Instances of cyberbullying and the spread of harmful content are rampant nowadays. Children using mobile devices are consistently exposed to these issues. As such, parents need to monitor their children’s text messages for their safety.

However, with increasing privacy concerns, iPhones have become more restrictive in their features. Accessing your child's messages is more complex and requires using an effective parental monitoring tool. KidsGuard Pro is the answer, and in this blog post, we will learn more about how to utilize it alongside other techniques to monitor text messages on iPhones.

Why Monitor Your Child’s Text Messages on iPhone

If you are a parent to a teen or tween, you’ve probably considered ways to monitor text messages on iPhone. The reasons why you should do this include:

• Ensuring Kids’ Safety: Children with mobile devices may connect with strangers with ill motives toward them. Hence, parents must monitor text messages on a child’s iPhone to protect against predators.

• Identify Bullying: Monitoring your child’s text messages can also reveal if they are being bullied or exhibiting such behavior toward other kids. That way, you can address the bullying issues or stop your child from bullying others.

• Guard Against Harmful Content: Your child may act innocent around you, but monitoring their text messages may reveal interaction with harmful or inappropriate content. This can include sexually explicit content or others that promote self-harm and drug abuse.

• Identify Signs of Stress and Mental Health Issues: By monitoring the text messages on a teen’s iPhone, you can identify signs of mental health issues like low self-esteem or peer pressure. Such information is crucial for helping your child manage stress better and grow into a healthy adult.

3 Best Methods to Track Child’s Text Messages

We’ve established that tracking a child’s text messages is absolutely crucial in today’s digital world. So, how do we go about it? This section will provide comprehensive answers to parents asking themselves the question, “How do I see my child’s texts on their iPhone?”

Use Built-in iPhone Family Sharing Features

The iPhone is one of the most privacy-focused devices available on the market today. As such, one way to monitor a child’s activity without hassle is to use its built-in features. Family Sharing allows parents to link their kids' Apple mobile devices to their iPhones to help monitor and control certain usage aspects.

Family Sharing does not give you direct access to monitor text messages. However, it can be used to supervise app usage through the following steps.

1. Tap to open the Settings App.

2. Click on your name.

3. Navigate to Family Sharing and follow the prompts to set it up.

4. Set your child’s role to Child Account.

5. Tap on App Limits and set limits on the iMessage app to control your child’s usage.

Family Sharing also allows you to review app usage reports to see how often your child sends and receives texts and how much time they spend on the iMessage app. You can also control which contacts your teen can text with by navigating to Screen Time in Family Sharing. Proceed to Communication Limits and designate which contacts they can text at what time.

iCloud Monitoring

Another iPhone-provided method you can use to monitor text messages on your child’s device is iCloud Monitoring. This approach only works if you have your teen’s iCloud credentials and you are able to sync their messages to the iCloud. Once enabled, you can conveniently access their iMessages on another Apple device linked to the same iCloud.

To enable messages in iCloud on your kid’s device, follow the steps below:

1. Open the Settings App by tapping on it.

2. Click on your child’s name.

3. Navigate to iCloud and tap on it.

4. Enable messages in iCloud.

Family Sharing and iCloud monitoring are overly intrusive and only support iMessage text monitoring. Parents, therefore, need a more comprehensive tool for monitoring texts on iPhones across different apps.

KidsGuard Pro: Dedicated App to Monitor Child’s Texts and Calls

With Apple enforcing strict privacy features, Family Sharing and iCloud monitoring are not sufficient for monitoring texts on iPhone. Hence, parents need a more reliable monitoring tool KidsGuard Pro is a dedicated monitoring app that bypasses all iPhone restrictions without jailbreaking to give you access to your child’s texts and calls.

This app empowers parents with the ability to monitor text messages on their kid’s iPhones in real time. That way, you can see when messages come in and what your child is texting about. KidsGuard Pro also lets you view deleted messages to uncover any secrets your child is hiding from you. Compared to other parental monitoring apps, your child will not easily get rid of conversations they don’t want you to see.

KidsGuardPro also has a feature for tracking specific keywords and getting notified when they are triggered. This feature is key when you need to know if your child is talking about particular topics such as suicide, mental health, stress, sex, and even drugs.

The comprehensive monitoring capabilities of KidsGuard Pro extend to contacts. You can see all the people on your child’s contact list, as well as any newly added or deleted contacts, to track who they are talking with. With KidsGuard Pro, you also see any multimedia files your child sends and receives and get insights into other app activities necessary for parental diligence in today’s world.

To use KidsGuard Pro to monitor your child’s texts and calls, follow the steps below.

1. Sign up for a KidsGuard Pro account on the official website.

2. Install the KidsGuard Pro app on your computer and bind your child’s iPhone or iCloud.

3. Start monitoring texts, calls and contacts from your account dashboard.

Privacy and Ethical Considerations

It is worth noting that even in your efforts to monitor your child’s text messages on iPhone, privacy and ethical considerations persist. Here are some considerations to keep in mind:

• Respect for Privacy: Teenagers need a sense of independence and personal space to create trust with their parents. As such, you should restrict your iPhone monitoring to only reading specific conversations that you are concerned about.

• Transparency and Consent: Monitoring your child’s phone in secret can often damage trust and confidence in your relationship. Ensure that you are transparent about the tools you use and frame the monitoring as an act of safety rather than a privacy breach.

• Balance Protection and Independence: The text monitoring should gradually reduce as your child grows and exhibits capabilities to make sound independent decisions.

• Ethical Boundaries: It is advisable to determine ethical boundaries when monitoring your teenager's iPhone activity. Limit yourself to only monitoring and intervening where a real threat, such as cyberbullying, is present.

• Compliance with Laws: It is worth noting that some privacy laws in some countries prohibit device monitoring, even for parental purposes.

Conclusion

You can monitor your child’s text messages on an iPhone using the device’s built-in methods, such as Family Sharing and iCloud Monitoring. However, due to privacy restrictions, these methods are not comprehensive. KidsGuard Pro is a third-party parental app that gives you full visibility into your teenager’s conversations. The app is easy to use, requires no jailbreaking, and works in stealth mode allowing you to guarantee your child’s digital safety.

Sign up for a KidsGuard Pro account today and start monitoring text and call activity without any restrictions.