Protect Your Kids from Long Screen Time, Explicit Content and Give a Safe Internet Experience
A majority of kids use mobile phones as early as by the age of two and most of them use around 2 to 4 hours every day. A more alarming fact is that their screen time increases with every passing year, especially in an environment when they are engaged in less outdoor activity and take their classes online.
Restricting screen time for a child is difficult. However, parental control is a way to protect children from exposure to inappropriate content, unsuitable websites, ill-intentioned adults, situations for which they are not necessarily prepared. While nothing can replace the discussion first about the dangers of too long screen time and malicious content, there are ways to help you out.
To apply parental controls, whether your child borrows your phone or not, you must take a few necessary measures. As soon as you let him use your device, putting a code is often the first solution to secure it. You can also opt for second user profiles. Some manufacturers offer a “child mode” which will recreate a specific environment, with adapted settings (protected browsing, purchases prohibited on stores, disabled applications, with or without messaging, etc.).
Why implement parental controls?
Computers, tablets, smartphones, new technologies are now part of family life. While digital technology is a great tool for sharing and exchanging information, it should be noted that nowadays the new generation, almost born with a smartphone in hand, and spends on average more than 35 hours a week on screens.
The Internet is a wealth of information that can be interesting as well as dangerous. Excessive and uncontrolled use of the internet can have serious consequences for the personal development of a child. It is therefore essential for parents to watch over and supervise their children’s internet use so that they have the fewest possible opportunities to come across images or other content that may offend their sensitivity.
This is how some parental control platforms have emerged, offering optimal security; these protection solutions aim to support parents in their educational mission. By allowing children to browse the internet safely, parents can therefore be more relaxed. However, parents are strongly advised to watch over their children’s internet use.
Set up parental controls on the devices that kids use
With parental control, you will be able to monitor your child’s internet consumption on their smartphone and thus supervise their personal development. But then more concretely, what is it for? With parental control, it is possible to:
Support your children’s use of the Internet by accessing usage statistics.
Protect your children from the dangers of the internet by limiting or removing access to inappropriate content.
Control your children’s internet access by managing access to apps.
Manage your children’s internet consumption by setting up time limits.
With the best parental control within your family, you will be able to accompany your child in his daily use of the Internet and its many screens and ensure prevention of the dangers associated with it.
Google Family Link is one such app that can help you deploy parental control on Android devices.
Parental Control: how many other solutions work?
Most parental control platforms offer similar services to allow parents to best protect their children. The basic functionalities that are normally found in the various protection solutions are:
Choose between different types of profiles: there are generally “child” or adolescent “modes to adapt the protection to the age of the children. Some platforms offer to provide a white list only of sites accessible to children and a black list with sites for teenagers to block.
Set time slots: to control connection schedules and the time spent on screens, most parental control solutions offer parents to establish connection schedules for different users. Passing the given time limit, access is blocked.
Prohibit sensitive sites: the main purpose of parental controls is to block unwanted content that may be bad for kids. Violent and explicit sites, games or harmful sites, chats and forums, etc. will therefore not be accessible.
Limit access to content: a time limit may be set by parents so that your child or teenager can no longer access certain applications or games.
Access the history: it is possible to view all the sites visited by your child or teenager to check that the content is appropriate for their age and possibly be able to block them if necessary.
View browsing time statistics: some solutions allow you to see how much time your child or teenager spends on each application and site.
Block certain contacts: to prevent anyone from communicating with your child, some platforms offer parents to block the numbers of certain people so that neither the child nor the unwanted number can contact each other.
In today’s digital world when every child in a household has a smart device, parental control is a must to keep your children safe in good faith.
