Digital age parents have twice the job!
Even before the advent of technology and its distant cousin – digitization – parenting was not one for the fainthearted. With the title “parent” came a lot of pressure, expectations, and responsibilities.
Now, with digitization the new normal, the role just got a lot more demanding and challenging, so much so that parents now have to perform traditional duties both online and off it. For example, while an average parent from previous generations would worry about saving their kids from the bad and ugly of their physical environment, today’s parent has to worry about both the physical and digital environment.
Simply put, as a parent in the digital age, you have twice the job of a parent from previous generations. For every duty you discharge offline, you have to do the same online. Looking out for your kids offline alone is simply not enough anymore. You have to help and save them from the threats they face on the internet too.
Parenting in the digital age: The viability
Despite the obvious challenges and increased pressure, parenting in the digital age is not an impossible task. And, yes, for those of you wondering: it’s still possible to be a perfect parent in the world of digitization. How you approach the role, however, is what determines the types of kids you get to raise in the end.
To that end, we’ve got some tips to help you sail the boats of parenting in the digital age.
Familiarize yourself with the apps, sites, and platforms your kids use
First and foremost, familiarize yourself with the tech, apps, and sites your kids are using.
By familiarizing yourself, we mean asking your kids or checking their phones to see what apps they have installed and then getting yourself acquainted with these apps. To be more efficient and to make up for times when they might install new apps behind your back, you should install the Spyfone app on their phones to track the apps they have installed.
Normally, most of these apps have parental control features. You can go on YouTube to learn how to activate this feature on most of the tools or apps your kids are using.
For example, search for “Instagram parental controls” if your kids use IG. This will help you control their usage of the app.
Use existing privacy settings
You should always check and activate the existing privacy settings on all your kid’s devices – phones, desktops, and tablets. Additionally, you should also check and activate privacy settings on the browsers they use too.
With the growing threats of scams, impersonations, identity theft, and cyberbullying on the internet, the last thing you want to do as a parent is to leave your child unprotected.
Monitor their online activities
Just as you monitor their activities at home, in school, and everywhere else, you should also look to keep track of what they do online. No matter how much you trust your little girl, you should always monitor the types of friends she keeps online, the sites she visits, and the sorts of apps she loves to install.
Again, this is one of the things you can do with a third-party app like Spyfone. This app will help you see the apps they’ve installed, the contacts on their phone, and also the identities of the people that own those contacts.
Make tech rules
As a parent, you wear the “mom” or “dad” tag for a reason. And one of the reasons is for you to be able to make rules and set limits. Therefore, you shouldn’t hesitate to limit your kid’s screen time and tech use. If you have the stomach for it, you can even go as far as getting your kids to sign a “tech behavior contract,” which, if they break, will result in punishments or gadget seizures. Alternatively, you can try an internet curfew, such as “no surfing of the web after 9 p.m).
Speak to them about cyber threats
Every kid loves to explore. They want to satisfy their curiosity, find out about new things, and possibly meet new people, even if they have to go online to do so. Unfortunately, you can’t just let them explore blindly. You need to speak with them from time to time about the threats they face online – about the possibilities of people impersonating, conning, bullying, and cheating them. To convince them, you can show them pictures, videos, and NewStories of people (kids like them) who have fallen victim to these threats.
Keep internet devices where you can see them
It’s easy to watch a porn video while at a friend’s place or engage in online gambling while locked in their room. But it’s hard to do any of those if the desktop is situated not from the sitting room. With your eyes hovering over them, kids know better than to engage in things that go against your core values.
To make this effective, you should try to forbid laptops, tablets, of phones in bedrooms or bathrooms.
The offline factor
As much as you want to keep tabs on your kids online, please don’t forget to look after them off it too. Parenting in the digital age is not just about tracking online activities. Instead, it’s also about monitoring where kids go and what they do when they’re away from you because digitization is present everywhere. And even though your kids might pretend not to gamble online in your presence, they may be doing it at a friend’s place.
To help take care of the offline factor, you can start to monitor your kid’s offline movement too. Again, this is something you can do with the Spyfone app.
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