Children spend anywhere from one to four or more hours a day on electronic devices (i.e., computers, tablets, phones, and video games). Children use these devices to communicate with friends and family, to access the internet, to watch cartoons, to study the subjects of math, science, history, biology, and reading on apps, to post images and stories to their social sites, to color pictures, solve puzzles, do games, listen to music, sing to their favorite songs, etc. Monitoring children’s internet use and setting up parental controls is a good way to help protect children while they begin to explore and enter the digital world.
(This post contains affiliate links. Click here to read our affiliate disclaimer.)
Monitoring Children’s Internet Use
Monitoring children’s internet use is not a task for the faint-hearted. Many parents lack the initial courage that is required to take a device out of the hands of a child, that is, when faced with the prospect of war. While it is considered to be a necessary step to take to ensure a child’s health and safety, what are some positive parenting methods that parents can make use of to make monitoring children’s internet use easier and limit their screen time (e.g., turn off the tv, gaming device, computer, or take the phone away) without losing a child’s respect, causing an all-out debate, or meltdown? While taking away a device might be the “correct” thing to do, actually doing it and maintaining a good relationship with your child is equally as important of a goal.
What are the Side Effects Associated with Excessive Screen Time?
Research suggests that structuring a child’s daily internet usage will ensure the forming of healthier lifestyle habits and help avoid the side effects of excessive screen time:
● Posture and neck problems,
● Eyestrain,
● Attention problems,
● School difficulties,
● Sleep disorders, and
● A sedentary lifestyle with an increased risk of childhood obesity.
As a measure of good advice, the American Heart Association AHA strongly urges parents to give children a wider range of activities and restrict the use of electronic devices for children under the age of five to no more than one hour a day and children aged six years and older to no more than two hours a day.
What Online Dangers Exist? What is Cyber-bullying? Who is at Risk?
While healthy childhood development is a top concern, there are a number of additional reasons why monitoring children’s internet use and placing parental controls on their devices may actually be a crucial step for parents to take – for their safety to help protect children from potential online dangers such as:
● Cyber-bullying,
● Online predators, and
● Viewing inappropriate and violent content.
Cyber-bullying includes the acts of bullying, stalking, rejecting, or harassing someone through digital communications to damage their reputation, hurt their feelings, to slander and spread misinformation, negative facts, false or mean statements about the person. Essentially, anyone may be at risk of cyber-bullying anywhere online in the same way that anyone may be at risk of bullying in everyday life. Bullying can occur in online classes, just like it can occur in real-life classes. Bullying can occur in online chat rooms, just like it can occur in daily communication with people you meet. Bullying can target anyone for any reason at all.
What are the Side Effects Associated with Excessive Screen Time?
Research suggests that structuring a child’s daily internet usage will ensure the forming of healthier lifestyle habits and help avoid the side effects of excessive screen time:
● Posture and neck problems,
● Eyestrain,
● Attention problems,
● School difficulties,
● Sleep disorders, and
● A sedentary lifestyle with an increased risk of childhood obesity.
As a measure of good advice, the American Heart Association AHA strongly urges parents to give children a wider range of activities and restrict the use of electronic devices for children under the age of five to no more than one hour a day and children aged six years and older to no more than two hours a day.
Healthy Parenting Tactics
To help make the restriction of use and monitoring a more positive experience for both the parents and the child(ren), parents may benefit by first reviewing some general rules of thumb or parenting principles and tactics learned by experience before beginning a new program for monitoring children’s internet use on their devices. Having a good, healthy parenting approach will help to ensure a more successful outcome and alleviate possible negative ones.
● Rule #1 Goodness. Parents should remember that implementing what is considered to be a healthy parenting skill, such as monitoring children’s internet use, is of great merit, even if it is not immediately accepted by your child(ren).
● Rule #2 Trust. Parenting does not always come with a clear blueprint; as such, adjusting the approach and refining the method used to help your child be the best he or she can be takes trial and error, patience, a positive or supportive attitude, and trust in the process.
● Rule #3 Healthy Habits. Setting down some ground rules from the beginning when a child is younger and first introduced to electronic and digital devices will help to ensure that children develop a healthier habit and mindset concerning the use of their devices from an early age.
● Rule #4 Healthy Relating. Build a good rapport with your child(ren) before implementing any restrictions on their devices and explain to them the actual reasoning as to why it is so important to limit screen time so they can understand the positive aspects involved. This can help to get their cooperation and support.
● Rule #5 Consistency. To create good structures that support your child(ren)’s development, be sure to be consistent when enforcing any rule(s) in the home so that the rule becomes the norm. This will go a long way toward making it an everyday healthy habit.
● Rule #6 Guiding. Focus on guiding children with a gentle manner and kind tone of voice so they may understand and act from their own level of understanding, not on punishing or forcing them. When a child learns about what is a healthy action to take in life, and knows what is allowed and what is not, this foundation encourages healthy behavior and willingness in children to do what is good for themselves.
