The use of the Internet has expanded severely over the last decade. Aided by the continual contact provided by smartphones, 94% of teens go online every day, according to a survey from Pew Research Center. Moreover, 24% of children go online almost regularly. In a typical day, kids consume over three hours of media, including smartphone, tablet, and laptop use. Only 6% of teens report going online no more than once a week.
Internet Is Parents Biggest Fear
What Are The Main Concerns Of Parents?
Parents become more worried about their kids’ Internet usage, especially about the use of social media platforms. Facebook is one of the most popular and regularly visited social media services among teens. They spend hours sharing personal data, photos, links, and other information. 43% of parents assume that a profile on a social networking site has a side effect on their kids. Teens can “overshare” personal details without thinking about possible consequences.
Due to the survey, one in three parents admits he or she has had serious concerns about kids’ Internet use in the last year. Most parents say they fear their children being exposed to many online dangers. Chatting with strangers, online predators, cyberbullying, and sexting are those possible risks every child may face daily. Three-quarters of parents are concerned about inappropriate content that can be found online. Young children have access to resources that can negatively affect their mental health, such as porn websites, adult apps, and harmful content.
Why Do Parents Use Parental Controls?
More than half of parents claim they have installed parental monitoring applications to prevent their children from accessing certain types of online content, oversee kids’ online activities, and check their location. Modern parental control software such as Children Tracker, Cell Tracker, MM Guardian have a lot of different functions letting follow all children’s activities. It is possible to see calls and messages, view browsing experiences, block certain websites, track the current position, check social media accounts, and much more.
However, the first applications on the market couldn’t boast many features. One of them, Sentry Parental Controls, was a group of software packages designed to limit access to inappropriate information for kids. Back in 2008, software packages included Sentry Remote and Sentry at Home. Sentry Predator Locator was terminated in 2007. With such software, a user could block improper phrases, categories, and URLs in a browser.
Nowadays, more and more parents decide to use parental tracking apps to protect their children from all possible dangers and unpleasant experiences connected with excessive Internet use. And they do that for a reason. More than 90% of teens own a smartphone or tablet. They can easily become victims of Internet predators. Parents worry a lot about this issue and constantly check their children’s messages and calls by themselves or with the help of monitoring software. Statistics prove that today Internet has become the biggest parents’ fear.
Child Online Protection Measures Across The States Of America
In order to childproof Internet use, the Government of the United States enacted regulatory instruments that apply to the online collection of personal information from minors and include restrictions on the advertising of inappropriate products on websites targeted towards them.
The fundamental principles and restrictions on child online safety are specified in the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA). At the same time, many states of the USA also have their own regulatory instruments to make the online environment safer for kids.
Louisiana and Maryland require Internet service providers to make online parental control software, which allows parents to block or limit websites their children visit, available to users who are residents of the states.
Nevada requires Internet providers to offer their users products or services that allow regulating and monitoring online child activities.
Texas requires interactive computer service providers to place a link to free monitoring and filtering software on a visible place of their websites. There is also a civil penalty of $2,000 for each day of non-compliance with the conditions.
Utah requires Internet providers to allow users to use filtering software for free to prevent children from facing inappropriate content on the web.
Delaware prevents companies that provide educational software from compromising the personal data of schoolchildren. The state also ensures that adult services and products are not targeted toward children. Importantly, the General Assembly has passed four bills on Attorney General’s online privacy and safety plan, which can ultimately make Delaware the safest state in America where kids can use the Internet.
How To Monitor Your Kid’s Facebook
In 2004 Facebook invaded and found new roots in our everyday lives. It opened the big era of social media, which replaced live relationships and shifted them online. If then, in the beginning, having a Facebook account was a novelty, for now, not being on Facebook is a curiosity. Today it is as trivial a thing as having a mobile phone.
When it comes to children, who develop much more intensively and get familiar with modern technologies from the cradle, Facebook has become an integral part of their lives. Sometimes it all begins to look like parallel reality, where children live a double life.
As a parent, you should always keep your eyes open. You do take care and worry about your children when they are at school, playing football outside, or just hanging around. Then why shouldn’t you do the same when they are online? Admit it, parental controls for Facebook are a must these days!
Facebook opens its arms widely to provide users with various possible ways of spending time. You can share any of your personal information, photos, videos, thoughts, opinions, and feelings, communicate with other individuals, date online, create and promote services, and even run a business. In other words, a great living world is open to you outside the real world.
