Minor Monitor is a free website that helps you monitor your child’s Facebook activity. Specifically designed to monitor Facebook accounts, Minor Monitor is loaded with tons of different options to keep track of your child’s Facebook activity.
There’s nothing to install on your computer, and you can use the website to monitor your child while you’re on the go. Minor Monitor is a great tool to help keep your child safe in the modern connected world.
A little while ago, I wrote a review of a web-based child monitoring service and that got me wondering what other tools are out there to help keep our kids safe.
Minor Monitor is one such tool. The major difference with Minor Monitor, however, is that it is designed specifically to monitor your child’s Facebook account and activity. Programs like Qustodiolet you monitor how much time your child spends online, and even allows you to specify certain sites that can or cannot be accessed by your kids, but Minor Monitor takes it a step further and actually monitors what happens on your child’s Facebook.
You will need to create a Minor Monitor account at and enter your child’s Facebook account credentials (email address and password) and that’s all there is to the sign-up process.
With options to monitor various activities on your child’s Facebook account, like scanning their wall and news feeds for questionable or dangerous content, Minor Monitor takes you a step deeper into the realm of knowing what your child does online. You can keep track of their friends list, who is on it, how old they are, and other similar information. Minor Monitor also lets you centralize the photos that your child uploads to Facebook so you can review them and approve or disapprove them, taking into account considerations that only adults should be aware of. Minor Monitor also checks the content of messages and posts that are associated with your child’s Facebook account, so you can catch instances of cyber-bullying or profanity. It also has filters to check for inappropriate content in order to help keep your child safe from predators. It offers the option to alert you by email when certain messages or keywords are found. The site will default to monitoring the activity from the last 180 days of your child’s account each time you log in, so it will give you enough information to determine trends in activity, as well.
All of those different options could easily lead to an information overload headache if not for the Minor Monitor organization system. Built to look much like a standard email inbox, the main interface of Minor Monitor makes sure that you are comfortable in sorting through the huge amounts of information that it keeps track of. Along the left side are menus like, “Alerts” and “Overview” that will let you see a list of items that may need your attention. To the right of that menu is the page content, showing different options for action on individual items, as well as the summary information for the entire account. The system of organization was, to me, intuitive and very easy to use without wading through pages and pages of high-learning-curve documentation. Everything about Minor Monitor, from the support of auto-fill options on the sign-up page to the simple and easy interface for the monitoring pages, is built with the average user in mind. As a result, the site is easy and simple to use, while also being very powerful in its scope of possibilities.
Overall, I found Minor Monitor to be a smart choice for watching my child’s activities on Facebook. It’s an effective tool that costs nothing and has a level of support from its developers that is not commonly seen in free programs. And, of course, it just might keep your child protected and out of harm’s way.
[Thanks to reader Panzer for the tip about this awesome service]
Sign up at the Minor Monitor site.
