Norton Family Review 2025: A Lightweight Solution With No Conversation Monitoring

Does Norton Family stand up to the quality of other Norton products? Based on our assessment, we have to say yes. 

Norton Family is an extensive parental controls app that doesn't feel invasive. You can monitor your children's web searches, set screen time filters, and track their location. 

There's a lot to love about Norton Family, but it lacks features like screen time filters for specific apps and conversation monitoring. It's also not as comprehensive for Apple users. 

Depending on your parental control needs, Norton Family might be right for you. 

At a glance

Price	$49.99/mo
Freel trial	Yes — 30 days
Number of kids supported	Up to 15
Content filtering	Yes
Conversation monitoring	No
Screen time management	Yes
Location tracking	Yes
Activity reports	Yes
Remote lock	Yes
Supported devices	Windows, Android, iOS
Learn more	Get Norton Family

We last tested Norton Family on July 9, 2025.

Our experience

Overall we found Norton Family to have some truly useful tools. It was easy to set up our child's restrictions, and the dashboard gave us a nice overview of the content being accessed on the monitored phone.

When reviewing the dashboard, we could see and receive alerts for searches, videos watched, apps used, and locations. We also saw the overall screen time and were able to lock the phone remotely or set bedtime and school hours.

One big missing feature the lack of conversation monitoring, including text messages or any other type of online chat. If you want to prioritize your child's safety from cyberbullying or predators, you may want to go for a more heavy duty option (like Bark).

When we went to try and uninstall the app, we were unable to do so without first signing in as a parent, which makes it secure against older kids too.

Here are more details about our testing experience.

Norton Family setup

After our purchase, we were prompted to download the Norton Family app onto our child’s device. We received a special QR code that conveniently linked to the proper download based on our device. 

Once we downloaded the app, an activation code appeared, which let us link the app to our desktop login.

After installation and login, we were prompted to add the first child to our dashboard. We had to add the child’s name and choose a restriction level before being allowed to proceed. 

Once complete, the device was linked and we could monitor the device from our dashboard.

The restriction levels give general permissions and exclusions to the profile, but you can customize each of those further in your dashboard. 

Norton Family monitoring in action

Norton Family monitoring sends out alerts when your children come across content that's blocked by your selected filter. Depending on the level of restriction you enable, a website is either blocked or the child is sent a warning. 

We tested this out with moderate restriction levels (recommended for kids 12-14 years old), by accessing adult websites. Norton gave us a warning that the website had adult content.

We then tried searching terms that were geared toward adult content. All of the search terms turned up in the dashboard.

Additionally, we could customize the settings to restrict phone access during school hours or even remote lock it completely at anytime. We tested locking our Android, which closed out Spotify and blocked us from opening any apps.

The app also monitored for overall screen time and screen time per app. We were impressed with how quickly these alerts and statistics updated, as some of the other parental control apps we've tested were quite delayed.

The last thing we tested was location. We set up our home address as a favorite location and set alerts to go off whenever the device left or entered that location.

We then left in our car to drive around the block and was happy to see we got an alert and an email when we left and entered the location.

Who is Norton Family good for?

• Recommended for parents who don't want to monitor their child's conversations

If healthy boundaries are a big part of your parental style, then Norton Family can allow your child to keep their privacy while you're able to keep them safe. You won't be able to see any of the conversations they have on their device, but you can still monitor their searches and set screen time boundaries.

If you want an app that alerts you to potential bullying on social media or similar apps, Norton Family doesn't currently have this capability.

Norton Family prices and subscriptions

If you’re looking to purchase Norton Family by itself, the current price of $4.17/mo (billed annually) is on par with a lot of other parental control apps. 

For example, the popular Bark app costs between $4.08–$39.00/mo and Qustodio is $4.58-$8.33/mo (billed annually).

If you’re looking to bundle Norton Family with other Norton products, you have two different options that can help you increase your overall security.

• Norton 360 Deluxe offers antivirus, cloud storage, a password manager, and other features in addition to parental controls.
• Norton 360 with LifeLock Select offers these features as well as identity theft protection. Where there are device limits with the security software, you’ll be able to add multiple profiles and devices to your Norton Family subscription.

Here's how the different options compare.

Features	Norton Family	Norton 360 Deluxe	Norton 360 with LifeLock Select
Price	$49.99/yr	$49.99/first yr	$99.99/first yr
Number of children	15	5	10
Content filtering
Screen time management
Location tracking
Norton Antivirus
Norton Secure VPN
Norton Password Manager
Norton LifeLock
Details	View plan	View plan	View plan

Norton Family features

Norton Family offers seven features for monitoring and regulating your children’s devices. You can see what content they’re viewing, including websites and videos, as well as regulate their screen time. 

We'll detail how these features held up below. 

Content monitoring

The web filtering feature will monitor content. Depending on the level of restriction you set, this may be a full-on block or a warning that the site they’re about to visit is restricted.

We had our content filters on moderate, which is recommended for tweens. When we tried to visit adult sites, Norton Family informed us the site had content not intended for our restriction level. 

In the dashboard we could see what sites were accessed, if a warning was issued, and if we visited the site despite the warning.

If you want to restrict certain sites or allow others, you can do that within the Web feature by selecting the Exceptions tab. This helps you bypass the restrictions for a site that might be necessary without disabling all protections. 

