How To Monitor Your Child’s Messaging Conversations

This post is sponsored by Marimba.

“With great power come great responsibility,” I love that quote and it is completely relevant when you have kids. Consider this, a smart phone is a very powerful device that most people rarely respect. However, as a parent turns a cell phone over to their child, that is when the need for responsibility is much more important.

Tésa and I have had a bunch of conversations about this, Kora & Logan are now 9 & 8 and some of their friends are getting phones. Now it is hitting even closer to home as one cousin has their own phone now and another cousin wants one.

We have talked with our sisters and brother in law about all the kids getting phones and the main concern with everybody is safety.

Once your child has a smart phone in their hand, they have access to everything out there. It is a very scary proposition. Not only do you have to stay on top of what they are using their phone for, but also you have to monitor and keep track of times that the phone is available to your child. That’s why I’m excited to work with Marimba on this sponsored post to show how their app can help keep your mind at ease.

We recently had the opportunity to work with a company that provides an opportunity to solve these problems. Marimba Chat is the product of a 7 year-old daughter and her Dad. Marimba Chat was developed after the founders were unable to find a child friendly messaging app for a child under 13.

Marimba Chat is a messaging app that provides kids a safe way to chat with friends and family members while giving parents the ability to set limits and feel safe while still allowing their kids to ‘grow up.’

Alternate messaging apps do not allow children under 13 to sign up due to the Child’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). Marimba Chat allows the parent to sign up for an account for their child, there is a really interesting confirmation process for parents. Marimba uses a parent’s government issued ID to confirm the identity of all new accounts. In addition to just confirming your ID and address, they also ask some very basic questions so they are able to confirm your identity. This process improves the safety of the app, and also gets you, as a parent, involved.

Marimba Chat has some features that can help ease the concerns of parents who are first timers introducing a child into the messaging environment.

1. Approve Invitations and Friend Connections

As a parent, you can decide who you want your child to chat with, you can even remove a contact if something has changed with that contact.

2. Observe & Monitor From Your Phone

Being a parent takes some work, but Marimba Chat makes this part easy. You can easily see past conversations and even watch conversations real time.

3. Limit Chat Hours With Parental Controls

Marimba makes it easy to set the hours of use, if you don’t want them on the phone chatting after 8pm, just set the hours, nice and simple.

4. No Cell? Share Your Device

A lot of young kids don’t have their own device, you can share your phone or tablet with them by setting up different accounts, don’t worry, a log in is required to get back into the parental account.

5. Eliminates Profanity

There are the basic profane words (and a list that keeps growing) that cannot be sent via messaging. The app will make a loud beeping sound, the message will be outlined in red and will not be sent.

6. Trusted Connection

As I mentioned earlier, the verification process requires a government issued ID and it is confirmed before you can move on. Have confidence because every user goes through the same process to create a Marimba Chat account.

7. Privacy

There is no public directory for Marimba, it is accepted invites only. Also, as pictures are shared, the geotag info from the picture is removed from the photo.

Marimba Chat offers a child friendly messaging app which was thought up when a daughter and father put their heads together. We are very comfortable with the setup process, how it works and would definitely recommend it for kids who want to chat with their friends and for parents who want to stay involved. If you have kids between the ages of 7-12, this is the only kidSAFE certified COPPA Compliant messaging app in the iTunes App Store.

An additional nice touch I noticed while using the app is that there is no advertising. Since kids will be using the app, there is a great opportunity to blast videos and commercials to the kids, but I love that there are no ads, and no plans to ever have ads in Marimba Chat.

Marimba Chat is currently free in the App Store, there are plans to make this a paid app in the near future, so download it now!

Are your kids messaging with friends or family? How would Marimba Chat improve that experience?