Social Shield Review — Child Safety Software Comparison (2012)

Social Shield is a new service which enables parents to monitor exactly what their kids are doing while visiting online social networking sites around the Web. With child predators as well as cyberbullying on the rise, we as parents need to be armed with better information about how vulnerable our children are online.

Key features of Social Shield:

• Be alerted when any adult tries to add your child as a friend on any social network
• View all the photos that are being posted about your child online
• Get an alert whenever your child discusses any type of risky behaviors or risky topics online

Social Shield is one of the most comprehensive child safety monitoring systems - with the unique ability to monitor all the photos and videos being posted about your child by *anyone* online. This is a very comprehensive security feature which enables you to have a birds eye view on what your child is doing and what others are posting about him or her.

Social Shield most closely competes with sites like NetNanny and SafetyWeb.

Compared with NetNanny, Social Shield provides unique capabilities like being able to monitor what children are doing on social networks. NetNanny serves primarily to block unwanted content like pornography, gabmling, and gaming sites. However, NetNanny is a downloadable software package that you pay for just once, while with Social Shield you have to pay an ongoing monthly fee.

SafetyWeb is very simliar to Social Shield. It also monitors and alerts you about your child's social networking usage. However, SafetyWeb has the ability to monitor your child's mobile phone usage such as text messaging, which is a nice advantage. Another key difference is that SafetyWeb does not require your child to give the software permission to track his or her activities. Social Shield needs the child to opt-in to the service. Whether this is a pro or a con probably depends on your perspective.

Social Shield comes out during a time when parents are becoming more and more concerned about child predators and cyberbullying. With all the risks involved with your children going online, don't you want an extra measure of security, knowing that your child is well protected while they are surfing online?

Social Shield is an innovative service. I was quite surprised that there is actually a service that can allow you as a parent to monitor what your kids do on social networks. My daughter uses Facebook all the time, and I just assume that she's only interacting with the friends on her list (I do monitor that) and not being subjected to any unwanted risks. However, in the back of my mind, I know there's always the possibility out there that this simply isn't true.

Facebook and other sites like MySpace, Xanga, and LiveJournal are actually very free and open sites to the public where almost anyone can come into contact with your child. Having a good tool to monitor what goes on in there places is just as important as having a good pair of eyes to watch your child while she's at the mall. Or like having a video monitor for your baby.

Social Shield is a great way to keep a pair of eyes on your child when they're travelling around the public (and sometimes dangerous) spaces on the Internet.

The best feature of Social Shield is that it alerts you whenever anything risky is happening with your child online, even if its an action taken by another user, not your child. If an adult tries to friend your child, it will alert you. If someone posts a video about your child, it alerts you. If someone posts a photo about your child, it alerts you. It gives me lots of peace of mind, knowing that I'll be alerted whenever needed when my children are surfing online.