Once you’ve made the difficult decision to get your child their first phone, we got news for ya — the hard work is just beginning, folks. From there you need to set some ground rules and overall make sure they’re being smart digital citizens, on top of being good humans. Fun!!! But fortunately, Google is making it a bit easier to keep tabs, uh, I mean ensure the safety of your tweens on their devices.

Last week, Google announced new 2025 updates to Google Family Link, an app which allows parents to control and set parameters for media usage for kids ages 13 and under. Family Link shows parents how their kids are spending time on their devices (this survey we reported on might help you understand your kid’s internet usage better too), manages their privacy settings, filters out inappropriate content, and checks your child’s location on a map. Tech these days is pretty nuts, no?

But the new updates go even further. Here are a few of the new-and-improved and easier-to-navigate Google Family Link features rolling out for Android and iOS phones and tablets. They’re certainly worth noting if you have a kid under 13 with one or all of the above personal devices:

• School time: School time allows parents to select or limit which apps can and can’t be used during school hours on both phones and tablets, as well as reveals which apps kids are using the most both within and outside of the School time parameters. Essentially, like when you put your phone on Do Not Disturb mode, this button helps limit distractions during certain hours of the day by pausing notifications within a given timeframe, such as during after-school practice or around bedtime.

• Controls: If you have more than one child with a phone or tablet, you can toggle between each of their profiles under the Controls tab and manage their devices all at once. This tab also allows for filtering of certain types of content, as well as blocking access to certain websites and app downloads.

• Contacts: This feature will be rolled out across all devices soon, which gives parents approval on each person added to your kid’s list of contacts. They’ll only be able to call and text people that make the list.

What Family Link doesn’t do is allow parents to read their kids’ texts or emails from their own devices. If you want to snoop, that’s on you. Google isn’t going to be responsible. Still, it’s great to know that big media companies like Google, as well as Meta, which recently rolled out an Instagram rulebook for teens, are taking parental controls seriously. Though there are benefits to it, we know cell phones have negative effects on children, so the more monitoring we can do as parents, the better it’ll be for everyone.

What’s your favorite new Google Family Link feature? What parental control should they introduce next?

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