Internet Safety: A Mobicip Review

Family Internet Safety App: A Mobicip Review

I received an annual subscription in exchange for my review of Mobicip, a family internet safety app. All opinions are my own and reflect our personal experience.

So many families are concerned for their children as they use various digital devices. The mobile apps, tablet games, and desktop browsing for seeming innocent things can get kids into areas of the internet even adults shouldn’t be going (IMHO). At our house, my youngest, 10, has had his share of mishaps. I was so grateful when he would come to me and say, ‘Mom, I’m sorry…’. But I wish it didn’t have to be that way. I have tried several different video blockers, site blockers and the like, with little success and a high degree of frustration.

Don’t miss the FREE printable ‘Family Internet Safety Tools’ at the end of the review!

As a family that travels and digitally home schools digitally, family internet safety is high on my list. I want to keep my devices virus safe and I want my kids to have a healthy, safe internet experience. Being saved from accidentally misspelling a simple word like ‘cook’ in a search engine and end up who knows where, having passed the proverbial ‘point of no return’ without even knowing it, is not on my educational to-do list. However, teaching my kids to be responsible with their computer time, app choices and searches is at the top of my life skills training list.

What I needed from Mobicip.

I eagerly jumped at the opportunity to try out Mobicip’s family internet safety app. Mobicip is a family internet safety app that is definitely not like the other site blockers out there. I found this app to be a tool that I felt would help me:

Monitor where my kids were going on the internet
Prevent them from going to specific areas without my permission, and
create an opportunity to dialogue about family internet safety.

I was given a chance to review this relatively new app and I was pumped. I enlisted my husband in installing it on the laptops and began configuring the permissions specific to each child’s accounts.

Mobicip is easy to set up.

The ease of use in the setup stage was really quite good. The momentary frustration of every device (2 laptops, & 2 phones) was eased with being able to simply use a QR code or internet download on the tablets and phones. Initially, we set permissions pretty high, so we could actually see where each kid was headed. I’ll be honest, they were a little frustrated they couldn’t get to the normal places for schoolwork in the beginning. It was a few days of repeatedly saying “Just click the thingy that sends me a message to change it”. I probably said that a dozen times the first day or two. But, eventually, we got them organized with the places they were allowed to go.

Mobichip allows kids to learn how to manage their computer time.

After a few weeks of watching where my kids were headed via the parent’s account dashboard, I realized I needed to have a chat with one child who was spending entirely too much time on Etsy of all things. To be fair, she was setting up a crafty entrepreneurial endeavor, but I wanted to know why she needed to go to the site 340 times in a week. As it turns out she was just checking to see if she had sold anything. Once I told her, “Etsy will send an email if you sell something,” that was all it took to get her back into normal internet search habits.

Mobicip helps uncover potentially dangerous family internet safety habits.

My son, on the other hand, revealed a different problem going on. When he realized that he was no longer going to get away with playing games when he should be doing school work, he started using the incognito feature. Grrhh! He’s my super smart, probably going to be a computer coder or something, but oh-so-sensitive kiddo. So, we had to set up some more strict parameters for him. But, in the end, we created a pretty good system that we both can live with.

The features I really like about Mobicip.

Mobicip has quite a few features. I’ve only highlighted the ones I’ve used the most that also help me get up to speed on monitoring family internet safety at our house.

The easy-to-use dashboard where you can quickly choose which types of categories to turn on or of for each device.
The ability to set it up for only certain profiles on a computer (my husband & son share a computer, so we only set up my son’s account, but not my husbands)
The ease for the kids to simply send a note to ask permission for specific websites or apps.
The ability to set allowable computer usage times and the very cool button that locks all screens in the dashboard for ‘family time’.

Mobicip for Family Internet Safety

I would highly recommend Mobicip for families with young families. It is an excellent tool to help you know for sure your children are not going to find themselves on an unsavory site or ‘accidentally’ purchase $300 worth of unicorn toys from Amazon or fill their Kindle with the latest series of Spongebob comics without permission. However, for older, more tech-savvy kids, I’ll admit it was hard for me to find the balance in using the app with them. I ‘hit the roof’ over the incognito issue with my son and realized that my kids are at an age where they need to learn responsible use of the internet and not just ‘prohibition’.

Features I’d love to see added to Mobicip for improved family internet safety.

I have no idea how to create apps or anything like that, but in my ‘perfect family internet safety world,’ here are a few things I’d love to see that would help the older, more tech-savvy family members learn to make wise internet safety choices:

Some type of pop-up that reminds users that incognito browsers are ‘not ok’ to be using. Perhaps even a way to block the use of incognito.
I’d like to be able to see individual usage data for each device, rather than just overall data for all devices for the whole family. Maybe even an auto-generated email once a week or month to summarize the data.
Something that would help more sophisticated users recognize excesses or over usage. Even something like a pop-up saying ‘this search term is inappropriate’ or ‘Playing games, (or searching Etsy) rather than doing your schoolwork is not a responsible choice,’ and perhaps provide some redirection or solutions.

Overall, I do like Mobicip for family internet safety and will continue to use it. I appreciate the versatility of the app for a broad age range and app usage. I also appreciated that it helped me understand what was happening throughout our day as we use digital devices for both homeschool and recreation.