Especially in this digital age, parenting has become a very difficult task. Let’s talk about the mistakes parents make in their kids’ online safety.
Parenting is not all about fulfilling the basic needs and physical support of kids. Kids need emotional and technical support from their parents. Kids need a friendly mentor to guide them.
A parent should be more interactive with online safety measures. But a parent fails to give their time to their kids. So, children become victims of cyber-related threats, harassment, and bullying. The proper guidance to use the online medium is most.
What happens when parents let their kids into the online world?
The online world for kids is like a playground with friends and strangers. It is dangerous and can destroy their life. Kids can get addicted to social media and gaming applications. That leads their real-life to complication and disturbance. Also, can make them victims of cyberbullying, sexual harassment, and assaults.
Due to online addiction. Kids may suffer from different mental and physical health issues. Such as depression, eye strain, headache, impulsiveness, anxiety, and others.
The top 5 mistakes parents make in their kids’ online safety are as follow:
1. Lack of consultation about the online world:
Parents lack consultation about the online world with their kids. This topic is especially negligible in each family talk. They think it’s important to neglect it. But it is one of the major issues to discuss with kids.
How do they use the internet? Why do they use the internet? And did they find any inappropriate things on the internet or not?
Solution:
Parents should give proper guidance. Table talk about the online world helps to reveal a lot about your child’s activity.
Showing interest and concern in their online activities can sometimes. Warn them if they are doing wrong. It can help them share though if they found some unusual but hesitate to speak to you.
2. Poor Monitoring of kid’s social media apps and games
Not paying attention to your kid’s social media apps and games is one of the common mistakes that parents make. You should know what stuff your kids share, post, comment on social media? And what types of games they are playing.
Some kids might share inappropriate photos, stories, and comments. That will make them victims of trolls and bullying.
Solution:
Monitoring kids’ social media handles and gaming applications. Educating them about their digital footprint. Awareness about digital footprints and how they can affect individuals is important.
3. Limit the screen time but did not care about their online activities
Limiting the screen time of your kids does not mean your kids are safe. It needs a second to browse them what they want. The kids might find some inappropriate advertisements, pop up and links. That contains malware, virus, pornographic things.
Solution:
Instead of limiting time be friendly with the kids and look after their activities. Guide them to ignore the advertisement and pop-ups. If the kids found something fishy tell them to concern with you.
4. Lack of firewall:
A firewall is something that can protect you from internet threats. Not having updated security systems can lead to identity theft and virus attacks.
Phishing and pharming are the main problems face by kids while using the internet. Receiving spam and unwanted messages can disturb your child mentally.
Solution:
Always keep the smartphones, network systems, pc and laptops updated to new technology. Enable the firewall of your internet and browsers. Helps to keep your kids safe from phishing and pharming.
5. A poor privacy setting of browsers and other application
Due to the poor privacy setting kids get access to mature content. Most of the browsers, websites, social networking apps, and even gaming app have got privacy settings. That has the feature to restrict mature and 18+ adult content.
Solution:
Set up age restriction mode on the systems, applications, and browsers. It helps kids to use the internet in a positive and safe manner.
Online safety tips parents should share with their kids:
- Turn on the firewall and antivirus protection settings on smartphones, pc, and laptops.
- If they are using emails, social media. Tell them to keep their passwords secret from friends, strangers. But let you know their password.
- Warn them not to share personal details. Like the name, age, home location, school, contact details, accounts passwords. And confidential bank information, and any other government identification like Social Security Number.
- Check the privacy setting of browsers, social media, applications, and websites of your kid’s devices.
- Always be their internet mentor and aware of them. Not to use free, open, and untrusted wi-fi. In shopping malls, railways, metro stations, bus stations, parks, and other public spaces.
Conclusion:
The Internet offers kids to learn new things, watch videos, play games, make new friends, and explore many more. Internet is a pool of knowledge, resources, entertainment but can be risky if we didn’t use it in a safe manner. We need to protect ourselves and our kids by using safety measures.
