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Monitor your child’s Facebook activity with Minor Monitor

December 11, 2011 By 9 Comments

Minor Monitor is a free website that helps you monitor your child’s Facebook activity. Specifically designed to monitor Facebook accounts, Minor Monitor is loaded with tons of different options to keep track of your child’s Facebook activity. There’s nothing to install on your computer, and you can use the website to monitor your child while you’re on the go. Minor Monitor is a great tool to help keep your child safe in the modern connected world.

A little while ago, I wrote a review of a web-based child monitoring service and that got me wondering what other tools are out there to help keep our kids safe. Minor Monitor is one such tool. The major difference with Minor Monitor, however, is that it is designed specifically to monitor your child’s Facebook account and activity. Programs like Qustodiolet you monitor how much time your child spends online, and even allows you to specify certain sites that can or cannot be accessed by your kids, but Minor Monitor takes it a step further and actually monitors what happens on your child’s Facebook.

Minor Monitor Screenshot 3Minor Monitor Screenshot 1

 You will need to create a Minor Monitor account at and enter your child’s Facebook account credentials (email address and password) and that’s all there is to the sign-up process.

Minor Monitor Screenshot 2With options to monitor various activities on your child’s Facebook account, like scanning their wall and news feeds for questionable or dangerous content, Minor Monitor takes you a step deeper into the realm of knowing what your child does online. You can keep track of their friends list, who is on it, how old they are, and other similar information. Minor Monitor also lets you centralize the photos that your child uploads to Facebook so you can review them and approve or disapprove them, taking into account considerations that only adults should be aware of. Minor Monitor also checks the content of messages and posts that are associated with your child’s Facebook account, so you can catch instances of cyber-bullying or profanity. It also has filters to check for inappropriate content in order to help keep your child safe from predators. It offers the option to alert you by email when certain messages or keywords are found. The site will default to monitoring the activity from the last 180 days of your child’s account each time you log in, so it will give you enough information to determine trends in activity, as well.

All of those different options could easily lead to an information overload headache if not for the Minor Monitor organization system. Built to look much like a standard email inbox, the main interface of Minor Monitor makes sure that you are comfortable in sorting through the huge amounts of information that it keeps track of. Along the left side are menus like, “Alerts” and “Overview” that will let you see a list of items that may need your attention. To the right of that menu is the page content, showing different options for action on individual items, as well as the summary information for the entire account. The system of organization was, to me, intuitive and very easy to use without wading through pages and pages of high-learning-curve documentation. Everything about Minor Monitor, from the support of auto-fill options on the sign-up page to the simple and easy interface for the monitoring pages, is built with the average user in mind. As a result, the site is easy and simple to use, while also being very powerful in its scope of possibilities.

Overall, I found Minor Monitor to be a smart choice for watching my child’s activities on Facebook. It’s an effective tool that costs nothing and has a level of support from its developers that is not commonly seen in free programs. And, of course, it just might keep your child protected and out of harm’s way.

[Thanks to reader Panzer for the tip about this awesome service]

Sign up at the Minor Monitor site.


 
 
 
B.C. Tietjens

B.C. Tietjens

Born and raised overseas in a military family, B.C. Tietjens visited and lived in many places all over the world. He has worked on a number of publications and enjoys writing for different audiences, on such diverse subjects as relationships, technology, prestidigitation, self-improvement, entertaining children, and biographical stories. He currently writes primarily for Freewaregenius and enjoys the heck out of it.
December 11, 2011
B.C. Tietjens
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  • http://carbonize.co.uk Carbonize

    Of course this does require you to actually know your childs password. Also they can easily disable it at any time by removing the it from the allowed apps list.

  • http://paleografie.tk Cerberus

    Is it really a good idea to stalk your child on-line? I would never have allowed my parents to do this when I was a kid. Is such a huge breach of privacy warranted by the risks? If you raise your child well, and talk to it about prudent internet use, shouldn’t that be enough? I am not a huge fan of trying to Great Fireall one’s children. Children run far greater risks every day in traffic, and later when they start going to clubs at 16.

    • Samer

      @ Cerberus: my son is 8; he wants a FB account, but his mom and I are reluctant to let him have one. With Minor Monitor, we just might let him go ahead and do it. When he gets to be 14 or 16, he can start asking for privacy (and going to clubs), but until then, it’s a different ballgame.

      @ Carbonize: the way I see it, if my kid doesn’t want or disables Minor Monitor and we as parents do, we will simply take away the laptop. Until he is older, he plays by our rules ;)

  • B.C. Tietjens

    @Carbonize,
    My kids don’t have to give me their passwords, since I am the one who set up their Facebook and email accounts. Also, since the program does not show up in the Apps list on Facebook, which means it is gonna be real hard for even a genius kid to find a way to disable it from within Facebook. Indeed, if you don’t tell your children you are monitoring them, they won’t have any way to know it, much less disable it.

