Google Family Link: Every Parent’s Best Friend

Since the launch of the IBM Simon Personal Communicator in 1994, the first real smartphone, the evolution of mobile phones and smart devices has introduced new parenting challenges. For example, back home my teenage niece uses an Android tablet under parental supervision. However, when she visits us, she takes her grandma’s smartphone and uses it freely. I don’t want to set up the screen lock because my mom is a novice when it comes to technology. I tried using Suraksha by Dialog Axiata instead, but it was a disappointment. Then I found Google Family Link, a parental control service by Google. It allows parents to set parameters for their children’s devices, such as restricting content, approving or disapproving apps, setting screen times, tracking location, and more. These features make Google Family Link an ideal solution and the perfect alternative to Dialog Suraksha. Keep reading to learn more.

Lock Down the Whole Device

The service offers eight useful functions accessible through the app. Among them, the ability to lock down a “Child Device” with a single tap is the app’s core feature. A “Child Device” is any device where the Google Family Link App is installed in child mode, while a “Parent Device” is where the app is installed in parent mode. When you activate the lockdown function from the parent device, the child device will display the message, “Time for a break – Your parent locked this device.” There are two options beneath this message: “PARENT ACCESS” to temporarily unlock the phone for 30 minutes and “EMERGENCY CALL,” which allows for emergency calls. Incoming calls are also allowed. To unlock the device temporarily, you need to enter the code generated by the parent device. Initially, I encountered an error when creating the code from my device, but it started working after I generated a code from my MacBook Air. From the parent app, you can also grant “Bonus Time.”

10+ Other Types of Restrictions

The Google Family Link app offers over ten additional types of restrictions (Including Daily Limits, App Limits, Content Restrictions, and Account Settings), each designed to help parents manage their children’s device usage effectively and guarantee their online safety by preventing exposure to sexually explicit content. To keep this post concise, I will briefly mention some of these functions, though it’s worth noting that a more detailed discussion of all of them would make for a lengthy read. Let’s consider some of the key features in brief.

1. Daily Limit: This feature allows you to set the amount of time your child (or children) can use their device(s) each day (daily limits). The device will automatically lock when the time is up. Unlike Dialog Suraksha, this app lets you create multiple schedules, making it very flexible and easy to use.
2. Down Time: This feature allows you to set a bedtime for your child’s device, ensuring it locks down for the night so they can’t stay up playing with it. Similar to the “Daily Limit” feature, the device will automatically lock down when the time is up. It allows you to create multiple schedules, making this function very flexible and easy to use.
3. App Limits: This feature allows you to block specific apps, set time limits for them, or always allow them. I find it very helpful because I can use it to block the Play Store, YouTube, and the web browser preventing my niece from downloading mobile games and watching K-pop videos. With the “Set Limit” option, you can specify how much time an app is allowed to be used.
4. Content Restrictions: This feature allows you to restrict or filter content for Google Play, YouTube, Google Chrome, Google Search, and Google Assistant. For instance, you can instruct Google Family Link to enforce your approval before installing an app from the Google Play Store, set YouTube to “Restricted Mode”, allow all websites, Block explicit sites, only allow approved sites or block the internet completely.
5. Account Settings: This section has about seven more features that I will not take time to explain. However, you can use the “Controls for signing in” feature to specify whether or not you want your child to gain permission to use her Google Account to sign into iPads, iPhones, browsers & other platforms or third-party apps that can’t be supervised. You can even change the Google Account Password.
6. Devices: In this section, you can view and manage all the child devices linked to you via Google Family Link. You can also check information like battery level. By tapping on a device, you can see all available options. For example, pressing “Play Sound” will make the child’s device play a sound, which is useful for locating a misplaced device.

As you must have noticed by now, unlike Dialog Suraksha these features allow you to set up flexible daily usage limits, downtime, app limits, and content restrictions. Each feature is rich with options and provides a comprehensive way to guide your children’s digital experience responsibly making Google Family Link stand out as a powerful tool for parents looking to ensure a balanced and safe device usage for their kids. Next, I want to talk about another helpful feature and that is location tracking with GPS.

