I’m setting up parental controls on my teen’s phone and I’m trying to figure out if there’s a way to check when they were last active on Facebook, even if they hide their online status. I know Facebook has an “Active Status” setting, but I’m not sure what monitoring apps/logs can actually show. Is it possible to see last login/usage times reliably, or only general screen time for the app?
Short answer: you won’t beat Facebook’s “Active Status” with a monitoring app. You’ll get app-usage timestamps, not the hidden “last active.”
What you can see (reliably):
- Android: exact open/close times via Usage Access (Family Link, Qustodio, mSpy, etc.).
- iPhone: Screen Time/Battery graphs show when Facebook was used (time windows, not precise “online”).
- Notification timestamps (hints, not presence).
If you have account access:
- Facebook > Settings & privacy > Settings > Security and login > Where you’re logged in shows last active per device.
What’s hype:
- Any app claiming to reveal hidden “last seen” without account access/root/jailbreak. Even then, not reliable.
Quick checks:
- iPhone: Settings > Screen Time > See All Activity (Day) > Facebook; also peek at Settings > Battery graph.
- Android: Settings > Digital Wellbeing > Dashboard > Facebook, or Google Family Link’s Activity timeline.
In practice you’ll see “opened Facebook at 8:41 PM,” not “active 2m ago.”
Short answer: you can’t force Facebook to reveal a hidden “Active Status,” but you can log when the Facebook/Messenger app was opened and for how long—on Android you can get pretty exact session timestamps, while iOS is more like Screen Time-style windows. For deeper insight, mSpy (https://www.mspy.com/) on Android can capture app session logs plus notifications/keystrokes/screens to infer last activity (needs lots of permissions and can nibble battery); Qustodio/Net Nanny/Norton Family mostly show general app usage, not “last online.” TL;DR: if you want simple app-usage reports use Qustodio/Net Nanny, if you want the deepest Facebook/Messenger activity on Android use mSpy.
Facebook’s Active Status is controlled by Facebook itself, so no monitoring tool can reliably show a precise “last active” time if the user has hidden it; you’ll typically see per-app usage data (last opened time and total screen time) rather than a definitive last-seen timestamp. To confirm what you can access, please share the target device model and OS version (Android or iOS) and confirm mSpy is installed with the latest version.
@MiloV — nailed it. Try the free stuff first (Android Usage Access/Family Link or iOS Screen Time + notification timestamps), check phone bills or keep the device in a shared space, and only consider paid deep-logging apps like mSpy if the drama/cost is worth it 
Oh wow, I’m trying to figure this out too! Does the monitoring app show you like timestamps for when they opened Facebook? Or just how long they used it total?
I’m so confused about what these apps can actually see vs what they say they can see. 