My experience with Bark App

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1

I spent 24 hours doing a trial of Bark App hoping it would be as awesome as the reviews and their website claim. It does have some unique tech, but ultimately failed for me.

Given that all the comparison websites between Bark and Qustodio don’t mention these issues I found, I thought I’d post this here.

What makes Bark unique:

  1. You link the Bark App to the actual login accounts for your child’s apps so that it can scan their email, their social media, messages, and other apps for troublesome activity. You can choose the level of sensitivity to what it notifies about as a parent. To me, this is the big differentiator between Bark and others.
  2. You can set what time a day an app can be used by setting schedules (school, non-school, sleep). (Assuming the apps installed list is working, which it didn’t for me.)

Where Bark is weak:

  1. Philosophy - the Bark app does cool deep inspection of emails and messages and social apps, but then intentionally limits the parents on what they can see. What is visible to the parents absolutely should be the parents’ choice and the parents should be able to choose what level of monitoring they do. It is super strange to have an app for child safety intentionally not have monitoring features for the parents – the people that care most about these kids.
  2. (I know some people out there argue that children should have privacy. IMO, that’s a pipe dream which results in hurting kids. I don’t let my 14 year old drive the car either. If child privacy is a corporate goal then they’ve picked the wrong product to sell.)
  3. SUPER slow vpn. I have a 1 gig internet connection with my wifi. Page loads are like 60 seconds or more. Unusable. (No, I wasn’t blocking/filtering the pages I was trying to load.)
  4. I can’t set a max time a child can use the device a day.
  5. I can’t monitor how much time a child spends on an app a day.
  6. I can’t see what time of day an app was used.
  7. The installed apps list was missing apps my child installed.
  8. No notification when my child installed an app. I have to manually go look at the list?
  9. Because of the above, no ability to block an app Bark isn’t aware of.
  10. Yeah, Google Family Link has some of these features but Bark should offer an all inclusive experience. To be fair, some of these features are on the Bark Phone but they should offer it on the app as well.
  11. No list of websites my child has visited or searches. If a given website isn’t included on Bark’s filtering list and it SHOULD have been, I won’t know that my child is visiting that website. I only see blocked activity.
  12. I never got far enough to comment on call logs and text messaging visibility.
  13. You can kind of kludge together some app control through the schedules, but not flexibly. e.g. If I want to only let my kid use an app for 30 minutes a day, I can enable that app for a specific 30 minute time slot during the day. If they miss the time slot, they don’t get to use the app. (To be fair, I think other competitors have the inverse problem of allowing an app for 30 minutes a day but you don’t get to block out when that app gets used.)

There is the chance I missed ways to address these items but I don’t think enough of them get addressed to make it work for my needs. The big issue for me is that Bark fundamentally is choosing to create a scenario where the child privacy comes before what I want to monitor and for me that is contrary to the point of this type of software. If they added the items above + their app monitoring features, I think they would have a great app.

2

Thanks for the time spent on this thorough review. As another Bark user, I am also not satisfied with this app.

The cynical side of me realizes that tech companies want people (and kids) to use their devices/apps more. Creating well balanced parental controls unfortunately is not a long term sell for many tech companies.

3

I had high hopes for this apps, unfortunately is falls short and most of the time I just get notifications saying there’s an error. Additionally, with the recent iOS, it’s basically requiring my child to hit “allow” each time it tries to get the updates from their phone. Another frustrating thing about it, it’s that on the back end since you have to install the main app on your computer, it creates a whole lot of back up into your actual computer storage even though to check the notifications I must log into the web server. Just today, I tried to install an app on my Mac and it said I didn’t have storage(my application folder showed almost all the storage was from there though I only have a handful of applications and individually don’t amount to more than 15gbs). after countless of videos and online searches came to find out it’s the Bark App installing all this stuff on my computer. It had approximately 500gbs of “back up data” so if you have this on your computer look into your library and find the Bark folder and delete the back up files or soon you’ll run out of storage and not even know why. Hope this helps. I’m definitely not recommending this app to anyone.

4

I’m looking at getting a smartphone for my son. I want him to be able to text his friends, share photos, etc. I checked out Bark and Net Nanny. They all claim to be “the best” (obviously). I love your review of Bark! I’m hoping to find similarly detailed reviews of other parental control apps.

