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Does your Child use Smart Phone the Safe Way: Learn the Precautions to Take
What most kids do just for fun sake sometimes turn out to be a perilous misadventure, and in just a span of few seconds everything gets out of control. And giving away personal information on the Internet, announcing geographical location, or befriending a complete stranger has quite a same story.
# Case Study: Ashley’s Story (name and events are fictitious)
Ashley, a 13 year old, got best grades in her term end exams and demanded a smart phone from her father as a gift. Overwhelmed with joy because of her academic success, he bought her a brand new iPhone. She was happy to have it.Now, this was her new toy that brought every possible entertainment right in her device. She’d play games, chat with her friends, send text messages to her friends and so on. Soon she was on all the popular social networking sites and found them great source of entertainment. Her adventure ride took her to sending friend request to every second person she’d find to be a mutual friend on Facebook. Soon most of the adults from her mum and dad’s friend list were on her friend list too.
One fine morning getting bored she messaged one of her friends whom she hadn’t met in person through an app on her phone as the app automatically imported all her Facebook friends. Thus, those who were using the same app could communicate with her. This friend of her sent her a humble little ‘Hi!’ and went on wondering how on earth does he know a little kid and within no time he made out the city where the girl lives, the school she attends, what places she regularly goes, and where does she live and finally made out that the girl was her former colleague’s daughter.
Well, it was just a story with a happy ending. But not all stories have a happy ending and reality isn’t a fiction!
Imagine if the person turned out to be an online predator, or a cyber-criminal, or perhaps a child abductor who abducts kids for extortion. You can well imagine how dangerous the whole thing would have been.
This is where giving a smart phone to our kids appear a faulty decision. Now, if you have already bought an iPhone for your child, here is a simple way to make things fine and keep your child safe.
Precautions your Child has to take
Make sure your child takes all the precautions listed below; simply guide your child about the perils of using smart phone in unsafe way.
No personal information on social media.
Tell your child how it is dangerous to publish personal information on social media sites, how can bullies, predators and criminals misuse all that information.
No communication with strangers
Let your child know the dangers of befriending strangers online. Make a rule that there shouldn’t be any stranger in your child’s contact list whether it is Facebook, some chat room, or the phone book with contact details of people. And in case your child is a member of some online gaming community or plays multi-player games, strangers are to be avoided.
Make it clear with your child that an unknown mutual friend on Facebook is but a stranger, thus such people are not to be befriended.
Not to use any such application that automatically connects to others
As far as possible don’t let your child use applications on the smart phone and even if it appears to be important to use a one, make sure it doesn’t connect to people automatically or import all connections from various social sites on its own.
Not to announce location through apps and sites
Your kid shouldn’t announce her location on various sites that offer check in option nor should she publicize her location through any app.
No cell phone over use through texting, chatting, Internet Surfing
You’ve gifted a smart phone to your kid but not a lot of free time to get too much involved in texting, chatting, or surfing the Internet. Set time limit for all such activities.
Precautions you have to take
You explained your child the various perils and asked her to take precautions but your role doesn’t get over out here. You still have a lot of thing to do. Check out what things you’ll have to do for ensuring your child’s safe smart phone usage.
Disallow phone all the time
When you gift your child a football, it is an obvious she doesn’t keep playing around with the ball all the time then why using phone all through the day? Make a rule for phone use, set a proper usage time.
Monitor cell phone activities
Monitoring your child’s cell phone and Internet activities is a must. Don’t you check her notebooks for checking how she’s doing in school? Similarly, her activities on the phone need a check. But checking a smart phone is not similar to checking notebooks or a school bag. Better way of doing this is to use a cell phone monitoring app on your child’s phone which will trace every single activity of your child, tell you her location, and let you stop any of her foolish foolhardiness on the Internet sphere from taking place.
Block trouble making stuffs like apps, sites, downloads
Most of the troubles are created by the hundreds of troublesome applications available on the Internet for free. Some of these allow game playing, others let your child send messages directly, then there are the ones that allow her to befriend strangers, share pictures, announce location, chat for long times and so on. Simply block these apps on her phone to keep her safe. Similarly, there are various sites that aren’t safe and even the social sites sometimes create a lot of mayhem in your child’s life. By blocking apps, sites and downloading of such apps, games, inappropriate videos, and so on you will solve out most of the trouble. Your mobile monitoring app tracing your child’s activity will prove helpful in this case also as most of the tracking software let you block unwanted activities.
Source: https://parentalmonitoringtips.wordpress.com/2013/10/03/does-your-child-use-smart-phone-the-safe-way-learn-the-precautions-to-take/
