Is your child using the internet safely? Have you given a thought to this ever? You’ll find most parents installing special firewalls and depending upon various monitoring apps for their PCs but ever since the kids have started using their own personal smart phones, it has become a bit difficult to maintain safety in your child’s internet usage when it is accessed through the cell phone.
Though this might be serious but you need not worry at least till the time you follow the child mobile usage safety checklist given below.
1# Time bound your child’s cell phone usage. Doesn’t your child have restricted time for playing baseball, eating out, partying around, or doing anything and everything like video games, hobbies, TV viewing? Why not the same for the cell phone usage? This will make sure that your child isn’t spending all his time over unsafe browsing. But be strict with the rule, a slight leniency can spoil the kid.
2# Make cell phone rules for your child. And if you have more than one kid tell them rules don’t differ. Talk to your child about the seriousness and stringency of the rule put forward by you. And be sure that you sound serious to the kids only then they will be following the rules with seriousness.
3# Are you fine with using smart phones? Or they look like aliens from the Mars to you? Well, if your case be the second, you got to learn how to handle it and it isn’t a difficult task. Simply go through the features of your phone, read the user manual, and do a bit of internet surfing and you’ll be a master in handling it. So, your child won’t get a chance to make a fool of you.
4# If your child is a pre–teen or even a teen, talk about the possible threats of befriending strangers online, what they must talk about while interacting with strangers like they shouldn’t be sharing personal details and how this kind of sharing can be fatal and so on.
5# Install cell phone parental control on your kid’s cell phone, this will help you track your child’s cell phone and all the activities taking place on it. You’ll have a check on every call made and received, every text message sent and received, email exchanged, etc. And will even be able to spy on the photos clicked and shared whether they are explicit or not if you bring into use some advanced software.
6# When you have the software on the phone utilize it to the fullest. Make sure to check all calls especially the one that are made or received late at night, check out the friends on contact list. And best is to restrict phone usage that will debar your child to use phone at certain times or before or after a certain time.
7# Hold a discussion at home to teach about safe phone usage and the threats like cyber bullying, pedophiles online, sexting etc. Best way to guide your child would be to give them the example of similar cases.
With proper parental monitoring for child mobile phones, you ensure best safety and security for your child.
