Bark Phone - Safest Phone for Kids & Teens - Monitor Texts, Social Media, and More - Tamper Proof Parental Controls - GPS Tracking - Unlimited Talk/Text A16

I highly recommend the Bark Phone to any family looking for a safe, reliable, and easy-to-use smartphone for their child. My 8-year-old son absolutely loves it — and so do I! One of the best things about the Bark Phone is how simple and kid-friendly it is. My son can easily make calls, including to his grandparents who live overseas, and he even calls me when I’m at work just to say hi — which absolutely melts my heart! As a parent, I love how much control and peace of mind it gives me. I can monitor everything he’s doing, set screen time limits, block apps, and get alerts for anything concerning — all from my phone. It’s packed with built-in safety features without being overly complicated. The Bark Phone truly offers the perfect balance between freedom for kids and control for parents. It’s designed specifically with families in mind, and it shows. If you’re thinking about getting your child their first phone — this is the one. Trust me, it’s worth it!

Great starter phone for a younger child - we got this for my 11 year old and appreciate the ability to customize what applications he can use as well as approving contacts and limiting the times he can contact different sets of contacts (friends after school, parents anytime, and family in case of emergency). Currently we are just using for text and voice calls and appreciate the alerts for cases where things might be inappropriate in the texts without having to invade his privacy by reading all of his texts. The phone was easy to setup and get started with and we look forward to using the enhanced capabilities as our son is ready to use additional applications and eventually social media.

I bought this phone for my 10 year old son and I highly recommend it. I have to approve all his contacts, I can set limits, track him and get alerts if he does anything that seems suspicious or inappropriate. I feel safe with him using this.

Nice Android phone. Easy for my 8 year old son to use. Bark app is user friendly. I like that you approve their activity and contacts. You get alerted of new activity. You’re able to see all conversations and calls. GPS is also key. So far no complaints and my son loves being able to keep in touch with family and communicate with me when he is away for the weekend.

We were looking for a first cell phone for our 11 year old and wanted one that looked like regular phones, but had a strong monitoring aspect. After months of research, we decided to go with a bark phone and couldn't be happier. The phone is the same Samsung A16 my husband and I have, so we know it's a great device. The real gem here is the Bark phone plan with monitoring. We chose to go with the lowest tier plan, which includes unlimited talk and text but no internet access. Talk and text is all we wanted for our child at this point. The plan also includes location monitoring and my child can take and send photos. We have the ability to upgrade the plan at any time, which is wonderful. I also love that in the future, when my child is much older, the Bark phone number can be transferred to another phone plan so my child can still keep their phone number. We had the option to buy the phone through the Bark website and pay for it monthly in addition to our phone plan, but chose to buy it outright from Bark through Amazon, which was what we had planned on doing. The phone was less than $250, which is incredible for a quality, name brand phone. Setting up the phone was extremely easy using the instructions included from Bark. The Parent app is great and I love that I get notifications on my phone and that I can update sensitivity settings, contacts, location services, etc on my phone. My one complaint that stopped me from giving a five star review is that my child was not supposed to receive calls or texts from unknown contacts, as the Bark programing only allows contact with approved contacts. This may have been a glitch, but for the first few days with the phone, we would get calls come through (we never answered them) from a local utility company, as well as texts alerting for automatic bill pay with a road toll company, electric company, etc. My understanding was that these were not supposed to come through as they were not listed as approved contacts. I blocked each text that came as well as the calls and made sure that I added the Bark ohine number to the No Call Registry, and we had no issues after the first 4 days. Again, may have been a glitch or maybe automated texts that come from five or six digit numbers aren't blocked, not certain. Overall, I would recommend this phone and the Bark phone service to anyone. I see us upgrading the phone plan in the future to allow for app and internet use, but it's not needed right now. We also plan to buy a second Bark phone in a few years for our second child when they are ready for a phone.

We are very pleased with our purchase with Bark phones. It is an actual smart phone which was important to our teenager. We love that every app has to be approved and bark sends a rating with every app request. I highly appreciate that. Another plus for us is the ability to pause the phone during school hours or when screen time is not allowed. They can still make calls but no video games or anything else. One thing I do have to say is the location is not that great. It will tell us he is leaving home even if he is just going to the bathroom. That’s annoying and could use some updating. I would suggest downloading a different app for that. Overall we are very happy with the Bark phone

Finally decided to gift our teen his first smartphone this Christmas after much consideration & research. We were apprehensive about getting our child one due to the increase of cyber bullying, negative social media influence & the likes. The Bark phone was the best decision we've made. It exceeded all our expectations on parental control on security tracking on their device. Which far exceeds any any other platform out there, in my opinion. We're able to set parameters and restrictions on what they're able to access. It blocks sites that are restricted and alerts us right away. For example, I messaged my son to put my "meds" in the cabinet & the Bark flagged the word "meds" and alerted me. The Bark technology is sophisticated enough to recognize common words as potentially harmful.

My daughter was getting to the age where having a phone was starting to be helpful. I wanted her to have freedom to grow without all the risk of social media and internet access. After quite a bit of research I decided to go with Bark and we have not been disappointed. Of course it takes a little work to set up and be engaged but it is totally worth it. I feel like it is a great balance of protecting her while also allowing her to learn how to navigate the waters.