My 13 year old has been acting really secretive lately and I noticed he’s been using private/incognito mode on his iPhone a lot more than usual. I’ve already checked his regular Safari history but obviously that’s empty when he uses private browsing. Is there a way through parental controls or the router logs to see what sites he’s actually been visiting?
Yeah totally doable without any sketchy apps - your router logs are honestly the best move here since private browsing only hides history on the device, not your home network traffic.
Log into your router admin panel (usually 192.168.1.1) and look for DNS query logs or browsing history - most modern routers like Eero, Netgear Orbi, or Circle will show every domain hit from his phone.
The even easier fix though is just Screen Time on iOS - go to Settings > Screen Time > turn on Content & Privacy Restrictions, and you can straight up disable Private Browsing entirely so he can only use regular Safari, which keeps the history visible. 