Grounded Teen App

[Cheesycook]

Let me start by saying that I have a teen girl who is getting terrible grades and is more concerned with texting and facebook than school. Original problem right? I am in law enforcement and want my daughter to be able to get help at anytime so I am not a fan of taking her phone away but want to be able to control it.

I would love a password protected app that could block my daughter from texting during school hours or block all calls and texts from non-family while she is grounded. Maybe block web sites like facebook or selected apps on her phone.

Possibly set school days and hours. Have selected categories like:

Normal - Block Non-family, apps and websites during school and allow all other after school hours

Holiday - Allow all

Grounded - Only allow family and emergency dial or text. Block internet. Block select Apps.

This could be made as a simple app where the parent enters a code in the phone to modify status and settings or make it fancy by allowing a status change with a text from the parents phone.

What do you guys think?

[dorogoff]

It's horrible =) I think that it's very bad. Talking with daughter about this.

[kkinder]

This could be technically challenging to do because she could simply uninstall the app, or use something like Titanium Backup to back it up, delete it, then restore it before coming home. You know what I mean?

The only viable route might be to use Android's "device administrator" to really lock down the device, but that only works with newer Android phones and it's by no means foolproof.

[Cheesycook]

Keeping teens like mine in mind, being able to backup or anything technical would not be an issue. They think working Facebook means they are computer geniuses.

[ThePwnStick]

As a fix for the problem of uninstalling, why not make it so it sends a packet to a server once in a while to prove that it's running?

[seanbo]

Why not just get a cheapie phone with no features and put the sim in it. Sure, she could still get calls, but if you're that worried about it, just take the phone away. Not too many years ago, no kids had cellphones anyway...we all survived.

[Abdul Samad]

as far as un-installing is concerned, there is a sweet feature in android 2.2 to onward, that is called device administration. is u create a device adminitrator programatically within the app, then the use can't uninstall that app unless that administrator is deactivated first , the relevant API name is DeviceAdministrator , can be found at developer.android.com

[skatardrummer]

I don't really feel teenagers should have smartphones anyway. They already cause headaches for keeping purity in relationships let alone keeping your teens safe. You should have a moderate monitor program on kid's smartphones all the time so they are not looking at things they're not supposed to, or even worse, those talking to strangers apps. You can use lockout programs for certain apps.

If you can get away with it, I would also advise the cheap phone.

[tonymontana]

I think it has huge marketing potential. parents spend all their disposable income on their kids. technically a hard job. you will essentially be making spyware. i wouldnt do it because i dont think it is the most practical solution. but i would do it for the easy sell

[Aeta]

I have 2pre-teens, we are not yet an all-smartphone family. But I would personally just stick the Sim-card into my old dumb-phone during the week, or if she was grounded. And give her the Galaxy back on the weekend, or after the terms of the grounding have been met. If you don't have an old phone lying around you can get a cheap pay as you go phone from most carriers for 20-30 dollars, and a majority of SIM cards are interchangeable (the exception being LTE phones and older Verizon phones, which didn't use SIM cards)

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