5

Thanks for this review. I’ll skip bark.

6

I’ve used the Bark Phone for over a year now for my 10yo and have had a pretty overall satisfactory experience. Not perfect, no solution is. But less frustrating than more frustrating.

2 things to note as this may not be a direct comparison to the OP as we use the actual phone through Bark which is a Galaxy A13 with Bark preloaded. You pay one fee for the phone/cell service/bark app directly to Bark and has some more functionality built in that maybe just the app doesn’t have. But I did want to give my thoughts on the list just to offer a different perspective and usage comparison to the phone itself. No offense to the OP meant, we all have different kids and needs, just offering my experience if you’re considering using the Bark Phone instead of just the Bark App.

(Using their list in the same order)

  1. I don’t think any service/device will simply just mirror the kids phone. Bark offers insight and alerts when it finds content it deems inappropriate. The Bark phone has a “no delete” feature making deleting text messages impossible. I don’t think the App alone allows that, so I could see the lack of full text messages being available a concern if just using the app.

  2. Same as #1. If the sense of privacy isn’t an issue, just take the phone to look at it. That’s the rule I have my kid.

  3. Agreed. The phone does seem slower than it should be. Not 60sec to load, but slow.

  4. A combination of screen-time settings and schedule could accomplish this. But not sure why straight up disabling the phone as a whole after a set period of time would be a concern.

  5. They offer insights that can accomplish this, very granular.

  6. This is true. Not sure the need, but the insights only show total time, not time of day. If you’re using the screen-time schedule then you can limit what can be used when, so at that point, not sure the need for this.

  7. I didn’t experience this, anything installed on the phone is listed in the app for me to control.

  8. The Bark Phone requires the admins explicit permission to install anything. I have to explicitly approve the install otherwise the app is blocked on the phone. If my daughter goes to the store and trys to install something, I get a notice immediately.

  9. I haven’t come across this. I guess there could be an issue if Bark doesn’t recognize the app, but I haven’t seen this.

  10. Family Link is also too limited for my younger child for me to feel safe using it as the only safeguard. On that note, the android account on the bark phone CANNOT be a child account. If Google Family Link has the account setup as a child/limited/needs supervision, Bark can’t use it. They conflict.

  11. My child is too young to have web browsing enabled on their phone (Chrome is completely disabled). This may be an issue for me as they get older, though. But I can’t speak to this feature or lack there of.

  12. Text messaging and calling is blocked based on who you’ve allowed to contact them. Admin has to explicitly allow communication per contact. Cumbersome, but very granular and helps safeguard. This may be Bark Phone specific.

  13. There are app limits. This is very much possible on the Bark Phone (not sure about that app).

To summarize, I have had a very good, but not perfect experience with the Bark phone. It does seem more robust than the app as the control is built into the phone itself at the system layer. No solution is perfect, but I haven’t come across anything more robust than the Bark Phone for what I need in terms of balancing a full phone experience (apps, music, texting, GPS, etc.) with security and safeguard features.

7

If anyone is reading this thinking about getting a phone for this kid or teen please read this you will hear this from a 13-year-old boy’s point of view.

First of all, if your kid is 12 and younger i recommend this app, its great for keeping them safe during their younger ages. bark can read text messages and online posts/messages from a lot of apps and can keep your child safe from pedophiles, and looks over and scans chats for anything that talks about drugs or hurting themself or drinking stuff like that it is great to put on their phone when their young and I promise you, you will never worry about you child being bad or having to worry about their online safety. Even as a teen, I know parents need and want to protect their children and that’s awesome i love that but here is where i start to hate Bark/why i hate Bark. When your child reaches 13 sit them down to talk about online saftey and whats okay and not. they will understand you are trying to help them and they will love you for that, and they will love having their own space… But here is why i hate Bark, I am 13 years old and i struggle to find people to connect with online i think it’s great to meet people from different areas of the world. before bark, i had friends from Europe and Asia and a lot of countries and I loved talking to them because we all had different ways to communicate and talk about different things… after bark was put onto my phone i realized my parents had blocked Snapchat which was one of the apps i used mostly to communicate on and i was sooo sad that i could not use it anymore, but i sucked it up and moved to iMessage and instagram and i realized my parents could read my texts!!.. and i know im gonna sound like all teens but that is a invasion of your children’s privacy. everyone has a way of feeling happy and have a diffrent humor. mine is dark humor and you know what im terrified to talk to anyone on bark because my parents read it alllll. and on the App Store and google play they claim it only certain things buttt. no matter what you say or do really anything sets off barks message detection and what it does is takes a screenshot of chat history and sends it right to you “the parents” phone and you can see it. as teens we need our phones to be a private area for us relax and cool off after a long day. and take this how would you feel if your child was all up in your buisness on your phone after a long day of work or living? wouldnt be to fun. as a child i strugge with now texting people i am terrified that my parents see everything i am doing and its been really hard for me to talk to people now. after this app was instaled on my phone they have removed more featues such as. Appstore, Deleting apps, Camera app??.. please please do not get this for your kid you also have to pay for this service to.

