Most Parents Keep Track of Their Children’s Online Browsing

How Parents Track Their Children

With the ever-evolving digital landscape, children are now on more devices than ever. From school, to socializing, and home, children now spend almost every phase of their day-to-day life interacting with some form of technology to stay in touch. This creates new challenges for parents in tracking their children across various digital devices and platforms. How often and to what extent are parents able to fully keep up?

A 2026 All About Cookies survey found that 96% of parents keep tabs on their child’s devices in some way, as evidenced by the graphic below.

With the recent shift to a more digital schooling system, it’s not a major surprise that school performance is the #1 thing that parents keep track of. Screentime, banking/financial, social media accounts, as well as internet browsing history, rounded out the top 5 things that parents kept the biggest eyes on outside of academic monitoring.

A Majority of Parents Have Access to their Child’s Devices

With almost every parent surveyed keeping track of their child in some way, shape, or form, many of those parents have access to their kid’s passwords on various devices.

Over 85% of parents claimed to have access to their child’s computer/tablet (88%) as well as their cellphone (86%).

An interesting statistic to note is that while 79% of parents say they keep track of their children’s social media accounts, only 62% of them have access to their passwords. The 17% discrepancy could be coming from parents who feel that tracking their child’s social media activity, as a follower, is an effective enough measure.

Digital Tools Parents Use to Keep Track of Their Children Offline

While the digital realm is a place where parents want to keep close track of their children, many are relying on apps and devices to keep tabs on their kids when they’re not actively scrolling.

When it comes to parental tracking, 86% of parents use some form of tool as a way to monitor their child’s physical location.

A large majority (60%) of parents who do keep track of their children do so by using their child’s cell phone’s location sharing feature. The second most popular tracking method for parents is using a family monitoring app (such as Life360 or Bark), with 43% of parents opting for this method.

Other various methods that parents use to track their children outside of the top two listed above are a dedicated tracking device, a smartwatch with built-in tracking, or a parental control app.

Over 40% of Parents Have Caught Their Child Misbehaving With Tracking Tools

While many parents utilize the tracking tools listed above, how many find them effective?

According to those surveyed, 41% of parents have been able to catch their child doing something they weren’t supposed to be doing due to some form of digital tracking.

While a majority of parents have caught their children doing something they shouldn’t have in an online capacity, there was also a small percentage (9%) who were able to use digital tracking tools to catch their child misbehaving in the real world.

All About Cookies did note that 89% of parents disclosed to their children that they are being tracked.

Some Parents Have Concerns about Tracking Their Children

While a very large majority of parents are tracking their children in some way, it seems that some may have concerns about using specific apps to track their kids.

According to the survey, 62% of parents have some level of concern about using tracking technology.

The results show that parents have various levels of concern when it comes to: tracking their adolescent over time (31%), possible data breaches that could leave them or their child’s data exposed (26%), and possibly jeopardizing the relationship they have with their child (20%)

Final Thoughts

These results show that while parents do keep track of their children and, in some instances, have utilized digital trackers to catch their children exhibiting bad behavior, they also have some level of concern over how often and exactly when to track their child.

Parents will need to navigate this difficult situation by attempting to find a balance between keeping track of their child while also keeping them safe in both the digital and personal worlds that are constantly changing.

About Author: Derick Migliacci is a Digital PR Strategist for AllAboutCookies. He brings over 3 years of experience in the PR world as well as a passion for digital trends, cybersecurity, and technology.
Reviewed by Irfan Ahmad.

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by Guest Contributor via Digital Information World