More than 90% of children under the age of 16 own a smartphone in the US. It is natural for parents to worry about their kids and most of them give a phone at a very young age so that they can know where they are all the time. But where the smartphone has its benefits, it has its drawbacks as well. If you are not making sure that your child is using their smartphone safely, then you are putting them into danger. In this article, I have mentioned a few tips that will help you protect your child on their smartphone and will teach them how to use it safely. Let’s take a look:
The first thing you need to do is teach the kid how to use the phone so start with the simple things that benefit them. Tell them how they can make and receive a call, how they can reply to your texts and how they can use utilities like alarm, reminders note, etc. Teaching these things that will be useful to them in day to day life will help them learn that it is a device that they need to use for good things and to be more productive.
Once you have given the phone to the child, he or she will not just be texting you, but they will be texting their friends as well. So you need to ensure that they are not talking inappropriately to any of their friends. You also need to protect your child from strangers, so make sure that they are not talking to someone who is an adult or you don’t know. You can also get their text on your phones as well to keep a close eye on them. You can learn how to do that by visiting smstrackers.com/how-to-forward-someones-text-to-your-phone/. This way, you will know your kids aren’t talking to any strangers.
Luckily the new generation of smartphones offers advanced parental locks as well, which means you can control what kind of content your child can watch on their phone. There are several parental lock apps out there that allows you to keep track of your child’s phone and blocks any kind of inappropriate content. The app also allows you to decide the level of restriction you want to put on your kids’ phone, which means you can customize the locks according to your liking.
Setting rules is a great way of making sure that your child is using their smartphone the right way. But when it comes to the rules, don’t just come with some rules and impose them on your child. Sit with them, have a proper conversation about the safe usage of phones and ask them to come with a few rules themselves as well. When you involve them in the process of rules making they are more likely not to violate them. Talk to them about what kind of content they need to avoid, and they will take responsibility for it.