Make an informed decision by learning what to look for in a parental monitoring app, so you can be a good digital parent.
Parents used to punish us and ask us, “Where have you been all day?” a few decades ago. and our father vowed that it was in a playground.
Who knew that in the near future, parents would force their kids to go to playgrounds? Now, young teenagers are willing to use tech gadgets such as smartphones, tablets, iPads, and many other devices.
The dizzying world of social media networking pierces the blood of the young generation, and at the same time, parents are worried and coping with the negatives of social media, such as cyberbullying, sexual abuse online, racism, stalkers, and possible health hazards.
The extreme of everything always went wrong, so according to the National Crime Prevention Council reports, almost 43% of young teenagers were the victims of online bullying last year, but few cases were reported to their parents.
However, young kids and teens are dramatically more likely to use smartphones for such things as texting, messaging, internet activities, instant messaging applications, and many others.
According to a PEW survey, almost 23% of the young teenagers aged 12–17 admitted that they have smartphone devices; all of them use their phones for texting, and 18 percent claimed that they send 200 text messages in a single day.
So, parents should be aware of the fact that the use of a cell phone and the use of social media have some serious consequences.
How Do You Choose the Right Parental Monitoring Apps?
The best way to keep a watchful eye on kid’s activities, such as text messages, internet browsing, and emails, seems like a very hectic job for busy parents. But there are plenty of monitoring and tracking tools in order to implement some particular ground rules that would be useful for protecting kids.
Talk to your kids and inform them that each and every single activity is being watched. Then parents can use software. The contemporary world is full of technology, which is very handy for worried parents.
The question is how the parents go about it, what sort of service they utilize, and what concerns they would address.
The answer is that they can track their kids in case of emergency; the issue can be solved through the services of geo-location, GPS tracking, and geofencing.
The monitoring services provided by the software enable parents to keep predators, bullies, and stalkers at bay.
When is monitoring useful?
“Privacy ends where safety begins.” The element of monitoring is necessary at the point where parents feel that it is too much now. There is a lot of contradiction in monitoring, as Parry Aftab said.
Parry is a lawyer who specializes in cyberbullying and harassment. She is also the author of the book “A Parent’s Guide to the Internet.”
Monitoring kids is not a hectic thing compared to tracking the kids where they are and who are their friends, she further added.
So protecting kids for the sake of their wellbeing is called parenting, she added. The element of parenting permits parents to monitor all their kid’s online activities, set some ground rules, and have discussions with them regarding online safety.
Parry further stated that there are a lot of more concerning things, such as violent crimes and kidnapping, sexting, getting ransoms, identity theft, and credentials theft, which are very serious issues for kids.
#1. No digital phone for underage youngsters
Parents should think about and realize why they purchase smartphones for their young kids. I don’t think it is a good thing to have a smartphone in a young kid’s hands. Parents should buy safe phones or feature phones for their kids that do not have web browsing attributes.
Safe phone and features Phones are much less expensive than smartphones; parents should not provide smartphones until their kids understand the do’s and don’ts. With the feature of a safe phone in a kid’s hands, parents will not have any insecurity that can harm their kids by any means.
#2. The Carriers
There are also some carriers that usually offer location tracking, also known as geo-tracking or geo-fencing, as well as the element of monitoring along with security features. These carriers allow parents to monitor the location and also empower parents to lock the child’s phone device.
Parents can use these carriers to track their kid’s locations at predetermined times, such as at school in the morning and at night.
Generally, parents can use account records to view the contacts on which their kids text and call. The problem lies when these carriers protect privacy and parents cannot view the messages of instant messaging apps such as Facebook, Line, Tinder, WhatsApp, and others.
#3. Parental Monitoring Apps
There are as many parental control and monitoring apps available as there are parents who are insecure about the protection of their kids. There are plenty of options, but the setup can be unimaginably complicated.
Third-party monitoring apps are an option when parents realize that it is too much now and that saving kids from evil’s online world is necessary.
Opting for a good and perfect monitoring app is the most crucial and tough thing to do. Parents should first analyze and address the core issues that they actually want to monitor.
After addressing the issues, they should visit the experts to get some opinions and then make the choice of having a monitoring app that has all the solutions to possible online problems.
Parents should get a monitoring app that can monitor text messages, conversations, voice calls, all instant messaging applications, GPS location tracking, internet browsing, emails, key loggers, and multimedia file activities of their young kids and teens single-handedly.
Conclusion:
Parents can use monitoring apps when they come to the point where their kids are addicted to the online world and there is a dire need to protect them. The monitoring applications were created for the well-being of the young children and to save them from possible online dangers.