Parental Control Software Market

Parental Control Software Market Research, 2031

The global parental control software market was valued at $1.3 billion in 2021, and is projected to reach $4.3 billion by 2031, growing at a CAGR of 13% from 2021 to 2031.

The COVID-19 pandemic had a positive impact on the parental control software market owing to the rise in screen time and the rise in monitoring and control over children's online activities and protecting them from fraudulent activities.

Parental control software are tools that allow parents to set controls on their children’s internet use. This prevents children from accessing inappropriate online content via smartphones, tablets, and computers. Parental controls software is located on Vista's control panel, where a user can access an account and monitor their children's activity or behavior. This helps to create a customized checklist to set parental controls on each device, especially for family users. Moreover, many schools have incorporated laptops, computers, and tablets into their syllabus, which has encouraged the requirement to install tracking tools to filter content and limit sites.

Rise in government regulations to standardize digital content for children's safety is driving the parental control software market growth. The use of parental control tools enables parents to limit children's exposure to unwanted social media posts and helps in protecting children from unethical practices such as cyberbullying. In addition, increase in social media usage and exposure to internet content among children and growing penetration of personal device access for kids. Thus, these factors drive the growth of the parental control software market size. However, high initial cost and data privacy concerns of software is hampering the growth of the parental control software market. On the contrary, growing demand for advanced AI/ML-powered parental control software will provide major lucrative opportunities for growth of the parental control software market.

The parental control software market is segmented into Platform, Deployment Mode, Application and Region.

Segment review

The parental control software market is segmented on the basis of platform, deployment mode and application. By platform, it is segmented into android, iOS and windows. By deployment mode, it is segmented into on-premises and cloud. By application, it is segmented into residential and educational institutes. By region, it is analyzed across North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and LAMEA.

By platform, the windows segment attained the highest growth in 2021. This is attributed to the rapid expansion of digital content: the digital content available on various platforms, including websites, social media networks, and app stores, is expanding rapidly. This is providing a major impetus to the growth of the windows based parental control software. However, android segment is anticipated to register the highest growth rate in parental control software industry during the forecasted period due to the rise in a number of android based smartphones and TV.

By region, North America attained the highest growth in 2021. This is attributed to the presence of industry players with best-in-class equipment and service to offer. Moreover, rise in online learning in the U.S. is also boosting the parental control software industry growth. However, Asia-Pacific is anticipated to register highest growth rate in parental control software market forecast due to technological advancements and rise in cyber fraud among children.

Market Landscape and Trends

Growing internet addiction in the young population is a leading reason that has boosted the growth of the parental control software market. The rise in the screen time of the children has resulted in higher concerns for the parents related to kids’ physical, social and emotional health, which promotes the use of the parental control software. Moreover, the product developments and ongoing research that brought in the innovations in the market are expected to boost the growth of the parental control software market. For instance, D-link has announced the launch of its latest Wi-Fi router that enables parents to control their kids. Such features in the Wi-Fi router will provide ample opportunity for the parental control software market to grow. In addition, the affordable rates for internet access and proliferating smart devices such as smartphones, tablets, and computers have bolstered the growth of the market. Furthermore, the biggest benefit of using a parental control software is the peace of mind and inner satisfaction and experience what kid is accessing safe content and it protected from harmful cyber threats that can prove dangerous for their well-being. Therefore, these are the major market trends for parental control software market.

Top impacting factors

Growing penetration of personal device access for kids

In recent years, smartphones and tablets have gained immense popularity among consumers and have become an integral part of human lifestyle, including kids. Moreover, the affordable rates for internet access and proliferating smart devices like smartphones, tablets, and computers have bolstered the growth of the parental control software market. In addition, increasing digitalization and availability of smart devices at affordable prices have impacted the growth of the parental control software market in recent times. Furthermore, with the growing adoption of smartphone among kids, the adoption of parental control software also will be increasing in the coming years.

