Managing your Kid’s digital engagement
In this day and age all of kids are expert on using tablets, smartphones and gaming systems but we need to be diligent and monitor them closely. There is a world of “bad people” trying to engage them and out older kid’s have found some pretty clever ways to hide things they should not be doing.
I have a few people I follow which excellent tips and guidelines and decided to share a few with my MacKid Family.
Safe Browsing
Kids under 5 -- create a list of sites that you are comfortable with and approve and add them onto their devices. Monitor their usage.
Kids 5 -8 -- I bet you didn’t know that you can disable the browser on a device in settings. Find the browser under applications and “Disable” or “Force Stop”. Once this is done you can replace it with a kid-friendly browser that you download from the app store. KidzSearch Safe and Mobisafe are two that I use for my daughter. You can use the filters to control content for your child. Monitor their usage.
Kids 9 and up -- Google Safe Search. Using Google Safe Search along with controls set on devices is an effective way of filtering content. On a mobile device (tablet/smartphone) Go into “Settings” then “Search Settings” and choose “Filter Explicit results”. On a laptop go to google.com/preferences and click on “Turn on Safe Search”. Monitor their usage.
When using laptops with windows you can also create a Microsoft Family Account and add each child’s device and it will send you a weekly report of where they have been.
You can also Kid-Proof your Wi-Fi
Here are a few items you can purchase to kid-proof your wi-fi….
This cute cube monitors every device connected to your wi-fi through an app on your phone.
KoalaSafe is a parental control router that lets you easily monitor the time your kid spends online.
Screen is a set top box which Set time limits, Track device usage & activities, set family rules for device and TV usage, remotely turn off devices including TV and Game Consoles,
display custom messages on all screens, and create your own alternative activity options,
locate any connected device.
There are several things we can do to monitor our kid’s digital life, the easiest are password protect your devices, have established purchase authorization controls for apps and websites and definitely turning OFF location identification on all their devices and yours when posting on social media about your kids.
