Best Parental Controls for Monitoring Your Wireless Network

As a parent, you want to know your kids are using the internet safely. But it’s easier said than done trying to monitor their online time on your own. Parental control software and hardware can help you and your kids navigate the internet safely in your home.

While there are a lot of options out there, we’ve chosen a few of our favorite parental monitoring software and devices.

Circle with Disney is a small and ironically box-shaped device that pairs with your router to allow for parental controls on your wireless home network.

You’ll need to download the Circle app, from which you can find any devices connected to your wireless network and customize your parental monitoring. You can also do a lot to curate your kids’ internet time. It’s easy to set bedtimes, schedule off time, and customize their access to different websites and apps. You can even reward them with extra internet time.

>>Read our full Circle with Disney review

Qustodio is a cross-platform tool that can monitor Windows, Apple products, Android, and a few other common household devices with internet access.

Qustodio’s multifunctional approach makes it easy to protect and monitor every device in your home from the same platform. The service includes all the most important features, like website filtering and device and internet time limits, and gives you a detailed 30-day activity log.

The free plan covers only a single device, which might have been passable in the 1990s, but nowadays you have smartphones, laptops, and tablets, all of which can access the internet. So we definitely recommend Qustodio’s paid plans. It has three plans that scale in price based on your monitoring plans, with the cheapest starting at $54.95/year with coverage over five devices.

If you’re managing a larger household, Norton Family Premier doesn’t limit how many devices you can monitor on one plan, making it a great budget option compared to some of its competitors. (Qustodio charges $137.95/year to protect 15 devices.)

But it’s also not without its disadvantages. Savvy teenagers would have no trouble disabling Norton’s web extension, so it’s probably better suited for families with younger kids.

Gryphon is both a Wi-Fi mesh router and a parental control device for your home network. It has many of the same features as the Circle with Disney including filters and app-blocking that work on your child's smartphone even when they're not home.

Because it's a mesh router, you can put you can put multiple units around your home to provide the most stable connection wherever you are.

There's also a subscription. The first year is free but costs $79 a year after that. We didn't include it in our top picks because it costs almost twice as much as the Circle, but we think it could be a good alternative if you need to replace your router.

In an age where internet access is ubiquitous and kids are given the freedom to browse at a younger age, installing a proper parental control system for your in-home wireless network is a great step to make the internet safer at home.