Take These Steps for Children Internet Safety Using Secureteen

Children internet safety has become a big concern for parents, especially with rising social media. When kids turn into teens, they tend to explore everything they encounter. They want to enjoy their lives, be independent, connect with people and know more about the world. With this curiosity, the internet plays a role of a dreamland for them.

They get to know stuff, explore entertainment sources, connect with people, and most of the above, they get this feeling that the internet world understands them better than their parents. At this age when the kids start using the internet unsupervised, it can make them face many problems. That’s why parents seem to be so much concerned about internet safety for their teens.

Teens are on the verge of facing three sorts of risks on the internet: conduct, contact, and content risks. All these risks include exposure to explicit content like porn, connecting to strangers that might be online predators, facing or being a part of cyberbullying, and many other risks. These things negatively affect your kids’ mental growth.  

Imagine that you have 15-years, old daughter. Perhaps you do. Now she has a mobile phone in her hands, do you know what she is doing? Is there a possibility that she is talking to someone she shouldn’t be? Or she is watching something that she shouldn’t? Well, what can you do? You can only be stressed out by wondering what she could be doing?

In this article published on HuffPost, a study has been shared which showed that 70% of the teens report that they are well aware of the ways they can use to hide online stuff from their parents and around 80% of the parents report that they don’t know how to find out what their kids are up to. This situation is frightening.

Although some believe that using parental control app is like spying on the kids, this is an essential part of “digital parenting”. And, this should be a key practice for parents to keep their children safe online. There are multiple risks out there waiting for your children, and if you do nothing but pretend to be good parents, this won’t do any good to you.

Why Should Parents Be Concern About Children's Internet Safety?

With the risks and the possible outcomes of leaving your children alone with the internet mentioned above, there are many other things that your kid can encounter once he/she starts using the internet. We will look into a few of those:

• Cyberbullying: Researches have found out that almost 34% of the kids aged between 12-17 have been bullied at some time in their lives, and 11.5% have bullied the others online. It is a threatening, mean-spirited, and aggressive activity that can serious emotional damage to the victim. Girls are more likely the victims of this act.
• Exposure to inappropriate content: Inappropriate content is one of the major concerns of the parents as it is easy to encounter one these days. Everything from hateful speech to sexual images and violent videos has negative and harmful effects on the teens. Over 55% of the teens have been exposed to violent content, and 60% have seen sexually explicit images or videos.
• Online Predators: Adults who use the internet to entice children for abusive and sexual exploitation are known as online predators. There are a lot of them in online forums, groups, and almost on every platform.

The lists of the risks and harmful content never ends. But not to worry, you can take some necessary steps to handle this wisely.

How Can Parents Protect Their Teens from Internet Risks?

This era requires parents to focus on the kids’ mental health, seek ways to improve it so that they can cope with the world they are living in. Parents need to understand that they don’t need to be authoritative always. Most parents compare their youth with that of the kids. Well, they need to rethink about the scenarios of their youth.

Once you have understood that you need to treat your kids differently, following are the things you can do:

·Understand all the Risks Completely

Know what cyberbullying is and how it can affect your kid. Do a little research of your own and know how you can easily spot a bully. Explain to your kids that these bullies act friendly at first, but they will show their real faces afterward. Encourage them to share with you whenever they feel something is not right.

·Open Communication is the Key

Have them discuss everything with you. Talk about what the internet is and how it is evolving these days. The key is to communicate not advice. You don’t need to make them feel the big generation gap. Learn from them and talk about online stuff.

·Set Some Boundaries

Make some basic rules about the use of the internet. From screen time to the time limit of being online on social media platforms, everything should have rules. Let them know that you will be talking to them and checking them regularly. Don’t make them feel suffocated and discuss these rules with them politely.

·Be Prepared for the Worse

You might have done everything there is to protect your kid, but there are high chances that they are going to face these risks anyway. Prepare yourself beforehand for such situations. Control your panic mode and don’t scold the kids. What you need is a proper and logical understanding of the situation.

·Using SecureTeen

Using parental control apps like SecureTeen will help you monitor your kids’ social media activities in a better way. You can apply your rules in a better way with this. Don’t consider it spying, instead, it is a part of your parenting. And if it is a must, the kids can also know that you are about to monitor them for their good.

With these acts, you can protect your kid from possible online dangers. Along with this, you can also make them mature enough to deal with these things on their own.