    @Cerberus,
    I think that it should be enough to talk to them about dangers like online predators, but the sad fact is that it usually is not enough. I think that a parent should talk to their kids about said dangers, absolutely, but there’s no harm in backing them up with some free tools like Minor Monitor either. Kids run risks crossing the street, so we put up lights and crosswalks. Kids run risks on Facebook so we put up monitoring software. It’s not stalking them, it is protecting them, and that should be explained to them as well. When you were a kid, did they have Facebook? If not, I bet that your parents accompanied you or in some way kept an eye on you during some social events and meetings. That’s what Facebook is, to our kids. They don’t have to go down the street to a friend’s house to hang out, they do it on Facebook. They also meet new friends on Facebook, talk about what they have done and what they intend to do, set up plans for the weekend or after school, and basically do all kinds of other stuff that I am willing to bet most parents monitored offline, manually, before Facebook came along.

    @Samer,
    I agree. Age plays a big part in my decisions about what types of security measures are needed to keep my kids safe. As an example, I don’t worry about protecting my kids from Tax Attorneys or Corporate Lawyers since they are under 10 years old. I do worry, on the other hand, about protecting them from online predators and bullies. When they are 16 years old, things will be different. They will have had enough time and experience to be able to help me help them stay safe but until then, I have no problem laying down the law and being the ‘bad guy’ if it means they are kept safe.

    I am personally very glad such things exist. Thanks for reading and for the comments, my friends!

  • JZ

    @ Cerberus, SERIOUSLY, you wouldn’t “allow” your parents to monitor you’re online usage when you were a kid? I’m guessing you don’t have kids. In fact, with a statement like that, I’m guessing you ARE one. No offence dude, but really?

    I could see where this would be a useful tool for parents of young children. As a parent, safety is always a priority.

  • Primis

    Isn’t this pretty much a pointless discussion, since most children aren’t allowed to have accounts under Facebook’s ToS? There’s an age limit last I checked, and most of the kids that would fall under something like this would not be old enough.

  • http://carbonize.co.uk Carbonize

    @Primis – Last I checked the minimum age for Facebook was 13.

    @B.C. Tietjens – If Facebook is truly allowing apps to be hidden from the list then I find that worrying given the amount of times I’ve seen people click OK on rogue apps.

    Just to reiterate you are meant to be over 13 to have a Facebook account. This age restriction was put in place to try and combat children doing stupid things on there.

  • http://paleografie.tk Cerberus

    @Samer: Wow, I did not have such young children in mind at all. Why does your son want Facebook? I can see why you might not want an 8-year-old to freely roam the internet. I don’t have children, but in that case I would seriously consider not letting him use the computer on his own at all. Facebook’s own minimum age of 13 seems reasonable (do you want to encourage your son to violate Facebook’s rules?). But I understand internet use for children under 13 is a difficult area.

    @B.C.: As I said to Samer, I was not thinking of younger children at all. I don’t see why they need to be on Facebook at all, but that is not my call to make. At 13, however, I would probably give them a talk, then let them use the internet at will, provided that they were generally responsible kids. If they exhibit certain wild or irresponsible behaviour, I would give them less freedom; but then I’d just install a desktop computer in the sitting room and forbid them to use it when I’m not there. I’m not sure bugging the account of a 13-year-old is the solution: does it teach him responsibility and trust? Privacy?

    As to the risk of sexual abuse via on-line contact: as long as your younger child is not allowed to go anywhere unsupervised (except walk to school or a friend, maybe), which I would assume is the case, how is he going to meet up with Dirty Old Man? Is this a realistic fear? At 13, he may have more freedom, but also more wisdom. Again, it probably also depends on the child. Besides, most sexual abuse happens with family members and acquaintances rather than strangers. Lastly, who knows what might happen to you child on his way home? There are some risks that one just has to accept. And they’re very small in any case, I should think. You can’t have 100 % security, and traffic is probably far more dangerous anyway.

    @JZ: Thanks for your thoughtful reply. Again, this software is most probably not meant for children under 13. At that age, I did not even have dial-up internet yet at home, so things were different; but surely most 13-year-olds now know enough about computers to make a new Facebook account if they know their parents have their password and are snooping on them. Many children even start smoking (which is is incidentally far more damaging on average) at that age to rebel against their parents; do you really think they would not try to circumvent internet restrictions?

  • http://www.stealthgenie.com StealthGenie

    Just Facebook is not OK to monitor your child.What will you do when your child uses another device?
    You must have another option for this step.

  • http://tech2fun.com prajith@tech2fun

    Is it realtime or does it only retrieve the information when you begin your query. It would be absolutely pointless if it does the latter.

    It also doesn’t inspire confidence that they used a foreign language conversation and flagged english profanities. That’s just silly.