Bark

10 years ago, Bark was born from a simple mission: to help keep kids safer online. A decade later, we’re honored to be supporting millions of families navigating the digital world together. Thank you for trusting us. 💙 Here’s to the important work still ahead! 🎉

This is for all the parents out there who are ready to ditch Roblox, but don’t know how. Your kid probably won’t be happy about it, but their safety is far more important than their momentary happiness. You’ve got this!

ICAC detectives have seen things that would absolutely shock most parents. The internet is a dark, dark place, and your child can be exposed to explicit content and dangerous people on platforms and apps you’d never suspect. If your kid spends any amount of time online, choosing safer tech and using effective parental controls is a non-negotiable. Huge shoutout to The Texas Detective for sharing this video! 🙌 #ChildSafety #Detective #OnlineSafety #BarkPhone

The next time your eight-year-old is begging for “just five more minutes,” remember: holding the line isn’t being mean. It’s being the steady guide they need. Have you listened to the full podcast episode with Dr Carrie yet? 🎙️Find it at the link in our bio!

Despite more than 2,000 pending lawsuits tied to alleged failures to protect kids on its platforms, Instagram decided this week that what teens really needed was… disappearing photos in DMs. More Snapchat-like features. In case you missed it, kids can now send images that “vanish” after viewing. And parents should pay attention. (👋 FYI: No media actually disappears despite what the platform says. It lives on a server and other kids' camera rolls.) For years, many families viewed Instagram as the “slightly safer” alternative to Snapchat. That small layer of reassurance continues to disappear as features keep outpacing meaningful child safety protections. Instagram didn’t strengthen parental controls. They didn’t close major DM safety gaps. They didn’t address algorithmic recommendation issues that can connect predators and minors. They didn’t meaningfully confront the growing body of evidence tied to teen mental health harms. Instead, they prioritized this. At this point, it’s hard to view it as anything other than a pattern: New engagement features first. Meaningful protections later, if ever. Silicon Valley keeps treating child safety like a PR layer instead of a product requirement.

Happy Mother’s Day! 🤍🌼💟🦋🌟💖

This Mother’s Day, I want you to put the list down. The one in your head. The one you didn’t write but somehow inherited. The one that tells you: you’re behind, falling short, not doing enough. The world keeps handing moms an impossible checklist and then wondering why we’re exhausted?! You don’t need to be a Pinterest-perfect mom. You don’t need to “bounce back.” You don’t need to be everything to everyone. You just need to be you. And you, exactly as you are, are already enough. 💕

Kids are supposed to make mistakes. That’s how they grow! But the digital world doesn’t work the same way as the real one. A mistake online can follow your kid for years, affect their mental health, and in the worst cases, change the course of their life entirely. That’s why the conversations have to start before a device ever enters the picture. And when you do introduce one, make sure it is actually built with their safety in mind.

The algorithm doesn’t care if your kid eats today. It doesn’t care if they sleep. It doesn’t care that they used to create, play, and dream before the feed taught them that none of it was interesting enough. It doesn’t care if they cry themselves to bed at 2 a.m. comparing their face to a filter. It doesn’t care that they feel lonely in a room full of people. It doesn’t care if they’re 11 and already think they’re not enough. It doesn’t care that they’re being shown things no child should ever see or hear. It only cares about ONE THING: keeping them there. And it is very, very good at its job. We are the first generation of parents raising kids alongside a system specifically engineered to exploit them, and we’re still pretending that it’s just “screen time.” It’s not normal. It’s not safe. But it’s also not too late… This is a reminder that YOU CAN DELAY. You can say not yet. You can be the parent who holds the line when every other parent caves (and you’d be amazed how many are silently waiting for someone else to go first). You can give your kid a childhood before you give them a feed. You can teach them that their worth isn’t measured in likes. That their face doesn’t need a filter. That being bored is not an emergency. That the most interesting life they’ll ever live is the one happening right in front of them.

A lot of parents think that keeping their kids safer online means setting up parental controls and calling it a day. And while effective parental controls are critical, you need multiple layers of protection to keep your kid as safe as possible. So yes, set up those parental controls (Bark is the best), but also have those uncomfortable conversations, opt for safer devices (again, Bark!), and keep educating yourself on what’s really happening in the digital world and where kids are spending most of their time online. We’re in this together!

Your kid doesn’t need Roblox. Point blank period. Roblox continually proves to parents like me that they don’t care about child safety, and they would rather protect pr*dators and abusers than children and victims. Your kid will be better off without this game. Major shout-out to @schlepreal for fighting back against Roblox and advocating for the safety of kids.

This is your sign to delay, delay, delay. Trust us, you won’t regret it. 💪