Parental monitoring to protect children’s online activity: Expert advice.

SAN ANTONIO – We are learning more information about the high school shooting in Georgia. The FBI said the 14-year-old suspect made threats about a school shooting a year prior on an online chat platform. It begs the question: How do we protect and monitor our children’s online activity?

Kris Wall, chief technology officer with Critical Fault, a cybersecurity company, said there are ways to monitor your child’s online activity, but first, you need to have an honest conversation with them.

“The best thing you can do is talk to your child,” Wall said. “There’s nothing better than encouraging them, communicating with them about what they’re doing online and having that conversation.”

Discord, a popular online chat platform used mainly for gaming, is where recent threats about the high school shooting in Georgia were made.

Wall said Discord is tough to monitor unless you share an account with your child to monitor messages and activity. He said there are a lot of caveats with Discord.

For example, if a verbal threat is made, a parent can only know it happened if they hear it while their child is on the platform. However, Wall believes that will soon change.

“However, probably in a year or two from now, there’s probably going to be a product that exists that allows people specifically to watch what’s going on inside of Discord and other chat applications,” Wall said.

Wall mentioned that parental control apps can monitor your child’s phone or tablet activity, such as OurPact, Qustodio, or Net Nanny.

These can be pricey — anywhere from $50 to $100 a year depending on the plan. But they alert you to the apps your child is using and can even send random screenshots of their activity.

“A tool like Net Nanny and others allow you to get those screenshots and get an idea of what they’re doing,” Wall said. “You won’t see everything. You only see what the screenshots are showing, what the phone is doing at those times.”

Parents can install these apps on their child’s phone by bypassing a phone lock or Face ID. Wall said these apps exist in a legal gray area unless parents are using them for a child under the age of 18.

“While this tool meets the needs of parents needing to monitor their children’s behavior, there are some real privacy concerns with such a tool,” Wall said. “A tool this powerful can easily be abused, especially in cases of domestic violence. I caution any parent to examine their options and risks before choosing a parental monitoring tool. There’s a fine line between parental monitoring and spyware tools, and some of these tools appear to blur the line.”