Why Are Parental Controls Necessary on Digital Devices?

We are in an age where children, including toddlers use digital gadgets in their daily life. From playing games, to watching videos to texting, most children get introduced to tablets and smart phones.

While it is absolutely necessary to delay the start of using mobile phones by young children for obvious reasons, it is also necessary that a parent knows and is aware of what are all things, their child does over the Internet irrespective of their age.

Few Points for Parents to Follow:

Reduce usage of mobiles phones as much as possible.
Make an impression that the devices are used by parents for a purpose and not for time pass.
Educate how harmful is the digital addiction at a very young age.
Put them into a routine which has a very less screen time.
Don’t ever habituate a child to have food, watching mobile or TV.

Do Parents Undermine Trust By Installing Parental Controls?

Frankly, the answer depends on how as a parent, you are able to convince your child on this. When a child takes offense on parental controls, a parent should sit and talk with him at length about why it is needed. There is no way a parent’s loving and calm discussion fails with their child.

A funny irony is that we will be in a pool when we realize that the child works to find creative solutions to break the parental controls and it is that creative problem solving is what we want to see in our children.

To make it easy for oneself as a parent, teaching the child about digital habits right from when he starts using the gadgets could help a great deal.

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Why Do You Need Parental Controls?

Inappropriate content

Anything can pop up from the internet while being online. Nasty porn ads, or links that have harmful, violence and/or harassment content show up on the screen from nowhere.

Options such as Google Safe Search, help filter content which is not appropriate for kids. Parental controls help to see what content their children see or find, thus parental controls can help parents educate their children with the type of content children find.

Monitor Topics Searched

Children grow coming to know about a lot of different things – good and bad – from parents, family, friends, etc and become curious to know further and might search on those topics. Having control of his devices can help parents know what he searches on the Internet and guide him on the right and wrong.

Controlled access to options in games

Some online games incorporate chatting and buying a lot of stuff through real money. A child may be tempted to buy all the new stuff or become too enthusiastic or eager to connect online with other players of the game, having parental Controls can help control what children buy and who they talk to.

Track Child’s location

GPS tracking can help your whole family to track each other and not get lost or if he/she gets lost they can be easily found.

Backup Files

Your kid might accidentally delete his/her files, in this case Parental Controls can help backup files before they got deleted, so the child will not miss an important file/video

Digital Etiquette and Cyber Habits

Having parental controls helps see how your kids interact with someone, how much information they disclose and gives you an idea about what you need to teach them about digital etiquette and who to talk to or not talk to.

Cyber bullying is another common thing over the Internet. Teach them to handle such things should not be entertained. Also, let them know there are cybercrime laws that help victims of such bullying and harassing.

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Monitor who they interact with

Sometimes cyber criminals, cyberbullies and predators, might use abusive language and talk harshly with the child or ask the unaware child for personal information, putting themselves and others at risk. Parental Controls helps see who and what they talk to and automatically censor hateful speech.

Regulate Screen Time

Games are addictive, so do chatting and video watching. Movies too. Children might even wake up late night to do any of these, causing a lot of problems both physically and mentally.

Having parental controls installed can help controlling the screen time of the children. There cannot be a ‘No Screen Time’ in this digital age, but regulated screen time is a must, especially for children.

All in all, every parent should guide, help and make their child understand the merits and demerits of the virtual world, how far it can have an impact on anyone’s physical and mental health.