Location Tracking with GPS

Unlike Dialog Suraksha, Google Family Link uses GPS to track the location of child devices in real-time. Dialog Suraksha, on the other hand, relies on cell tower triangulation, which provides inaccurate location information and makes the service unreliable. My tests showed that the location indicated by Dialog Suraksha was off by more than a kilometre because it tracks the location of the cell tower the device is connected to, not the device itself. With Google Family Link, however, the location was off by less than 10 meters because it uses GPS to track the actual device. Therefore, Google Family Link tracks the location of child devices more accurately than Dialog Suraksha. Besides real-time location tracking, you can label locations for easy reference (e.g., Home, School). Next, I will walk you through some additional tests I performed on the app.

Additional Tests Performed

I conducted a few additional tests to see if the restrictions imposed by the app could be bypassed. The most common technique would be to uninstall the Google Family Link app itself. When I tried to uninstall the app from the test “Child Device,” nothing happened. It turns out a parent has to unlink the “Child Device” from the app before it can be removed. So, we can safely rule out uninstalling the app as a way to bypass restrictions. In my opinion, this is a simple yet impressive and foolproof feature.

Next, I rebooted the device. Rebooting allowed a window of less than 20 seconds on the “Child Device” without any restrictions. This happens because the device needs to re-sync with the Google Network before the restrictions take effect after a reboot. The length of this delay depends on the device configuration and network performance. I performed the test on an Oppo A15 with a 4G connection. Therefore, on modern devices with good network speeds, this delay should be even shorter than 20 seconds.

Then I tried bypassing content restrictions by installing a VPN app (Proton VPN and Orbot: Tor for Android, specifically). Of course, a parent has to approve the download if the Play Store is restricted. The results were impressive. Despite the VPN apps being enabled, I could not bypass content restrictions. According to Gemini by Google, Google Family Link doesn’t explicitly block VPNs. However, it seems that Google Family Link has been updated to block VPNs, and Gemini is not updated on this change.

The fourth test I conducted involved changing the date and time on the “Child Device” to see if I could bypass the “Daily Limit” and “Downtime” restrictions. The idea was that by altering the device’s clock, I might trick the system into thinking it was a different time or day, thus bypassing the set limits. However, this bypass technique also failed. It’s because the Google Family Link app requires parental permission to modify the date and time settings on the “Child Device.”

The fifth test I conducted was to see if turning off location access on the “Child Device” would disable location tracking from the “Parent Device.” If successful, this would prevent the parent from being able to monitor the child’s location in real-time. When I tried to tap the toggle switch to change the location access, a message popped up saying, “Decline this operation: If you have questions, contact your IT admin.” This message reinforced that the Google Family Link app completely restricted the ability to modify location settings.

The only test Google Family Link failed was the ability to toggle off mobile data. I could turn off mobile data on the “Child Device,” and Google Family Link didn’t block me from doing so. In my opinion, the ability to turn off mobile data is a big deal and undermines the overall purpose of the app. However, when I turned mobile data back on, the device synced with Google Family Link’s servers in less than 5 seconds and successfully locked down the device. Hopefully, Google will introduce a feature to address this in the future.

Wrap Up

The features and tests I performed on the app make Google Family Link worth considering. (Although I’m a bit concerned that Google will be creating data profiles for young children through the accounts parents set up for them to use with Google Family Link: Details here.) Did I mention that the Google Family Link service and the app are 100% free? Google Family Link is also available for iOS. While it’s primarily designed for managing Android devices, it can also be used to set some restrictions and controls on iPhones and iPads. However, note that some features available for Android devices might not work the same way or might not be available at all on iOS. For more details, refer to the Google Support website [Click here]. The FAQ section there also has helpful information about the app and its functionality on iOS. Parents can also monitor their children’s devices via the web by signing into g.co/YourFamily. So that’s all about Google Family Link. Feel free to leave your questions in the comments section or reach out to me via WhatsApp (messages only) or email.

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