Parents
Monitor a child's text messages on iPhone
Find out what your child is texting on their iPhone, even if they use a private messaging app like Snapchat or delete their messages.
Are you worried about who your child is texting on their iPhone or iPad? If you are concerned about whether your child is sending or receiving inappropriate texts, or texting a stranger and engaging in risky behavior, this guide will give you peace of mind that you have full visibility into your child's text message activity on their iPhone or iPad. In this guide, we'll show you how to monitor your child's text messages on iPhone or iPad to ensure full transparency.
Monitoring a kid's iPhone text messages can be challenging for a few reasons:
- There are many different apps that can be used to text message, so it's not as simple as checking iMessage.
- Some messaging apps, like Snapchat, use disappearing messages for extra privacy, making it harder for parents to monitor the contents of those messages and who their child is interacting with.
Fortunately, there are a few ways to comprehensively monitor texting on your child's iPhone.
Monitor text messages sent from any app on a child's iPhone or iPad
The most comprehensive way to monitor a child's texts on an iPhone or iPad is to use an app like LivingRoom for Families which uses screen recording to capture all messaging activity.
While your child uses the iPhone or iPad, they'll see a recording indicator in the top corner of the screen, reminding them to text responsibly.
The LivingRoom app is one of the few apps on the App Store that can capture an iPhone's entire screen, and this means that it captures your child's text messages no matter what app they use for messaging, if the use disappearing messages, or delete messages.
Use iCloud syncing to review your child's text messages on iMessage
If your child has their own iPhone with an Apple account, then parents can use iCloud's message-syncing feature . Parents need to ensure that iCloud sync is enabled on their child's iPhone. Here's how it works:
Parents need to do this on their child's iPhone and may need their child's help to access their device. The setting can be found by going to Settings > [your child's name] > iCloud > Messages > Use on this iPhone.
Manual check-ins
Manual check-ins are often best suited for younger children or for teens who are borrowing an iPhone, since it's easier for parents to set up a PIN that they can use to unlock their child's iPhone.
A common concern for parents is that their child or teen could just change the passcode on their own iPhone, meaning that parents can't easily log in. This can be prevented if you've set up Apple Family for your child's account or Screen Time on your teen's iPhone; see our dedicated parents' guide for iPhones to set this up.
Using Screen Time, for example, this option should be disabled:
Why It's important for parent's to monitor their child or teen's text messages
iPhones are increasingly becoming more and more common among older children and teenagers, and so are the increased risks associated with smartphones and text messaging.
Teens can struggle to develop healthy habits with text messaging
Like social media, teenagers are easily obsessed with text messaging. While not nearly as bad as the harms of social media, text messaging can take a toll on your teen if healthy habits aren't developed early.
Nowadays, it's far less likely to find someone who is addicted to text messaging without social media, but parents often choose to introduce text messaging to their children before social media. The habits that a teen develops with texting carry over to the more risky domain of social media.
Parents can intervene if someone sends a suspicious message
If parents can review their child or teen's messages, it's no longer entirely up to their teen to bring concerning content to the parents; both teens and parents can approach each other and work together to address risks.
Additionally, parents are much more aware of what kind of message is suspicious and should be a reason for concern. Teens often do not have the experience needed to navigate these kinds of stressful situations alone.