Parental Control Apps
There is a great deal for your children to discover on the Internet. The internet offers them a wide variety of interesting and fun features. There is, however, a downside to discovering everything. The online environment can be a hostile environment full of cyberbullying from peers and dangers arising from interactions with strangers. Keeping your children safe online has never been more challenging, especially since children and teens spend a great deal of time online today.
Today’s culture increasingly relies on the Internet, especially among children and young people, who use it for schoolwork, online gaming, and social networking. Despite this, the online experience and expression of a child do not always result in their safety. In order to protect our kids, we need to know our options, and parental controls are one of the best options.
What Are Parental Controls?
The term parental controls refer to features or software that parents can use to monitor and restrict their children’s online activities. You may find that some parental control software comes preinstalled on your operating system. There are several applications available for MAC and Windows, as well as several cell phones, including the iPhone, that can be used as parental controls.
Parental controls are designed to limit or monitor access to your system. They come with various features, including the ability to block and filter websites and content, record activities, limit time spent online and view browsing history and communications. Below you will find information about the different types of parental controls available.
1. Content Filtering
When your child browses the internet or uses a variety of mobile applications, content filtering helps protect him or her from inappropriate content and malware. By turning on this feature, you can protect your computer from malicious software and adult content. A content filter restricts access to harmful and malicious websites, emails, or file types while allowing access to child-friendly content, thereby reducing unfettered access.
2. Time Limits
In addition to setting a time limit for an individual app, the parent can also set a time limit for a particular category of apps (for example, the games category or the social network category). It is important to set time limits to create healthy habits for your children, which will limit their activities that require the use of screens. There are a variety of options that parents can use in order to limit the time that their children spend online, on their phones, or their tablets.
Cloud-based features like this one can provide users with information about how much time they spend online or across various devices at once. Further, this feature could also potentially provide the ability to limit the amount of time it takes for a phone call or a FaceTime call to last, and it could also be used to restrict access during certain times of the day, like during family meals and outings.
3. Activity Monitoring
By using this feature, parents can keep track of their child’s phone activity and online activity. It enables remote tracking and scanning for issues such as sexual content and online predators. As an additional benefit, depending on the program, you may receive alerts when something may be amiss.
Using this feature, parents will be able to monitor their child’s online activity, including their texts, photos, and social media activity. As a final benefit, it can provide parents with the ability to maintain data and network security.
4. Location Monitoring
The use of location tracking is commonly seen on mobile devices, providing the convenience and peace of mind of being able to locate the device (and your child) with the aid of a Global Positioning Satellite (GPS). Some parental control options enable parents to monitor their children and receive alerts when they leave a safe area. This device is often found in iPhone and iPad features like Find My Phone. As a result of this feature, parents will no longer have to worry about their kids as they will be able to monitor them in a variety of circumstances in real-time.
Pros and Cons of Parental Controls
The Cons of Parental Controls
Many parents are concerned about the disadvantages of using parental controls when keeping their children safe online. Some children feel that parental control invades their privacy. When parental supervision is excessive, children may attempt to create fake accounts on games and social media that their parents cannot access, allowing them to be themselves – but this can result in more problems in the future. Furthermore, some technically savvy children are capable of learning and adapting ways to bypass parental control settings.
Despite these cons, parental controls enable parents to create a safe online environment for their children. In addition, implementing parental controls can provide parents and children with the opportunity to communicate and share information. It is important to discuss with your child the reasons why parental controls are important, as well as the advantages they offer.
The Pros of Parental Controls
The advantages of parental control apps extend beyond managing screen time and your child’s online activity. With parental controls, parents are able to know whether their children are being bullied online. This enables them to allow children to be open about the situation they are experiencing. As a result, you can ensure that your child is not sharing private texts, images, and videos with strangers or being exposed to inappropriate content or situations. This is done by ensuring your child is not sharing private text messages, photos, or videos. Last but not least, parental control allows you to protect your devices and personal information from viruses, malware, and hackers.
Popular Parental Control Options
It is important that we explore our options to ensure the safety of our child online. It is essential that children and their parents work together cooperatively. Below are three options for ensuring that your children are safe online. Your device must support parental control apps if you wish to take full advantage of them. Various parental control apps offer varying degrees of monitoring for free or at a cost.
1. Mobile Devices
Most cellular devices come pre-built with a number of parental control features designed to give adults control over the phone. With the built-in parental control apps, you can access text messages, see phone records for who they called or received calls from, take a look at their gallery to see what photos they have taken, and a whole raft of other things.
For example, Verizon allows the account holder to manage their family’s wireless activities and set device usage limits and restrictions with Verizon Smart Family and Verizon Smart Family Premium. Verizon Smart Family starts at $4.99 per month per account; however, it does not include location services. The Premium version does include location services; however, the cost increases to $9.99 per month. T Mobile also offers parental device management and blocking controls through optional family allowance services for $10 per month per account.
2. Free Parental Controls
Parents seeking affordable and inexpensive parental control apps to protect their youth have a number of options to choose from. Some free options do not include services such as filtering, monitoring, time limits, or location services. However, others such as Kaspersky Safe Kids and FamilyKeepr offer such services to ensure your child’s safety. It is imperative that you research the free option carefully, as many require you to grant them various permissions to access your personal information and control your device.
3. Paid for Parental Controls
Parents may also opt to purchase parental control and monitoring apps that send alerts and allow the ability to block & filter out undesired content. A few examples of parenting monitoring are Bark, Net Nanny, and Qustodio. These three are just a few; however, they offer similar options to protect your child while being easy to use for parents. The pricing varies from $50 a year to some options being over $200; however, many provide the chance to utilize the service as a free trial prior to purchase.
49th Street Bail Bonds wants to help keep you informed on how to keep your children safe!
It is no longer the case that every household has only one internet-connected device. Nowadays, everyone, including toddlers, owns a personal device. As parents, we must take steps to protect our children and keep them safe.
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