How to Keep Your Kids Safe Online with Parental Controls?
The Internet is a wonderful place where children can learn a lot of things, access information from different resources, and get answers to some of their most difficult questions. Along with this, it gives them a good chance to meet like minded people and socialize with them at a virtual level. Then, there are fun and gaming activities that provide them another entertainment channel to enjoy quality time and compete with their peers. This is one side of the story. The other side is replete with risks, cyber dangers, and malicious, harmful, and abusive content. If by chance they access this type of content on the internet, then it can ruin their social and mental life for the whole lifetime.
Protecting your small ones from malicious content available online is highly essential to protect their future. Prenatal control is an amazing tool that can protect your children from the different types of cyber dangers and allow them to browse the internet risk-free. With the help of parental control, you monitor, filter, and manage your child’s online activities and ensure that they remain safe from all types of cyber dangers. Let’s break down this topic and understand how you can use parental control to protect your children online.
Why Do Kids Need Online Protection?
The internet is full of harmful and unsafe content, and children cannot differentiate and avoid it on their own. This content could expose them to violence and explicit and disturbing material. They can become victims of cyberbullying, in which bad actors can send them hurtful messages or harass them due to their tender age. Then, some malicious actors can exploit them and trick them into sharing personal information. All these are potential reasons why kids need online protection and monitoring. Also, they need to limit screen time for useful purposes. If they remain active on the internet all the time, it can affect their physical and mental health. These things make online protection for children obligatory.
How Does Parental Control Protect Your Children Online?
Parental control is a software that is designed to monitor and control online activities and website access children do using a digital device. It protects them from harmful and malicious content available online and allows them access to age-approved content, sites, and materials on the internet. Here is how parental control can protect your child while they are browsing the internet and using digital devices:
- It filters content and blocks adult content, gambling sites, violent games, and other inappropriate material from accessing the digital device.
- To block and monitor your children’s online activities, you can also use tools like Google SafeSearch and YouTube Restricted Mode.
- It manages the screen time of your little ones and sets healthy usage limits to create a healthy balance between physical and virtual activities.
- In this regard, you can also use tools like Google Family Link and create a device-free zone in your house to set limits to screen times at dinner or during important family occasions.
- With the help of parental control software, you can monitor social media chats and activities. It protects your little ones from cyberbullying, strangers, or inappropriate conversations on social media
- Along with this, you can also guide your little ones to use privacy settings on apps like Instagram, TikTok & Snapchat. Teach them how to deal with unwanted situations on social media platforms.
- Parental control can help you track the location of your child and enable them to browse the internet safely. You can learn about the whereabouts of your child and make sure that they are safe in their surroundings.
- To do the same thing you can also use Google Family Link or Apple’s Find My iPhone for real-time location tracking. You can set geofencing to get alerts when your child enters or leaves specific areas.
What are some of the best parental control tools available in the Market?
Here are some of the best parental control tools that you can avail to secure your little ones during online browsing:
Norton Family: Great for web filtering & screen time management.
Kaspersky Safe Kids: Includes GPS tracking and social media monitoring.
Qustodio: One of the most comprehensive parental control apps.
Net Nanny: Advanced content filtering and app blocking.
Google Family Link: Free, ideal for Android users.