Hey Android, I need reverse parental controls for my mom and dad

For years now, Android and Google have offered a way to set parental controls on phones to manage access to apps, services, and information for kids and teens before they reach adulthood. It’s a necessary and appreciated feature, but it detracts from something else Google needs to be thinking about: parents.

My mom and dad are a little over 70, my aunt is in her 60s, and my mother-in-law is also in her 60s. I’m the one remotely managing all their Android phones from Paris to Lebanon, and yet, I can’t manage the things I wish I could manage. I don’t want to take away their autonomy, but I always wished there was a way to lock certain things or require my permission to approve them. Let me explain.

If I’m advocating the need for some level of management over the phones of dependent adults in your family, it’s because I’ve been burned repeatedly by my dad’s weird tendency to completely reset his Android phone. This happened four times on their older OnePlus 9, and I blamed it on the OnePlus recovery bug that I saw frequently on the support forums, until it happened again on their Pixel 7 Pro.

Turns out that he was sometimes pressing the power and volume up buttons at the same time for some reason. But enough time to trigger recovery mode? And how did he do a full reset in there, knowing that he calls me whenever he sees a screen he doesn’t understand? This is one of the secrets of my life. I had to guide him from a distance to set up his phone five times. I am tired.

I just think people shouldn’t be able to completely reset a phone like this. There should be a password requirement or a security measure that prevents someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing from completely wiping your phone. (Yes, I know the best defense is to get well in the first place, but… I just want to point out my dad.)

This isn’t the only problem I’ve encountered with my parents’ Android phones. This covers a range of issues from installing bad apps from the Play Store because of ads to not knowing whether they should apply updates or not, moving things to the home screen and not knowing how to get them back, and granting or denying permissions to specific apps. Should WhatsApp have access to their mic? Sure. That’s how they send me voice notes. Should their solitaire games have access to their location? No, not at all.

These are things I wish I had remote access to, similar to how Google Family Link works in a way. Send me a request and let me approve it. No, you can’t download PDF Scanner, Mom; This looks like a bad app. Yes, Aunty, you can give Withings access to nearby devices; That’s the point when pairing it with your new Scanwatch. Please, Google, apply this update overnight; I know it has important security improvements. And so on. Dealing with this kind of thing shouldn’t require a video call with me, or even a “What do I do, Rita?” There shouldn’t even be a need to share a screenshot with others.

I’ve been living in a different country from my family for the past five years, and the times I visited were so brief that I didn’t even notice how much their behavior around smartphones had changed. In the mid-2010s, he used to yell at me to put my phone aside; Now, I have control over their screen time during personal hours, while they are used to it. I noticed this when my parents came for a month.

Every day, I would go into the living room and see Mom, Dad, and my aunt with the TV on, but with their heads bowed to their screens. I understand the boredom that comes with this more sedentary retired life, and part of it was due to not being in their familiar environments where they could go out, meet neighbors, etc., but the pattern of spending hours scrolling through YouTube shorts is still annoying. I discussed it with them, explained screen time management, and decided to put digital well-being limits on YouTube, but I would love if there was a better way to monitor it, as Google Family Link allows for kids.

No, I don’t need to babysit every minute and hour of my parents’ smartphone use, but general rules that encourage them to put down the phone and do something else instead would be quite welcome. In my ideal scenario, they wouldn’t get access to YouTube unless they walked for 30 minutes every day, but that’s probably too much demand.

I’ve been in a similar situation with my mother-in-law, who has lost a bit of control over her impulses after suffering a stroke and now spends her days enjoying AI-generated Instagram Reels while she reads French novels. I know this is out of control for either of us, but if I could encourage him to read a little bit every day before enjoying his silly videos, I’d be much happier.

Look, I don’t want this article to be considered ageist against all elderly people. My mom was typing out higher-education chemistry exams and answers all with formulas (with multiple levels of superscripts and subscripts) until a few years ago. My aunt has become very smart in detecting spam and phishing attempts. My dad is now smart enough to recognize bad pop-ups and ads. He’s figured out how to send WhatsApp stickers to himself and how to switch his keyboard to type in Arabic from time to time. I am proud of him for this.

There are many parents who adopted technology early or perhaps joined it later, but have fully embraced it, and are now very tech-literate. They are able to manage 100% of their smartphone usage on their own without any intervention. They are not my parents. I grew up without computers or phones, and even when computers and phones became a thing, I didn’t have to use them for long unless forced to. I have been their technical support for more than two decades.

For these cases, and other cases of dependency or reduced mental abilities, Android should have a solution that also lets caregivers handle someone else’s digital and smartphone use. This control doesn’t require me to put my dad’s age at 12 into his Google account – and I don’t want that much control to begin with. I just need to stop him from accidentally factory resetting my phone for the sixth time.