A Truthful, Unhappy Review – Parental Control App - OurPact Review

As a concept, it works. Control how much time your child has on their phone, control which apps they use depending on if you do the paid service, seems nice! This does, in theory, work. You do block the apps. Of course, you need cellular network or WiFi to unblock and block things, so hope that the cellular is good enough to not ruin your child’s phone experience for the day by wasting their time not loading. The problems, overall, are what happens behind the scenes. Deleting info, messing with settings, and other things that OurPact has known about for at least a year, based on time of reviews I’ve read, and they’ve done nothing about it. It can sometimes cut down on a child’s screen time, but at what cost? Social aspects of their life have been limited. It’s actually upped my “screen time” because I have to wait for it to pause, then unpause it, then pause. While I’d say it’s a better alternative to just taking someone’s phone, it’s certainly a burden on many children’s lives. Speaking from experience, I have a couple friends who really struggle with depression. The depression brain, it’s no fun. It’s even worse when you don’t have anyone to talk to. Kids who may be struggling with these illnesses can sometimes only express themselves and speak through these apps the parents are blocking. Or perhaps a kid is talking to another kid, and then all of a sudden the kids apps block. How can he tell the friend he’s had to go? How can he make sure the friend knows he’s not just ignoring him?? they can’t. Safari searching is also now a nightmare. Let’s say you don’t want “weird rash” on your history. Who would? It’s a shame you cannot clear your history or use private browsing, so that weird rash will be in your history forever. There is also a PLETHORA of words that are blocking words, such as “casual”, “hardcore”, or other words that could very rarely be used in a pornographic sense. As an example, I was trying to access a document for my French test, and the website kept blocking. I have no idea what keyword set it off, but it did. Or the time I tried to look up how to keep my mothers meal warm for around 30 minutes, and one website telling me how was blocked for unspecified reasons. Even Amazon was blocked until I whitelisted it in the app. The website blocking isn’t very customizable, just allowing for Whitelisted websites to be allowed. Not EVERY website will be categorized as whitelisted when you need it to be. Bottom line is that it works, but be wary with how restrictive you choose to be. Restrictions tend make kids more rebellious. Why shouldn’t they act as if they are these phone beasts who need to be controlled? That’s how some parents are acting they are. It’s a classic case of trust, checks and balances. Be cautious. And please OurPact, just fix the notifications issue. Or address it in some way. It’s fairly annoying.
Review by The whovian hobbit on Parental Control App - OurPact.