Authors: Hitanshu Bodana, Ronak Singh, Krish Patel
Abstract: The increasing immersion of children in digital ecosystems—mobile applications, virtual environments, and gamified digital spaces—has amplified concerns around excessive screen time, addictive applications, and exposure to harmful content. Traditional parental control systems rely on rigid blocking mechanisms, often creating resistance among children and lacking nuanced, interactive behaviour regulation. This paper presents a Parental Control Time Lock App, a collaborative digital parenting framework integrating real-time monitoring, application-level time budgeting, and OTP-based conditional unlocking. Developed using Kotlin (Android) and a Spring Boot backend, the system enforces usage limits and enables parents to remotely authorize temporary access by providing a secure one-time password. The application incorporates behavioural design elements to promote healthy usage rather than punitive restriction. Testing conducted across 20 families demonstrated a 32% reduction in unregulated screen time and high parental satisfaction. The study contributes to the domains of digital wellbeing, child safety, and human–computer interaction by proposing a hybrid control model that balances autonomy, security, and trust.
