Associate Professor Nguyen Duc Minh, co-founder of FamilyMate: Connecting parents with children in the digital environment

“Friend” of every family

Recent studies show that children aged 5-15 spend more than 90 minutes a day on short video platforms such as TikTok or YouTube Shorts. These 15-60 second content is not simply entertainment, but a “digital opium” that stimulates children's brains to release dopamine, thereby making them easily addicted to social networks, easily losing control and gradually distancing themselves from the real world .

Meanwhile, on the parents' side, busy life sometimes makes them not spend enough time with their children. Therefore, the gap between parents and children is also increasingly widening.

From that reality, the FamilyMate founding team wanted to create an application with the mission of supporting parents to effectively connect with their children, so that parents can truly become companions in their children's development.

FamilyMate started out as a tool to help parents control their children's screen time, but not in a harsh way. Specifically, FamilyMate focuses on setting soft boundaries using Guardian AI technology – where artificial intelligence acts as a “protector” in the family.

The app aims to reach 10,000 users by the end of this year, while also raising pre-seed funding from strategic investors.

Unlike traditional control apps that only rigidly limit time, FamilyMate's Guardian AI uses machine learning algorithms to identify children's device usage habits and emotional tendencies and issue warnings to parents or suggest appropriate adjustments.

For example, when the time limit is about to expire, FamilyMate will automatically notify your child 5 minutes in advance. This is enough time for your child to finish a video they are watching, save their game progress, help them mentally prepare and not feel the sudden interruption that causes discomfort.

Or when the time is up, the app doesn't lock the device rigidly. Kids have the option to send a request to their parents for an extra 15 or 30 minutes, along with a specific reason. This mechanism turns the use of extra time into a dialogue, where the parent has the final say. In the process, kids also learn how to express their opinions, increase their self-awareness and self-discipline.

Mr. Minh believes that the biggest problem today is not that children use the Internet too much, but that parents cannot set healthy boundaries with their children and do not know where to start communicating with their children in the digital age.

Starting out as aneducator , with decades of experience, Mr. Minh has witnessed many students falling into a state of disorientation, partly due to a broken connection with their parents. “Some students choose the wrong major, then get frustrated, drop out of school, play games, and then slide down the drain… I believe that if parents understand their children better and connect with them earlier, many tragedies can be prevented,” Mr. Minh shared.

Ambition to go global

FamilyMate was conceived in October 2024 and officially launched in May 2025, currently has 5,000 users with many positive responses. However, according to Mr. Minh, Vietnam is just the starting point of a larger journey. “We have set the goal of going global,” Mr. Minh said.

According to statistics from MarketsandMarkets, the global parental control software market alone was valued at around $2.2 billion in 2023 and is expected to exceed $4 billion by 2028, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of around 12%. This is one of the most potential markets in the edtech and home technology sectors.

Not only stopping at control, many large companies are investing heavily in solutions to accompany children in cyberspace, from artificial intelligence (AI), emotional technology to integrating with Internet of Things (IoT) devices in the home. With the advantage of being a “made in Vietnam” product and having high flexibility, the founding team believes that FamilyMate can adapt to each local market, easily adjusting to customer behavior and culture.

However, the founding team chose a “slow but steady” strategy, not “launching” all at once, but will gradually conquer each market, first of all the North American market in the second half of 2025. “FamilyMate is an AI application product in a psychological field. AI cannot learn in general for all markets. It takes time to retrain to understand local user behavior and culture,” Mr. Minh explained.

Unlike many software products that are offered for free, FamilyMate is currently priced at VND799,000/year. According to Mr. Minh, this is not for profit, but because of a common mentality: "What is free is often not appreciated." He has witnessed many English applications installed for children, but neglected because parents do not really guide and support their children. "We want users to be serious about educating their children and this fee is a way to establish a commitment," said a representative of Family Mate.

The app aims to reach 10,000 users by the end of this year, while also raising pre-seed funding from strategic investors.

In the future, FamilyMate will not only stop at controlling the time children spend on electronic devices. The application aims to expand to many features, such as AI counseling for parents and children, AI learning support, AI behavior analysis to give appropriate suggestions for career orientation...

Although affirming that they will do their best, the FamilyMate representative said that the effectiveness of the application depends on each family and each parent. “Technology is only for providing information. Parents should not expect that technology will solve all problems, especially psychological problems. No application can replace parents in the development journey of each child,” said Mr. Bright.

Source: https://baodautu.vn/pgs-nguyen-duc-minh-dong-sang-lap-familymate-ket-noi-cha-me-voi-con-cai-tren-moi-truong-so-d312877.html