Family Members Archives

The sickening tragedy in Boston has made the MamaBear app team pause and reflect on how thankful we are to go home every day to our families. It also makes us consider how vital it is for us to know where our family members are when disaster strikes. Disasters and emergency situations can evolve rapidly. When they do, standard communications simply aren’t good enough when we desperately need to check on the well-being of our loved ones.

Here are some technology pointers from a recent Wired article as well as our top tips to help communicate faster and easier when trying to locate family or share your location with family during an emergency situation:

1. Stay off the cell phone.

While calling is the obvious choice for many parents, rely on other types of communication during an emergency. The fact is calling doesn’t usually do very much good in most disaster situations. First responders need an open phone line into danger zones, and cellular service may be blacked out entirely due to interference. Calling over and over again can actively slow down rescue or relief efforts, while causing unnecessary stress as we wait.

Try to rely on a data connection and reach out through social, email or text if at all possible. Texting is almost always a better option than calling as it uses less data and can be far faster.

*But, it’s also important we remember a phone number, and teach our kids a phone number – don’t rely on saved contacts. Should you or your family get to a landline, know which number to dial by memory.

2. Conserve your battery.

Make sure you close out unnecessary apps running in the background – games, multiple social or location apps will use battery life. Only run necessary apps when needed – texting or locator apps. Mulitple apps running in the background will undoubtedly eat up battery life.
If you’re not firmly connected to a WiFi signal and your phone is constantly scanning for connection, turn off WiFi – reducing the constant scanning can help conserve.
You can also change some device settings – lower the brightness of your screen and reduce time lengths of screen lock.
Have a back-up. Use or carry a battery case and try to bring a charging cord with you as much as possible should you have access to outlets.

3. Apps are Your Friend in a Disaster.

Apps sometimes use entirely different communications protocols than standard digital options. It can be vital to teach our kids to use social media apps, and run locator apps like MamaBear during a disaster. Social media sites are monitored by thousands of users in disaster situations, and reaching out through social media apps is continuing to prove effective in a huge range of emergency and disaster situations. The MamaBear family monitoring app provides one touch options to check in with parents quickly and parents can share their location quickly with their children as well.

The MamaBear App works hard to protect our children and honor families everyday and our sense of urgency and importance becomes greater in emergency situations. Have a discussion with your family about what to do in an emergency situation and have a plan. Stay Safe.

MamaBear installs easily and parents can begin monitoring a child’s location, driving speed and social media activity immediately. Here is a step-by-step guide to getting started with the MamaBear app for iPhone and Android.

1. Download the App on the primary parent’s phone

The MamaBear child monitoring app is available in the Google Play Store and Apple App Store. Just search for MamaBear and click install. The Android or iOS web enabled smartphone or device will do the rest.

2. Sign Up

Once the app is downloaded on the parent’s phone, click on the icon from your home screen to open the app and then click “Sign Up” to create an account and add your family members.
*Note: add the phone number and/or e-mail address you want to monitor as the child. Added guardians will have the same parental view as the main account holder. The main account holder and guardians will only be able to view children’s location and alerts, not each others.

3. Download the MamaBear App on the child’s phone

Download MamaBear from google play or the iTunes App Store on your child’s phone. Select Log In. DO NOT select sign up. Log In with your child’s phone number and your password. The child will see three safety features on their view of the MamaBear App – Check In, Come Get Me, Emergency buttons for a discreet way of getting in touch with you.

4. Ensure the MamaBear App stays put

If your child closes MamaBear out of memory or deletes the app on their phone, you won’t receive location points. You will receive a notification if this happens and a check-in request button will appear when you tap your child’s icon if we haven’t received a location point from their phone in a while.

Here’s a video to help set up parental restrictions on iphone to prevent deleting apps: Click Here To Watch

You can monitor Facebook and Instagram activity without your child logging in to the app. You’ll simply need their log in and password for each social site.

5. Set Up location, driving and social media alerts

On the parent’s phone MamaBear version, click on “Settings” (it’s the button that looks like a gear on the top right). Select your child under the “Family” tab. You will see the easy-to-follow options for setting up alerts for location, social media driving. Location alerts include a school alert, a safe places alert or a restricted places alert. Monitor Facebook and Instagram activity including restricted words alerts. Lastly set the driving sped you’d like to be alerted to if your child drives or rides over. Once opened, each of these alerts menu options has more in depth options for parents to use.

6. Choose alert delivery type

Once the alerts are set up, it is just a matter of choosing your notification preference. In the “Settings” menu simply click “Edit Profile.” Scroll down to “Alert Type” to choose your preferred notification. Email alerts are delivered via email while Push based notification delivers alerts directly to the phone’s notification center. Push notification is the default alert types for MamaBear.

With these easy steps, parents are prepared with information and insight using the MamaBear child monitoring app. If you ever have any questions about using MamaBear, don’t hesitate to email us at info@localhost.

Tag: Family Members

Using New Technology to Contact Loved Ones in a Disaster or Emergency Situation