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Health & Fitness

Protect your kids! Summer safety apps from AT&T

With school out for the summer, kids have more personal freedom, but there are no summer breaks for working parents. However, there are still ways parents can keep track of their children even when they can’t be with them.

To maintain peace of mind this summer, and keep a watchful eye on your family, AT&T presents the following list of the best apps for tracking, locating and monitoring your kids.

·      Footprints (iOS): With Footprints you can track your family’s locations in real time, all the time, without them having to manually “check-in.” Footprints also allows parents to set up geo-fences that alert them if their child has left a specific location, such as summer camp, or entered a restricted area. Parents can even monitor their teens’ driving speeds. *Yearly subscription fee applies.

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·      MamaBear (iOS, Android): In addition to location tracking, geo-fence alerts and driving speed monitors, MamaBear’s social monitor keeps a close eye on kids’ social media accounts. Parents can set up alerts to monitor when their children make new friends, use inappropriate language or words indicating bullying, upload a photo or get tagged in a photo, message or at a location.

·      Family by Sygic (iOS, Android): The augmented reality function is perfect for finding family members who get separated at the beach, an amusement park or crowded summer festival by showing the direction to family members outside your field of view. Parents can also check the battery levels of all other connected smartphones, so they know not to panic when their child’s phone simply needs a charge.

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·      MobileKids (iOS, Android): The MobileKids app will tell you everything you want to know about your child’s mobile phone usage. It logs who, when, how long and what type of communication it was – talk, text, online. Create an “approved” contact list, block others and add guardians, who will all be alerted if the child activates the emergency button. Like most other family-safety apps, there is also a GPS-based locator function.

·      Glympse (iOS, Android): Glympse keeps families connected by allowing kids to send a link showing their current location and gives an estimated time for arrival, even if mom and dad aren’t smartphone users. The Glympse is sent via SMS, email, Facebook or Twitter and recipients can view it using any web-enabled device.

·      AT&T Family Map (iOS, Android): Parents can set up automatic checks to locate their children at a specific time to make sure they are where they’re supposed to be – at camp, baseball practice or the beach, for instance – and get notified via text or email. Family Map also improves the location accuracy of any iPhone, making it easier to recover a lost or stolen phone. *Monthly fee applies.

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