In today’s interconnected world of smartphone and tablet devices; there’s as much opportunity as there is danger. While we love the convenience of having access to the internet at our fingertips, this ease of access works both ways and has the potential to be especially harmful to younger members of the family.
This is because in the online world there is a vast underbelly of immoral users who seek to exploit or even directly harm children any way they can. Luckily, parental control products like Family Orbit help parents to easily keep track of their children’s device usage so that they can quickly and easily eliminate threats to their online safety.
Technology and the internet are great things that we shouldn’t be afraid to let children benefit from. Parental control apps are great because they allow you to safely manage your child’s use of digital technology so that you can ensure they have a positive online experience.
Let’s take a look at how using a parental control app can benefit your family.
What is a “parental control app”?
A parental control app is exactly what it sounds like; a digital application that allows you, the parent, to exercise greater supervision over your children’s use of internet-connected technology. Basically, this means that you’ll have access to an all-in-one suite that allows you to set boundaries for how your children interact online.
The best parental control apps have features that enable you to monitor your children’s text messages, call logs, photos, website history, instant messaging history and their address book. They also give you the means to set controls for how they use the device, such as making certain apps unavailable during school or sleep hours.
There are even settings that enable you to get a notification when your child searches for a certain keyword. At their core; parental control apps give you a huge range of options for how you can supervise your child’s use of digital technology.
How can it benefit your family?
Ultimately, the greatest benefit of using a parental control app is that you’ll be able to more than adequately protect your child or children from online threats. We have all heard the horror stories of children being targeted by online predators who seek to exploit their naivety for money or worse.
When children are given access to computers, tablets and smartphones they are also given access to the internet. While internet services have many rudimentary control mechanisms like ‘safe search’, which filters out adult content, they cannot be relied upon to protect your children from those seeking to exploit them.
Many potentially dangerous online interactions children have can be prevented from occurring in the first place through the use of a parental control app. The app allows you to make sure that your child never has the ability to visit certain websites or can only visit specific sites under specific circumstances.
In this way, parental control apps can be used not only to protect your children from online predators but to help curb their dependency on technology. If you have ever struggled to get your child to put down their phone during dinner time, a parental control app will let you set it up so that, for example; their phone is unusable between 8 and 9 every evening.
Options like this enable you to be strict but fair in how you apply rules to your children’s use of technology. With a parental control app, you can set clear boundaries for what is and is not acceptable while also protecting your children from threats they don’t fully understand.
Why is this important?
Everyone knows that children are the most impressionable members of our society and therefore they need to be protected and nurtured as they mature. Until they reach adulthood, even older teenagers are liable to make extremely poor decisions in the spur of the moment of because they were lied to.
With the online world now more hostile and predatory than it ever was, the need to protect children has become paramount. While we want children to benefit from the positive impact of the internet and global information sharing, we also want to protect them from being exploited or harassed online.
In a world where it’s simply too difficult to try and directly supervise every app and service your child is using; parental control apps are the perfect solution. They give you all of the control and supervision you need to enjoy peace of mind knowing that your children are protected online.