in conclusion do not buy this app 0/10 for me if you really cared you would talk to your kids about this online stuff if you read reviews online on the appstore and googleplay its all teens saying the same thing this is a gross app that no one should buy its $100 a year to destroy your child’s privacy and trust in you…

please respond to this if you want to ask me any questions

8

I’ve been using BARK products for about 2 1/2 years, and I kinda want to speak up for them.

I am also a 20-year high school teacher (psychology / government) and have more experience with adolescents than most people and have seen the damaging results of smartphones which Haidt and Twenge speak about in their bestselling books. (In my own classroom, I physically collect all phones at the start of class each day–I am not popular on the first week of school.)

When my daughter was 13, we got a phone from a different kid-phone-friendly company called PINWHEEL. The Pinwheel phone was criminally terrible–I was on tech support all the time. My daughter is T1D and needed glucose monitoring and walking through the settings to get that done wasn’t ideal.

The BARK service, however, did what we needed it to do.

About a year ago, we gave her a hand-me-down iphone, but connected it to the Apple Family setting. I believe that using the parental limits that Apple provides, along with BARK monitoring what is said on that phone is a pretty stress-free way of keeping our kids safe.

Every parent is different, here are our settings:

–She can’t download an app without my approval. She is 15 and doesn’t have Snap, IG, Tiktok, Discord, etc. Because of a summer job, we had to let her download Whatsapp, which BARK monitors.

–She can’t turn off find my phone without my approval

–Her phone turns off automatically at whatever time we want each day (we don’t use the BARK settings for this–no need)

–She can’t uninstall apps without our permission

–We can only let her contact certain people 24 hours a day. Parents, grandparents, aunt is our entire list.

–A couple times a day, I am notified (“alerted”) about something that the BARK ai found. The granularity of what it alerts me to is probably a little strict. For example, I don’t care if a song lyric has a swear word in it. I get alerts about youtubes she’s watched that mention alcohol, for example. (Side note: I get alerts when a kid texts: “my ducking teacher” or whatever. BARK is good with purposeful misspellings and they are more up on teen slang than we are.)

–A special note to the angry 13-year-old who thinks BARK is an invasion of privacy. We DO NOT SEE her texts, we only see a quick (4 lines?) snippet of a much longer text chain.

–I also like that BARK alerts me when she’s made it to school, or work, or a friend’s house. I understand that Apple can do this also, but the BARK alerts are working for us. (This has led to plenty of “why can’t you make it to school on time?” discussions because we know when she leaves home.)

–A NEGATIVE is that it does put a file on your computer which is approximately the size of their iphone data. I just checked and my daughter’s is 55GB.

–BUT THE WORST THING is that none of this works unless my daughter puts her passcode in when it asks “Trust This Computer?”, which happens way more than you’d think it does. Whenever she’s on the home wifi, it asks her. And then it asks her again five minutes later. This is an APPLE issue–sometimes their “privacy at all costs” makes parenting more difficult. A conversation with your child about the responsibility of having a supercomputer in their pocket and in return they have to punch in their code daily is probably a good idea.

TLDR; I haven’t heard of any better way to handle adolescent use of technology. BARK + iPhone Screentime is a pretty good choice, I think.

9

So is the phone a separate payment than the monthly app fee? Want to get my 11 year old a phone.

10

The Bark app sucks and has constant issues with zero support. Their documentation sucks as well if you do run into issues so good luck figuring out the issue on your own.

Today I requested a refund but I doubt I’ll receive it.

Any YouTube review video you might have watched on this has to be a paid video because this app has been nothing but a terrible experience.