Facebook shortens the distance between people. It lets you make friends who live thousands of miles from your place. One can say it connects humanity and makes it one big family. Then why are there so many lonely people? It appears that the closer we approach each other online, the more isolated we become awake.
Besides all the obvious opportunities that Facebook provides, it also involves some hidden dangers. Below are the most common of them: waiting for your kid on the web.
Facebook Bears Hidden Threat
- Online predators and bullies can contact your child easily through text messages or video chat.
- Online swindlers and cheaters can fish for your personal information like address, phone or credit card number, logins, passwords when parents are not at home, etc.
- Your kid may accidentally come across pictures or videos containing violence or 18+ content.
- He or she can be easily involved in some fraud or sect. Facebook is well-known, where one can be imposed on any idea, provoked, or dictated to do anything.
- There are different products sold via Facebook. Thus, if your kid has access to your credit card or has a personal one, he or she can spend too much money there.
You may wonder how to prevent your kid from possible dangers and secure his or her online activity. The easiest way is to set up special parental control software designed for such protection.
Almost all children today have smartphones and tablets. Most of them use these particular gadgets to go online rather than personal computers. The tracking app offers you probably the wisest working solution for parental control and children’s online security. With its help, you can monitor your kid’s web activity from anywhere.
All you need to do is to enter your Control Panel, where you will see all the data sent from your child’s device. The information you can keep track of includes not only Facebook activity and communication but also your kid’s smartphone usage, calls, SMS, location and route history, contacts, downloaded applications, browsed websites, and emails.
How To Block Applications on Android
The capability of blocking applications on kids’ smartphones and tablets is one of the major reasons why parents go in for mobile parental controls.
Children do not realize how much time they spend playing games, surfing the Internet, or chatting with friends via online messengers. Thus, they often waste too much of it, which ultimately turns into smartphone dependency or addiction.
Parents, who know how to block certain apps on Android devices, can prevent children from cell phone overusing and redirect the time wasted towards improving results at school or attending other useful activities like sports, music, arts, self-education, etc.
Unfortunately, there are no reliable built-in options to block specific apps on Android. And this is where mobile monitoring solutions come to the rescue. With such an application at your command, you can reasonably restrict the excessive use of smartphones.
Such parental control software allows not only complete blocking of applications installed on your kids’ devices. At the same time, they let you set limits on running apps at a particular time.
Thus, you will be able to prevent your children from using Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, or any other specific apps (including games) until homework is done. Moreover, you can block distractive applications while your kids are at school.
With mobile software, your kids will no longer be grounded for using smartphones during class.
It is a multi-compatible application. Therefore, in addition to the ability to block apps for Android devices, the software will let you keep control of iOS smartphones and tablets.
Thus, if you decide to block apps on iPhone 5 you have presented to your son or daughter recently, mobile software will provide you with such an opportunity alongside more than 24 useful monitoring features and jailbreak-free solutions.
How To Block Websites On Android Device
If you let your kids go online, you will surely not want them to see everything stored there. Of course, the Internet is a great source of useful information, where one can find just about everything he or she is looking for. Nevertheless, there are too many materials inappropriate for specific ages. That’s why parents turn to parental control restrictions regarding child safety on the web.
As the statistics show, 92% of children prefer smartphones for Internet surfing. It explains why mobile monitoring applications have become so popular these days. In addition to other helpful tracking functions, such software allows parents to block certain websites on Android and, thus, prevent children from coming across restricted content.
Installing a parental control application on your child’s cell phone or tablet will let you monitor browsing history and websites your kid has bookmarked. By doing so, you will see if your son or daughter visits any sources with sexual, explicit, violent, or fraudulent content and lock them, not to allow him or her to enter any of them ever again.
In addition to application limits, a block websites Android app feature will also let you control social media use. As you probably know, one can access Facebook, Instagram, or any similar network in two ways: via the application or a web browser. Thus, if you block the Snapchat app, your kids will still have a chance to enter Snapchat.com via a browser.
Yet, blocking a browser app is not the best way out since, simultaneously, you will block access to the Internet as such. Though the web is dangerous, it is helpful as well. So, forbidding your kids to use it is too desperate.
For such purposes, parental control applications answer the question of how to block certain websites on iPod Touch, iPhone, iPad, and any Android devices your kids use. Thus, as soon as you see an 18+ website in your kid’s browsing history or bookmarks list, you will be able to block it once and for all.
Finally, when searching for a practical mobile monitoring application, you will probably type something like “is there an app to block websites on android” in the search line, and you will surely find one of the most reliable apps for this particular and many other monitoring purposes. It protects, safely secures, and keeps your eyes open!