Phone apps

	App monitoring for iOS devices	App monitoring for Android devices
App capabilities	Unavailable on iOS	Monitors time spent on apps and alerts you to which apps your child downloads

Norton Family allows you to keep tabs on what desktop and mobile apps your child downloads and how long they're spending on each app.

This feature doesn’t monitor content on the apps, only time spent on them and which ones are installed or uninstalled. You can also blockc apps from being used. 

We blocked the Asana app from being used completely, which went into effect immediately. We tried to open it but Norton Family blocked us and flagged it. 

Note that you can't set time limits for specific apps, you can only block them completely. 

Web browsers

Web Supervision is one of the most robust features available on Norton Family. You can screen what websites your child is visiting and whether or not they fall under the content restrictions.

For anyone wanting to know what their child is searching online, there’s a feature that shows a word cloud of the top search results from each device, and you can click on the details button to see every search performed on Google, Yahoo, Bing, and other search engines.

Screen time management

Norton Family let us set screen time limits that locked out all or certain aspects of our child’s phone during the times we set. School and sleep schedules are preloaded, but you can adjust them based on your personal routines.

As far as we could tell, there wasn’t much nuance to this feature. Most of the device’s functionality is blocked during downtime. 

If your child has an iPhone or an iPad, there are multiple screen time settings that allow you to choose specific apps and contacts during downtime. Norton Family didn’t seem as comprehensive as the iOS parental controls.

Location tracking and geo-fencing

Location Supervision needs to be enabled in addition to setting up the app on your kid’s phone. Without enabling permissions, you’ll get a general sense of where the device is located, but you won’t be able to constantly monitor. 

If you do enable the tracking, you’ll get live, real-time updates as to where the device is located.

You can also search your child’s locations based on date and time. This is useful for parents with kids who are just starting to participate in activities by themselves. 

You can have peace of mind being able to see where your kids are during the day, especially if they do independent activities like ride the bus or get picked up in a carpool line.

Activity reports

Activity reports are pretty simple. Within each of the seven categories, you can look deeper at the alerts you see on your dashboard.

In the Web category, we tried accessing the site OnlyFans, which isn’t strictly adult content but is used for a lot of very adult content. Since we had our restrictions set to low for tweens, the website warned us about the site. 

The dashboard also noted that we didn’t visit the site after receiving the warning. 

As far as Google searches, we could see in the Search Terms section what words were searched.

Video reports

Norton Family also tracks what videos are watched on the device, but with several limitations. It can only track videos that are watched on YouTube through a browser, NOT the YouTube app itself.

If you want to make sure your kid is watching appropriate content, you'll have to disable the YouTube app on their device so they're forced to use the browser.

When videos are tracked, you're given the link to the video and the description, so you can easily see context on what it is.

Does Norton Family collect your data?

Norton Family falls under the Norton privacy policy, which collects a lot of data. We mean, A LOT of data.

Essentially Norton collects everything about the devices you’re using, the Norton services you have, all of your interface and screen activity, your geolocation, financial data, and all your network traffic. 

Norton will also collect data on friends and family connected to your accounts as well as third-party data.

Norton uses this information for all the standard practices:

• To provide you with Norton services and any consent to use it that you’ve given 
• For network and information security purposes
• To advance its own business as well as third-party affiliates

Norton Family security

Norton uses 128-bit SSL encryption, which is surprising given that it’s the lesser of the two most commonly used encryption types. 

AES-256-bit encryption is usually the industry standard when it comes to data. While both have the potential to stand up to brute force attacks, 128-bit is less effective than 256-bit.

That’s not to say your data will be vulnerable. At our current computing power, it would take 149 trillion years to crack 128-bit encryption.

If you’d like even more protection, you can enable two-factor authentication (2FA) on your account. Norton suggests you do this but doesn’t make it mandatory. 

Two-factor authentication allows you to log in to your account by verifying your identity on a second device. It can definitely improve your security.

Norton Family customer support

Support type	Norton Family
Email or live chat	Yes — 24/7 live chat support
Phone	Yes — you’ll need to fill out a form on the site for the number
Online guides or forums

Like most security products, you’ll first be directed toward a self-help support site. Their goal is to get you to troubleshoot your own problem by looking through forums and guides.

If you really need to talk with a support specialist, you can scroll down the page and click Contact us. You’ll be redirected a few more times before receiving the contact options.

We suggest going for the 24/7 live chat support because there’s a warning on Norton’s page that calling may result in long wait times.

Top alternatives

If Norton Family doesn’t offer all the features you’re looking for, consider one of these competitors. Social media, text, and email monitoring are available with some of these services as well as the ability to remotely block numbers. 

Depending on your needs and budget, one of these may be the best parental control software for your family.

Norton Family FAQs

Bottom line: Is Norton Family good?

Despite some of its shortcomings, Norton Family is a good service. We liked the web filtering and alerts on internet search terms as well as the location services. It all felt lightweight, easy to use, and quick.

The main features missing are being able to set screen time limits for a specific app and the ability to monitor conversations on messaging and social media apps.

If you’re going to purchase Norton Family, we suggest bundling it with Norton 360 Deluxe for the same price. You’ll receive even more security products, like a password manager and VPN, which can boost your security across all devices.

Curious how Norton Family compares to other top parental control apps on the market? Check out our in-depth comparisons:

• Norton Family vs. Aura Parental Controls
• Norton Family vs. Net Nanny
• Norton Family vs. Qustodio
• Norton Family vs. Bark
• Norton Family vs. mSpy