Now keep tab on kids' use of smartphones with new app

Does excessive smartphone use by your kid keep you worried? Now a new app allows parents to keep track of everything that their children do with their phones.

Called TeenSafe, the web-based service co-founded by an Indian-origin entrepreneur, Ameeta Jain, allows parents to gain access to all incoming, outgoing and deleted text messages of the smartphones of their kids.

It allows parents to access the phone, Facebook and Instagram activity of their children from any computer, the TeenSafe website read.

The application works with iPhone and Android phones, not Windows or Blackberry phones.

"Statistics show that children do not tell you everything that is happening and with cyber-bullying and sexting being so prevalent in their lives, I just wanted a safety precaution mechanism in place," Jain, who is also the mother of a teenaged daughter, was quoted as saying.

The app need not be a invasion of privacy, Jain added.

There are more than 40 million children with smartphone and social media access and, of those, 10 million have been cyber-bullied, Jain pointed out.

The app costs $14.95 (Rs.917.78) per month after one exhausts the seven-day free trial, New Jersey 101.5 reported.