5 Reasons Why Parental Control is Important in the Digital Age
Parenting in this digital age is no longer easier than it used to be in the past. Rapid advancement in technology is presenting new and difficult challenges for parents to keep up. Protecting your kids from dangers posed by digital technology and internet has become essential. Luckily, there are some excellent and advanced tools available for parental control, including monitoring apps. These apps and tools allow moms and dads to set controls on their kids’ internet activity. With the ease of access, internet exposes your kids to various threats like identity theft, cyberbullying, social media scams, and malicious content. That is why parental control has become an essential requirement to protect your kids. Here are some reasons why parental control is important in this digital age.
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Protect Kids from Objectionable Content:
The reality is that objectionable content is everywhere on the internet and most parents feel helpless to shield their children from it. Parental control is the only effective way to administer the digital devices of your children. With these controls, you can restrict the access of your kid’s device to refrain from viewing inappropriate content. YouTube also has an age restriction feature to prevent suggesting and viewing adult content to kids. Internet scheduler is also a type of parental control that allows parents to set a specific time for internet access. This prevents your child from internet addiction.
Allows Website and Category Blocking:
In many cases, parents cannot identify all the websites that are inappropriate for their kids. Such websites can be restricted by blocking the entire categories. Parental control tools allow you to do this. For instance, if you want to block access to all websites that contain adult content, you will just have to block the ‘Adult’ category. The categories of websites are named as adult, social networking, gaming, downloads, etc. The category blocking feature also allows you to create an exclusion list of websites that are included in a blocked category. For example, if you have blocked the category of Social Networking but you want to allow access to Facebook only, then simply add its URL to the exclusion list.
Ability to Fight Cyberbullying:
Cell phones and the internet has made children more vulnerable to bullying and abuse through social media and text messages. KidSecured is a parental control app that allows you to see the outgoing and incoming messages and calls through Viber, Tinder or GSM. This way, you can be aware of who is contacting your kid and what conversation he is having with his friends.
Limiting Downloads to Keep Your Devices Safe:
Kids can be easily deceived and fooled and this makes them prime targets for cyber-criminals and hackers. Children are more likely to download apps and programs that look genuine but are actually malware and viruses. It can lead to dangerous outcomes and your data can get leaked that might contain confidential information like passwords, bank account information, and media. Moreover, the viruses can lock your computer, cause operational problems and can even spread to other devices connected with it. Parental controls allow you to limit downloads from untrusted and suspicious sources. You need to be wise enough to control what your kids can or can’t download so that your computers and networks can be kept free of malware and viruses.
Increase Familiarity with Technology:
One of the prime benefits of using parental control applications is that it increases your familiarity with new apps, devices, social sites and more. While you have your own cell phones and devices, your kids may be using the apps that you haven’t used. That’s why you may find it troubling to navigate the apps and sites your kids use. Taking control of the kids’ devices allows a better understanding of what they are using and how they are using them.