Cyber Parenting – The Importance of Digital Parenting

In this new article, we are talking about cyber parenting and the importance of monitoring your children online.

Giving you handy tips to follow the rules of digital parenting.

Let’s get started!

We exist in an era when the young generation is highly addicted to technology.

That is because smartphones and computers are today an essential part of any teen’s life.

From education to entertainment, the young generation can seize to exist without technology.

While these gadgets have many advantages, you should know that they pose some risks.

From sex predators to cyber-bullying, there are so many things that you will want to protect your child from.

With a tracking app like webwatcher, you stand a better chance of monitoring your child’s online activities.

Because

You Will Be Able To Track Their Private Messages

Direct messaging is one of the ways which malicious people use to communicate.

In most cases, they start to be friendly, by greeting and sharing things like photos.

To an innocent child, nothing is wrong, but at the end of the day, your child will learn to trust the stranger.

Instead of risking all that, you can use a tracker to see who is messaging your child and what their motives are.

From social media to other platforms with direct messaging features like emails, you can always be on watch.

View Visited Websites

Some of the risks of the internet are the links which lead to adult websites.

It is very easy for a child roaming on the internet to end up on a site that may convince them to do something that is not proper.

To avoid your child from accessing websites that have content that can be harmful to a child’s mind, you can easily install a tracker and some type of web filtering app.

Monitor The Kind Of Apps Installed

There are so many smartphone applications built to serve different purposes.

While you expect your child to have games as the most downloaded applications, you might be surprised to find out that he or she is addicted to online gambling.

It is important to know that teenagers are good at hiding things that won’t make their parents happy.

When it comes to computers and smart devices, they definitely have a better understanding than most of their parents.

For you to avoid reacting late, you need to ensure that your child only accesses safe applications.

GPS Tracking

Apart from visiting dangerous websites, teenagers are known for their spirit of exploring that can lead them to dangerous places.

With GPS tracking software and devices, you will be able to track their location using their phone, even if it is turned off.

With the ability to monitor both position and phone activities, a good tracker should be a great solution as far as digital and cyber parenting is concerned.

Where Do You Begin As A Cyber Parent

The hardest part about tracking and monitoring your child is where to begin.

For most parents, they feel guilty about this, but they should know that they better be safe than sorry.

One of the first things that you must ensure that you do is to identify the right mobile phone tracker.

With the many trackers available in the market today, you may want to focus your search on particular things.

You’ll, therefore, need to pay attention to the features that these different trackers come with.

It’s also good to know that when picking a tracker, make sure that you are buying from a genuine seller.

There are so many risks of buying things online, and one of them is paying money to thieves.

If you don’t want to risk landing on the wrong website to obtain the tracker, you should know that you can always use the popular ones in the market.

When searching for the best mobile tracker for your child, one crucial thing to note is that they vary in prices.

That is why, for you to find the best deal, you need to make sure that you accurately compare prices.

However, you will want to avoid sites that sell mobile trackers at a meagre amount.

That is because most malicious people who rob people online using ridiculously low prices to attract and defraud the unsuspecting public.

Who Can Be A Digital Cyber Parent?

Cyber parenting is for any parent who has kids that use smartphones and computers.

One mistake that many parents make is that they trust their children so much that they feel that they are safe on their own.

What these parents don’t know is that children will not always be ready to share everything about their personal lives especially if they know that it will make their parents mad.

Teenagers like to explore, and this is the main reason you should be keen on what they do online.

You can never blame the child for being lured into committing crime through being influenced by someone from their online connections.

Most parents don’t know of ill-minded people that prey on children online.

Apart from being on the lookout for people predating on your child, being a cyber parent also involves controlling how long your child spends on the screen.

It should never go without mentioning that a child’s brain is thirsty for information that it does not have time to decide whether it is wrong or right.

It Is Not Always About Spying

A good cyber parent is one that is involved in their child’s life.

You should, however, be careful so that you don’t overdo it because everyone needs personal space.

However, through your digital device, you can always share moments with your child.

For parents who want to maintain a close relationship with their child, there are so many ways to do it.

There are games with two player options that you can play remotely.

These are some of the methods of controlling what your child does with their smart device.

Smartphones have so many features that parents can use to monitor their children other than tracking.

That is because not all children are in touch with the wrong people or are up to no good while online.

Some children will use someone to help them have fun with their smart devices.

How To Deal With Rebellious Teens

These are the worst because they assume to know everything while in the real sense, they are just in denial.

Tracking the phone activities of your rebellious teen can be the root to solving their problem once and for all.

The only problem is that they will not willingly give in to the idea of their phones getting tracked.

That is why most mobile phone tracking applications are built in such a way that they are discreet and even the phone being tracked cannot detect.

Another problem with rebellious children is that they would be in good terms with anyone else but not with their parents.

That is why it may not be a good idea to intervene something terrible from happening personally.

This is especially after getting a tip from your surveillance.

Instead of approaching your child head on and blow your cover, you can always use someone else to reach them especially a professional therapist or counsellor.

You can also use family members or close friends.

Having your child’s phone under surveillance can also be a way of getting rid of their rebellious nature.

Remember that most children behave the way they do because they need to feel like a part of something and that is where peer pressure comes into play.

The good thing is that by tracking, you will have the right opportunity to see who your child’s friends are and who among them is negatively influencing your child.

From there, you can start taking control measures to widen the relationship between the two.