● Rule #7 Cooperation. Monitoring a child’s internet use should not be seen as a mere struggle in the home. Having their cooperation, in the end, will help avoid the kind of war in the home that is just not necessary to have.
● Rule #8 Balance. To avoid it being a struggle, children need to be taught how to balance time between digital and real-life activities. Learning to manage time is a part of life. Real-life activities include playing with toys in and around the home, playing outside in the yard, walking the dog, swinging on the swingset, playing softball, going to swimming class, taking a piano lesson, book reading, and studying and doing homework assigned by the school.
● Rule #9 Normalcy. Once the child has experienced that balance in the home between their activities, the modification of their daily usage won’t seem so bad to them. They will get used to it.
● Rule #10 Positives. Furthermore, the use of electronic devices should not always be discouraged. There are many positives:
○ Giving an ample amount of time on devices allows children to learn new skills such as typing, writing, editing, and computer literacy.
○ Kids can learn to become good with digital forms of communication, which are essential parts of the digital world we live in.
○ Kids can learn school subjects through online educational games, online quiz apps, digital tutors, e-books, etc.
While so many of the activities available for children to participate in online are worth doing, balancing the use of the internet with real-life experiences is key.
What Are Parental Controls & How to Use Them?
While many parents do supervise their children’s internet use using a timer or simply being present while the child uses the device, parental controls on devices were developed specifically to help parents to maintain control on the use of the device to make it safer for the child to use. Apple and Android devices have some differences in this regard.
Apple Devices: (i.e,. ipads, iphones, and ipods) all have content and privacy restrictions that allow you the option to restrict or block specific apps or features on the device. Settings can be restricted to limit the purchasing and downloading of content. You can also protect the phone’s settings by setting up a screen time passcode to prevent others from changing them.
You can prevent the playing of music or videos with explicit content and movies or tv shows with certain ratings. In its web content settings, you can restrict adult content on website searches from coming up. The Apple game center can also be restricted from use, so the child does not play games on the device without your permission.
Android Devices, unlike Apple, have parental controls in the Google Play store but not on the device. And, there are many apps, both free and paid versions, you can choose from that offer parental controls for your devices.
Are Device Monitoring Apps Such as mSpy Legitimate and Legal to Use in the U.S.?
Phone monitoring apps help you as a parent to keep an eye on all of your kid’s activities to make sure they are beneficial and not harmful for their development and to protect your children from various online threats, including:
● Cyber-bullying,
● Online predators, and
● Indecent and violent content.
Popular apps include mSpy, Kaspersky Safe Kids, Net Nanny, and Norton Family, to name just a few. There are so many amazing phone monitoring apps out there, you might find it initially difficult to decide which one is right for you.
Taking a look at one very popular app, such as mSpy, can help a parent to understand how a monitoring app works and to assess whether or not it is worth buying. mSpy began in 2010 and is now an international leader in the field of device monitoring with innovative solutions available in over 100 countries to help ensure child safety online. mSpy is legal to use in the U.S. to monitor your underage child(ren)’s devices and is a legitimate company with excellent customer reviews and is approved by Stop Bullying, a federal government website managed by the U.S. Health and Human Services in Washington, D.C. Of course, it is recommended that before you purchase a monitoring app that you compare several apps to see which one(s) have the features and terms you personally want and the reviews to back their value.
What Features Does mSpy Have?
Your mSpy app comes with a personal login account which includes a control panel where you will be able to view all activities of the device(s) you are monitoring. The control panel allows parents to view all sent, received, or deleted messages, incoming and outgoing calls, GPS location and routes, messages on Whatsapp, Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, and all internet browser history.
mSpy takes only a few minutes to set up on a new device. It will send parents an alert anytime a dangerous activity happens on the device, anytime the child enters a forbidden location, and if the app is uninstalled from the device. Customer support is available 24/7. Information about the device’s activities updates every five minutes.
Different subscription levels are available for mSpy, depending on your intended use of the app. For monitoring children’s internet use on one phone only, the standard subscription is available. For monitoring up to three phones at a time, the family subscription is available.
When is Monitoring Your Underage Child(ren)’s Device a Good Thing to Do?
Because there are a vast number of potential dangers in the digital world, monitoring children’s internet use and setting up parental controls on devices is worth considering doing. The mSpy app offers parents a digital assistance platform for monitoring a child’s internet use activities to ensure they remain healthy and safe. The app can be installed on a device without an icon showing up or any particular way for the user to know it is there; the app also does not slow down the targeted device that is being monitored. In that sense, it could be installed without the child even knowing, as a way to be able to know their location and whereabouts should there be any doubt at all as to where they are at as well as to make sure they are protected from age-inappropriate content, communication with cyberbullies or predators online, protected against excessive gaming, and against excessive phone device use.