizon Smart Family Control not only allows you to manage your family member permissions but also customize notifications in the setting gear. In order to achieve this, tap on the setting gear icon situated in the top right corner of the home screen.

1. Tap Family Settings to assign a particular family member permission to phone call/phone number.
2. Select the phone number you want tailoring (consider reviewing the role played by that particular phone number at your home). You may further consider modifying the name. Tap “Location sharing” to grant that line location information of the family.

But, if you want to tailor your notifications. Notifications > On the settings menu > Select the child’s details you want to tailor customize notifications for.

Go to the Notifications settings screen > Enable or disable email/mobile notifications for the various activities such as but not limited to:

• When your child constants a number that has been previously put into the list.
• When a new number is added to the phone book.
• Using the phone during sleep or school hours.
• Using phones to watch explicit or inappropriate content.
• Calls emergency number.

How to turn off Verizon Smart Family?

When time comes and you feel the need to remove some or total parental controls from your child’s device, here are simple steps you can follow to achieve your goals. These steps are simple and straightforward.

• 1. Log in to your Verizon account.
• 2. Go to “My Verizon tab.”
• 3. Click on “Settings” option.
• 4. Pick “Parental Controls” on the left side of the menu on the screen.
• 5. To Disable Parental Controls > Uncheck the box adjacent to “Enable Parental Controls.”
• 6. Click/ Tap > “Save Changes” at the bottom of the home page.

Or you could do it this way.

• Open the Smart Family parent app > “Settings” > “Family Settings.”
• Then click the name or mobile number you want to remove > “Remove from Verizon Smart Family” > “Remove.”

Make sure that the changes you’ve made have been confirmed by checking that the checkbox is not checked. Once you follow these steps, you’ve successfully removed Verizon Parental Control from your device.

However, don’t forget to monitor and guide your child after you’ve disabled parental control features on their device. Hold regular conversations together about internet safety.

Unlock more features with FlashGet Kids

While Both the FlashGet Kids app and Verizon Parental Controls app offers amazing Parental Control features such as inappropriate content restriction, and time limits, the FlashGet Kids app includes additional features such as geofencing, and location tracking, among others, thus making it a better option than Verizon app. Besides, FlashGet Kids offers very accurate results when tracking your child’s location. The two authentication features offered by FlashGet Kids make it very challenging for the child to bypass your settings which would otherwise compromise everything else. FlashGet Kids features include;

• Location Tracker. The app shows your child’s current location or route in real-time. The results are very accurate.
• Daily Usage. Know how often your kid is staring at the phone.
• Alerts and Notifications. Keep tabs on your child.
• Live Monitoring. Monitor your child’s microphone and camera in real time.

Closing thoughts

In conclusion, Verizon Parental Controls is a great tool that helps parents ensure the safety of their kids is secured while on the internet. The app offers multiple parental controls tools such as setting time limits, location tracking, content, and app restriction. However, the app lacks precise accuracy and dalliance, thus making it sometimes not very reliable compared to FlashGet Kids, which is not only very accurate but also very timely.

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