However, you need to be tactical in this because once your rebellious kid finds out you are tracking their phone, then you might be in for it.

What Should You Look Out For When Tracking Your Child?

The internet is like a forest with all sorts of things in it.

The sad part is that your child is also inside this forest.

As a parent or an adult, you can make good decisions that can help you survive in this forest because you already know the dangerous things and safe things in the forest.

For a child, it will be a matter of seconds before something preys on them.

With cyber parenting, your work is to look for signs of things that want to prey on your child.

That requires you to know your child’s contacts and what they often discuss.

As much as social media and other platforms allow people to chat through private messaging, you have to check on every person in your child’s private chats and stalk them one by one.

One sign of a child predator is always keeping the child close for no good reason.

They will greet, share pictures and all sorts of things that can make your child open up for them.

As a parent, the kind of conversations your child is having through private texting with a stranger can tell you their intentions.

You will also want to be concerned with the age of people who are in touch with your child online.

The new trick used by child predators is that they open fake social media accounts so that they can lie about their age.

As for a child, it will not be easy to tell if you are chatting with the right person or someone who wants to take advantage of you.

But, as a parent, the way a conversation flows can give you a hint of whether your child is chatting with age mates or malicious people.

During your spying, it is vital that you do enough investigations before jumping into conclusion and involving the authorities.

Our friends over at Pixel Privacy have a great non-techie guide that will also help you keep your children safe online

Cyber Parenting May Not Be A Walk In The Park

Teens are teens, and without giving their parents a hard time, they are never satisfied with anything.

There are cases whereby children find out that their parents are tracking their phones.

This is not a good thing especially if you have not found out that they know about the tracking.

However, some signs should make you suspicious.

If you realize that there is a sudden change in behaviour, then you need to think twice.

Typically, children want to appear perfect in front of their parents.

The moment they realize that you have dirt on them, they work so hard to redeem themselves.

That also means that they will behave better and even avoid all the bad things they did through their phone.

The bad thing is, the change can be too quick to be true.

There are son instances where a child can decide to get a new phone a keep it away from you so that you cannot track it.

However, this should still be easy to spot because you will notice reduced activities on their official phone.

Signs of abrupt behavioural change should worry you.

Especially if you know that you did nothing to contribute to it.

However, you should not be over suspicious because there is also a great chance that your child has decided to change their ways.

Our friends over at VisiHow have a great guide to keeping your kids safe from Stranger Danger

You Can Track Each Other

This usually is very common with single parents who only have one child.

That is because of the over protectiveness between them.

They are just two against the world.

However, it is a technique you could use with your child so that it does not seem that you have something to hide yourself.

It can help build trust.

However, never forget that the main reason why there is a tracker in the house and that is to spy on the child.

You will, however, want to be careful with the kind of information you will want to your child to access through the tracking app.

You can even get a separate phone for that matter.

Digital Parenting And Cyber Parenting Keeping Your Kids Safe Offline

While digital and cyber parenting has everything to do with the phone and online activities, you should know that you can influence your child’s online actions online.

There are so many fun things to do in life.

The best part is that you can often use your phone while doing these fun things.

From games to adventurous things to read and explore online, you can always feed your child great ideas of how to spend their time online.

As a parent, this should be easy assuming the fact that you know your child well.

It’s also good to know that when doing this, you have to be keen on your child’s interest.

And you need to make sure that the idea you have is impressive.

It is good to know that teenagers today are interested in anything that will glue them on the screen of their mobile phones.

They are the laziest generation in history.

Apart from encouraging your child to explore their interests online, you need to choose your topics very carefully around them.

You should know that children pick up things quickly.

Since the internet is free, they will easily go and look up for the meaning and other items can follow depending on which site they landed on to find meaning.

That is why you need to very careful about the things you say around your children.

This should also be applied to what you listen to and the TV programs that you watch together.

Never forget that a child’s brain is like a sponge soaking up information and it sees and hears everything.

Cyber Parenting – The Importance Of Digital Parenting – Takeaways

Before deciding to purchase any tracking software for your child, it is imperative that you consider the features.

Additionally, you should know that a good tracker is one that cannot be detected since some children will try to use tricks to evade being monitored.

Another essential feature of a tracker is its accessibility.

You should be able to access the tracker through any browser.

Compatibility should be among the considerations.

It is important to know that cyber parenting is beyond spying on your child’s smartphone.

It takes many strategies and solution plans that should ensure that your child is safe and you maintain a healthy relationship.

You should know that child predators have broken families beyond redemption simply because some parent are too lenient when it comes to digital and cyber parenting.

One important thing that every parent should not allow is their child to confide in someone else.

Especially some stranger from social media.

People who prey on children online know that once your child trusts them entirely, the child becomes a brain slave to them.

That is when your teenage son or daughter will start to display extreme signs that they are no longer in their rational minds.

That is all for now!

So do you track your child to keep them safe online?

Perhaps you have a ban on them using smartphones or accessing the internet?

Or maybe you have become a digital cyber parent and are using a GPS tracker…. if you do use a tracker then let us know what you are using and your experiences with the system via our comments section below.

And make sure that you subscribe to the comments so that you are notified when we reply.

Regards

Dexter

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Summary

Article Name

Digital Parenting - The Importance of Cyber Parenting

Description

In this new article, we are talking about digital parenting and the importance of monitoring your children's online and offline activity and ultimately following the rules of cyber parenting.

Author

Dexter Roona

Publisher Name

Infobunny

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