Covid-19: A guide to parental safety

Covid-19 may have brought people’s lives to a standstill and forced them to stay at home for a more extended period, but what resulted also was that children did also get more digital exposure in their free time.

Now the schools are going online; almost every child owns an electronic device for itself. Now the challenge here for parents has been to keep an eye on their kid’s online activity, and there are ways of doing so.

COVID-19: Mindful parental control 

There are plenty of good things on the internet to access for our good. Still, when one gets access to awful stuff, it is a real challenge, especially to parents, when the users have increased for multi-folds, and the fear of kids getting exposed to unwanted things is there and harmful effects on the brain.

Let’s understand how parents can have control over their kid’s activities. The parental control can be done on all devices, i.e., Android, IOS, etc. To enable it on Android devices, download Google Family Link, using which parents can track their online activity, screen time, social media activity, etc.

You can also refer to this article here (https://techyhost.com/parental-control-apps/) to find more information. One can also monitor their screen time if the mobile has a feature introduced by Google called Digital wellbeing.

When it comes to IOS devices, Apple’s screen time feature can be used to track the screen time, things they can download, and time spent on apps & games.

Parental Control Features

Track Location:

One of the most useful and best features is location tracking. When parental controls are put in place for kids, parents get to see the device’s location.

This helps them have an eye on children’s activity and their whereabouts. This feature’s popularity is also among people who can track their elderly at home when they are out.

Block Websites:

Another great feature is blocking certain websites. Parents have the authority to block specific websites on their child’s mobile so that they can’t access them intentionally or unintentionally. This saves the child from seeing any harmful content online, which is not suitable for them.

Monitor Phone:

Parental controls help monitor the Childs activity on their device, such as the apps they use, text messages, screen time, etc. Specific devices come with the feature of putting a limit on these things. Therefore, this feature is a great one from the parents’ perspective. One can also disable specific options in an app like Facebook; a parent can make sure the child texts only to friends and not strangers.

Managing Multiple Devices:

Parents have the option to manage various devices with parental control features. This is helpful where kids have access to numerous devices, and there is more than one kid at home. The features mentioned above can also be activated for all the gadgets and kept track of.

Use Of Inbuilt App Controls:

With the worry of online over usage and the harms, it is causing people’s minds. In general, several companies have introduced digital well-being features that allow users to set a reminder on their usage and enable them to take a break.

Apps like Instagram, Youtube, and TikTok have introduced this feature, which reminds users of their usage time and take a break. Parents can set time limits on their kid’s devices and have them reduce their usage. This feature is also beneficial to adults who also tend to use more of these apps.

There are few cons to having parental controls for the kids, which aren’t harmful. Specific devices do not allow having control over a few apps and the activity related to them.

Say, for example, if a parent wishes to Restrict the kid from following anyone on Instagram, it Is not possible owing to the company’s privacy policy, which does not allow external control.

Instead, the parent can keep an eye on the activity directly on the kids’ device. Another issue that parents may face is kids are aware of the technology they use, and it won’t take much time for them to figure out what they are missing, and they would be smart enough to undo parental controls to an extent. Also, some features like incognito browsing and VPN do not help the cause of parents.

All in all, parental controls are a must in these ever-evolving tech times and the exposure to more and more malicious and spammy websites, apps, and addictive social media algorithms. Parents are supposed to learn and know more about them and have them put in place for their child’s wellbeing.

It has to be kept in mind that the child is not supposed to feel inadequate about his choices and curbed its full freedom.

They are supposed to be educated about the possible threats online and make them know of the internet’s acceptable uses using it the right way, making the most of the internet, and using it for the proper purposes.

Author Bio

Ezio Montoya can usually be found playing the guitar, and mostly headbanging to Green Day music. Writing a book was always on his bucket list, and soon, it will become a reality. When not absorbed in the latest track by Billie Joe Armstrong, Ezio loves cooking, cooks very badly, enjoys riding his Rodeo around town, and otherwise spends far too much time at the computer. He lives in the States, with his sister and a cute little squirrel named Alvin.

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