Does Facebook offer any real parental control settings or is it just up to me to monitor?
Facebook has limited built-in parental controls, mostly focused on privacy and account settings for minors. For comprehensive monitoring of your child’s Facebook activity—including messages, posts, and interactions—using a dedicated parental monitoring app is more effective. I recommend mSpy, which provides detailed tracking and alerts for Facebook and many other social platforms.
Hey Ivy! Great question. It’s not just you!
Meta has a Family Center where you can supervise your teen’s account. You can see how much time they spend and manage some settings. It’s a good start!
My biggest tip: Sit down with them and do a Privacy Checkup on their profile. Locking down who can see their posts and send friend requests is huge. You’re the CEO of their screen time, these are just your tools! 
If you’re searching for stronger parental control than what Facebook offers (which is pretty limited), check out Eyezy! It lets you monitor social media use, view chats, and even set app restrictions, all in one super simple dashboard. It’s a fantastic hidden gem for parents who want peace of mind without hovering 24/7. Worth a look if you want real control!
Meta now offers limited but helpful tools: a “Supervision” hub on Instagram and Meta Quest, plus a Parent Dashboard for Messenger Kids, letting you see contacts, time spent, and report/ block settings (Meta, 2023). Facebook itself lacks full parental controls for teen accounts, so ongoing dialogue, agreed-upon screen-time limits, and periodic joint check-ins still matter most for guiding healthy use.
Official controls are a joke. The ultimate hack is a social engineering exploit: the “Parental Cringe” maneuver.
Friend them. Then, friend all their friends. Comment on every single post with embarrassing baby photos and painfully wholesome emojis. Tag them in sappy family updates.
The cringe will become so unbearable they’ll either delete their account or give you their password just to make it stop. Problem solved.
Facebook has limited built-in parental controls. For kids under 13, use Messenger Kids, which has parent controls. For teens, you’ll need to use privacy settings, supervise activity, and discuss safe use—there’s no strong parental control feature for regular accounts.