NETGEAR®, Inc. a leading provider of networking products that power businesses and smart homes, announced that its NETGEAR Smart Parental Controls™ service, a CES® 2021 Innovation Awards Honoree, is now available on select Nighthawk WiFi routers and Orbi Mesh WiFi systems (see full list below) with more availability on WiFi 6 routers and mesh systems in the coming months.
As the world continues to work, learn, and entertain from home, children are more engaged than ever with their personal devices and screens by staying connected through social media, gaming, and other forms of online entertainment. Smart Parental Controls is an easy way for parents to manage their children’s online activity across all their connected devices, including gaming consoles and Smart TVs.
NETGEAR Smart Parental Controls is the simple way for parents to manage, monitor, and control the content their young children and teens see online. The best-in-class technology creates an efficient management system to supervise children across all their devices in a single household and manage both content and time online. In this connected world where screen addiction is a growing concern, Smart Parental Controls provides the data for parents and their kids to have a healthy discussion around screen time and build long term skills to manage their online activities.
“The ability to focus is the most critical skill that parents can develop in their children,” said Nir Eyal, critically acclaimed author of ‘Hooked’ and ‘Indistractable.’ “NETGEAR Smart Parental Controls helps by providing detailed information about internet usage that can be used to discuss and set up boundaries about internet and media usage between parents and children.”
Smart Parental Controls provides the tools to create schedules to automatically shut down online access, set up time-limits for addictive applications or specific categories of applications such as online gaming, social media, shopping etc. The application works across both WiFi or mobile connections to ensure that rules and policies are applied even when children are not connected to the home WiFi networks. Coupled with the My Time app, children can also monitor themselves, by viewing the remaining time they can spend online and see an overview of the established internet policies set by their parents.
“This last year of online distance learning and working from home has clearly demonstrated how essential network connectivity and management has become for an entire household. As the leading provider of innovative performance networking products, NETGEAR is proudly providing value added services to help parents better manage a family’s time online,” said David Henry, senior vice president of Connected Home Products for NETGEAR. “NETGEAR Smart Parental Controls enables parents to both monitor and manage online activity to know how much time is spent online and what sites or apps are visited by their children.”
As a simple solution to unplug from the always-on connected world, Smart Parental Controls provides several key features for the modern family.
Smart Parental Controls features:
- Profiles ––Create custom profiles for your children and associate all their connected devices to this profile for easy management of their time across all devices.
- Pause –– Take a break. One tap to pause your entire internet either on an individual device or for all of the children’s connected screens.
- History —Take a look at every website they visited on a given day or as far back as you’d like.
- Usage[i]–– Get an overview of your children’s internet activity across their connected devices.
- Filteri –– Easily select the most age-appropriate content filters. Use our recommended pre-set filter or customise it to fit the needs of your family.
- Time Limitsi –– Set a limit and step away from the screen. Limit daily internet time for specific websites, apps or categories such as online gaming, social media, video streaming and more.
- Bedtimei –– Schedule a bedtime for children’s devices and encourage healthy sleep schedules.
- Rewardsi –– Motivate and inspire by rewarding good behavior with more screen time for favorite games or set a later bedtime for a sleepover.
- Off Timei –– Schedule internet Off Time during dinner or family gatherings. No need to take away a device from the children.
- My Time Appi — By installing My Time onto your kids’ devices, they will see their screen time and can follow along with time limits. The app also ensures internet rules apply even when they’re connected to LTE instead of home WiFi.
Availability:
NETGEAR Smart Parental ControlsÔ is currently available for North America on select Nighthawk WiFi 6 Routers. The service is also available on the original Orbi Tri-band WiFi Mesh System (RBK50) as a firmware update via the Orbi app and is expected to be available in a phased manner across WiFi 6 Orbi Mesh systems and Nighthawk WiFi 6 products later this year. Following the free 30-day trial, Smart Parental Controls is a subscription service with a fee of $69.99 annually or $7.99 a month.
Current models:
- Orbi Tri-band AC (Model: RBK53, RBK53S, RBK50)
- Nighthawk Tri-Band AX8 (Model: RAX70, RAX78)
- Nighthawk AX6 (Model: RAX50S, RAX50, RAX45)
- Nighthawk AX5 (Model: RAX43, RAX42)
- NETGEAR AX1800 (Model: R6700AX, RAX10)
Please visit NETGEAR.com for the latest updates on expanded availability across the NETGEAR line up.
[i]Only available with a NETGEAR Smart Parental Controls Premium subscription, $69.99/year or $7.99/month after a 30-day free trial, no credit card required for trial.