Rise in government regulations to standardize digital content for children's safety

Online content offers a variety of educational, social, and entertainment benefits to kids. However, there are also perceived dangers, especially with the internet content and the behavior and interaction risks associated with internet-facilitated peer-to-peer communication. In addition, the use of parental control tools enables parents to limit children's exposure to unwanted social media posts and helps in protecting children from unethical practices such as cyberbullying. Moreover, governments across countries focus on ensuring child safety regulations for digital media applications. For instance, in February 2021, the Indian Government announced a new set of regulations and guidelines to regulate digital content. In these rules and guidelines, OTT platforms must implement parental lock solutions for those above the age of 13 for the classified range.

Increase in social media usage and exposure to internet content among children

Children use social media platforms for sharing media content and social networking. These social platforms include WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat. Moreover, these social media site requires personal data for creating an online profile. Thus, this can be harmful to the children due to increasing cases of cybercrime, social media addiction, and health issues like sleep disorder and anxiety. In addition, the increasing usage of social media exposes children to too much-targeted marketing and advertising, and breaches of personal information like phone number, location, date of birth, among other things. This can affect the lives of children; hence the parental control software can be used to prevent children from this exposure. Therefore, the increasing usage of social media recognizes the need for parental control software, which helps fuel the growth of the parental control software market share.  

High initial cost and data privacy concerns of software  

The software provides cutting-edge functionality and advanced applications at a high cost. For certain parents, this price could be prohibitively expensive. Purchasing parental control software could be out of budget for a few parents. Moreover, many websites provide innovative functionality at the high expense of parental control solutions. Thus, the high initial price is a crucial limitation for adopting parental control tools. In addition, the software can be attacked with malware and is subjected to data breaches. This software can contain an infection or pose other threats to phone or computer devices, resulting in significant data loss. Hence, these factors are expected to hinder the market growth over the forecast period.

Cyber security issues and lack of awareness

Due to the COVID-19, cybercrime and cybersecurity issues have increased by 600%. Flaws in network or software security is a weakness that hackers exploit to perform unauthorized actions within a system. Moreover, to minimize the impact of the cyber threats faced by the kids, parents are advised to use parental control software to monitor their ' 'kid's activity. This software is effective if constructed efficiently but due to weak architectures of the software, hackers tend to bypass the software's defenses, resulting in cyber-attacks, cyberbullying, and loss of personal information. Therefore, increasing cyber-threats is expected to impede parental control software market growth.

In addition, lack of proper guidance for the usage and lack of awareness among the parents is the major restraining factor that hinders the growth of the parental control software market in some countries. Especially in the urban and rural areas where parents are unaware of operating the smart devices fail to realize the importance of installing the parental control software in their child's devices.

Growing demand for advanced AI/ML-powered parental control software

Parental control solutions aim to access and control activities on digital devices and tools. Several features such as Family Link, screen time management, and program management have been introduced by parental control software or apps in the last few years, and various platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, etc. have adopted and implemented parental controls solutions to provide better and safer services. Smartphones provide access to various social media platforms, as a result, parental control solutions are much needed, as they affect not only sleep patterns but also academic performance. Moreover, the adoption of advanced technologies such as AI and ML helps in providing advanced monitoring features for parents to monitor the activities of children’s. All these benefits of AI and ML is providing ample growth opportunity for market growth.

Key benefits for stakeholders

• This report provides a quantitative analysis of the market segments, current trends, estimations, and dynamics of the parental control software market analysis from 2021 to 2031 to identify the prevailing parental control software market opportunities.
• Market research is offered along with information related to key drivers, restraints, and opportunities.
• Porter's five forces analysis highlights the potency of buyers and suppliers to enable stakeholders to make profit-oriented business decisions and strengthen their supplier-buyer network.
• In-depth analysis of the parental control software market segmentation assists to determine the prevailing market opportunities.
• Major countries in each region are mapped according to their revenue contribution to the global market.
• Market player positioning facilitates benchmarking and provides a clear understanding of the present position of the market players.
• The report includes the analysis of the regional as well as global parental control software market trends, key players, market segments, application areas, and market growth strategies.

 Parental Control Software Market Report Highlights