11

OP- what did you end up deciding on, software wise?

12

As someone who is on it, if bark AI detects something it thinks could be bad it blocks it, AND THE PARENTS AREN’T ALLOWED TO UNBLOCK IT(you can see these websites in insights)

13

It is a scam app!

I received an email claiming they found me online and have a suitable client for me. I click on the link to get the contact and suddenly i have an account in Bark. I have email them to take off my account , delete my contact and remove everything since there is no delete or unsubscript button. This is unethical

14

Have you tried Mindguard Parental Controls? I’ve been using it for the past month and am quite satisfied. I like the straightforward setup and how easily i can block any content both app and web.

15

Great review. All of the reasons I wanted to try Bark are listed under your cons portion of this message. I think I will forego Bark.

Any other suggestions on parenting monitoring apps?

I have a list from the internet I am slowly reviewing and trying to make a sound decision.

16

I’ve had these same experiences with Bark. I REALLY don’t like that I can’t block specific apps. Imo… that makes Bark completely useless.

17

Bark was pretty effective for a couple years for us. It worked really well and we would get all the alerts for iPad and iPhone. However with Apple’s most recent updates over the past 6 months or so, Bark just doesn’t work like at all anymore. I have spent hours uninstall, reinstall, checking settings etc… and we are done with it. Looking to move on to something different.

18

Thanks for your feedback

19

Thank you, I highly appreciate this. It seems none of the highly ranked spy apps genuinely work or provide what they advertise which is depressing. My mother was using this app on her partner and speaks highly on it but reading the reviews I have my doubts. Access to seeing the browsing history especially in Incognito is a must for me

20

Hi parents! Before considering using this app, please hear this from my perspective. I am currently 19 years old and, therefore, a legal adult. My parents monitored my phone via Bark since I was 16. Here’s my take on it before you give it to your children.

  1. Bark’s monitors are EXTREMELY sensitive. To the point where it’s ridiculous. I’ve been subscribed to cooking and baking channels on YouTube forever now because they are some of my hobbies. I have gotten in trouble with my parents because occasionally a recipe with alcohol in it [think fish and chips, where you use beer for the batter to coat the fish in] will be posted and Bark flags it???

  2. What parents don’t realize is that the humor of our generation is different than y’all’s humor. You may be seeing something as a genuine threat that both parties see as something funny. I love dark humor. I’ve gotten in trouble for using dark humor. Even when its very clearly something both parties texting are comfortable with and all in good fun.

  3. It prevents resources for mental health. I already was not a big fan of my parents [Queer child living a conservative household]. I also already had a history of depression [that they were not aware; not why they installed the app] and safe emergency hotlines was what was genuinely keeps me alive at one point. I love the Trevor Project [suicide hotline that prevents queer youth suicides] but I knew that Bark would flag me if I went to their page to look up the number. So I went 3 years without it and, in the end, had to be instituted to a mental hospital. I took attempting over potentially being flagged and confronted.

  4. Trust. My parents downloaded this for me outta nowhere. It destroyed what very little trust I had in them. To them, it may have been protecting their 16 year old daughter from harm. I get that, I really do. But I was a responsible teen [4.2 GPA; taking multiple college courses; president of the environmental club at my school; NHS member; literally no social life; etc etc] and I had hoped that they trusted me enough to leave me be. They didn’t. And in my mind, if they couldn’t trust me despite all that, then they themselves were untrustworthy. It caused me to be even more private/“dodgy” than usual which just ked to more restrictions.

  5. FEAR. I lived every single day in absolute fear. I felt I couldn’t do anything on my phone. Hell, I TURNED IT OFF for three months out of fear so if they wanted to yell at me for something, I could just deflect and say that it’s been shut off in my dresser for a while. When I once got one of those spam texts from some random number saying “F*** you”, I had a legit PANIC ATTACK and texted my mother in the middle of class trying to explain it was a spam text.

  6. It really exacerbated problems that’s causing me to go NC with my parents. Beyond just destroying trust, I am no longer able to associate my parents as safe people to talk with or my phone as a safe place to destress. My therapist has said a lot of it is a trauma response to things that happened so take this point with a grain of salt, but yeah…

tldr: bark caused me a lot of unnecessary stress in my teen years and I urge parents to really just think it through or have a conversation with your kids.