Monitoring apps promise to keep young people safer online, but looking in on kids’ phones can backfire. Online safety experts say there’s a better way.

Pam Wisniewski's digital adolescence showed her the best and worst of the internet. At 14, she left an abusive home, where she was isolated for years. Online, she found support but also danger. ‘I sent my address to some guy in New Mexico and then found a news story that he killed someone,’ she recalls.

These experiences shaped Wisniewski’s career. Now a principal research scientist at the International Computer Science Institute, she has spent over a decade asking what safety should look like for families navigating an evolving tech landscape, without sacrificing trust. ‘I really see the internet as this double-edged sword,’ she says.

Digital harms have become the defining fear of American parenthood. The University of Michigan’s 2025 National Poll on Children's Health showed that parents’ top three worries are social media, screen time, and online safety. Nearly half of American teenagers say they have been bullied or harassed online.

But a growing number of adults are opting for tools that go further than simply restricting or locating. Content-monitoring apps scan texts, photos, emails, and chats, alerting parents whenever an algorithm flags something dangerous. While some apps have had genuine successes—preventing suicide attempts, intercepting predators, averting school shootings—they can also harm, causing false alarms, breakdowns of trust, and anxiety.