The widespread adoption of mobile phones and the internet has made digital parenting crucial. Parents are responsible to educate their kids about the accurate use of digital technologies. For this they need to stay updated about what is good and what is bad about the technologies, gadgets,software and apps being introduced with every passing day.
The digital world holds several potential dangers for teenagers and tweens. From cyber bullying, online child predation and scamming to sexting and pornography, our children are likely to expose to innumerable dangers. The more time they spend using cell phones and social media, the more likely the yare to experience online threats. This article discusses how parents can protect their children from the menaces of digital technologies with digital parenting.
Have Frequent Discussions with Kids
Communication plays an important role in a relationship. It helps you strengthen your relationship with your kids. Have frequent discussions with your children about their everyday routines, online experiences regarding cellphones, social media and the internet. The more you discuss things, the more you can educate your kids about these technologies. You may ask open-ended questions like what they know about bullies or predators and what can be the best way to deal with them. Ask them about their new favorite apps and games so you can give them a try to look for the pros and cons. However, make sure to make this conversation session interesting for kids and not annoying.
Set Parental Controls
The parental controls enable parents to monitor and manage the use of applications, software and search engines. For example, Google offer parental controls to allow parents to manage the internet experience of their children. With these controls, parents can restrict their kids’ access to age-in appropriate content.
There are also parental control apps and software to monitor and manage the cell phone and computer use of children. These digital parenting applications enable parents to track the online and offline activities of their teens and tweens without getting access to their devices. Once you get the targeted devices installed with monitoring software, you can track and control it via online portal of that software.
Stay Updated about Technology
It cannot be denied that today’s kids are more tech savvy than their parents. This is because the use of newly launched apps, games and mobile phones excites our post-millennial generation. To lead this generation and protect them from the potential dangers of the internet and digital technologies, it is crucial to stay updated about these technologies. You must know what is your kid’s new favorite game or app and whether he/she should use this or not. You can learn about these things from the internet. Just put your query to the search engine and you will have the most appropriate answers for your questions.
Be Social With Kids
Social media plays a significant role in kids’ lives. While it connects them with the world and boost their self-confidence, it can also put a negative influence on their physical, mental and psychological health. The kids with social media obsession are likely to experience online harassments.
Parents are responsible to supervise social media activities of their children to protect them from potential dangers of social media platforms. A way to track social media activities of kids is to follow their social media profiles. Ask them to add you in their friends-list. However, the tech-savvy generation knows many tricks to deceive their parents and conceal their risky online activities.
In this situation, you can take help of social media monitoring app to secretly and remotely track every single online activity of your kids. You can track popular social media apps including Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Line, Viber, Vine, Tinder, Tumblr, WhatsApp,Skype, Telegram and many other social and instant messengers.
Set Digital Rules
The digital rules can help your kids to learn use mobile phones and the internet in a responsible and secure way. For example, you can restrict kids from bringing cell phones to dining table or set time limits to minimize use of these technologies. You can take ideas from the internet to make most effective digital rules regarding use of cell phones, computer,social media and the internet. Make sure your kids follow these rules both in side and outside home. You can reward your kids on obeying these rules or take their privileges back if they fail to follow these instructions.
Hope this article would be helpful in learning how you can do digital parenting to protect your children from the potential dangers of the digital world.
