A Life-Changing Parent's Guide For Their Kids Online Safety

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How to Keep Your Kids Safe
in The Online World?

The internet is now wide open and easily available to most of the homes. We often use the internet for multiple purposes including different social media sites, to find out any information, to buy new things from e-commerce stores or to watch movies. While surfing through the browsers, we keep a close eye on the spam websites, the scamming emails or even the malicious files.

Without internet, things may get really tough for us, but what about our kids? Do we know what they are searching? Are they being secure online? They may not be safe every time while browsing the internet. Here is a complete guide on How to protect your Kids Online that you can opt to buy.

This Guide is Broken into 3 Sections

Benefits and Concerns of Technology

How to talk your kids about screen addiction?

How to talk to your kids about cyber bullying?

How to talk to your kids about safe messaging?

How to talk to your kids about self-esteem?

How to Talk to Your Kids about different Technologies?

How to talk to your kids about smartphones?

How to talk to your kids about social media?

How to talk to your kids about TV and video games?

How to talk to your kids about online security?

What can You Do as a Parent?

How to start the discussion with your kids?

How to create a Family Media Plan?

What should you know about Parental Control Software?

How to Talk to Your Kids about Screen Addiction?

Spending time on the PC, mobile phones and tablets are now increasing at a record rate in case of children at home. In fact, a successful study says that most of the young children 39% of their time in just staying awake in front of a screen. This number gradually grows amongst kids and teens. This is probably the first step of addiction that comes up in case of kids and youths. But to get rid of this, you can take up a few questions to ask your children.

Ask them over what do they do with the tablet and the PC. In fact, ask more about what do they like the most about this device. Try to know their state of mind when they are without the tablet. Try to ask more about what field activities they love to do the most and let them understand what is the healthy amount of time to be with the phone.

Side Effects of Screen Addiction

1. Loneliness

Most of the time, our kids may feel lonely because of getting too much addicted to a PC game. They start feeling that it is their only companion. So thus, it starts to make your kids feel depressed and lonely at times.

2. Anxiety

Most kids love to play games. But when they become addictive to it, they become more anxious to cross levels. But when it is unsuccessful, the anxiety levels increases. This may not only reflect in the games but also put a major backdrop in the regular lifestyle as well.

3. Stress

Being addictive to screen means that UV rays are always affecting your eyes and same happens with your children as well. The more time they spend on the PC, the more they harm their eyes which results in sever head pain and thus it increases stress as well.

4. Disturbed Sleep

Children require a lot of sleep to be active for the next day. But with the increasing amount of addiction to the PC or phones, it may start hampering their sleep. It is very important that they get proper hours of sleep to attend the school or to prepare for exams.

5. Disorders

Being in front of the PC or electronic devices for 6-8 hours in a day is definitely a big problem for any child. It may hamper their eyes as well as ears. So this leads to sever disorders which are unnoticed while they are being addicted

6. Concentration

Being online for so many hours means that they are only thinking about what they are doing on the PC. Even when your child is not in front of the PC, they start thinking about the same. This reflects in their school hours as well as education practices. So lack of concentration regularly occurs.

How to Manage Your Kids about Screen Addiction?

Talk with your children and let them know about the importance of time frame and time limits. It is always ideal to set a time limit for your children to sit in front of the PC or tablet.
Try to develop a family time together. Only packing their bags for school will never help you to keep your child secure. To keep them protected, you need to give them time as well.
Try to get more engaged in non-tech based activities. It is always ideal for children to spend their playing time out on the field and park. This helps them to grow healthy and always effective.
Kids always learn from what is around them. So only restricting their time limits on screen addiction will not help. You must change the habits of people inside the home also.
Try to use parental control software that will allow you to monitor what they are doing when online. This will give you a proper idea on how to proceed further.

How to Talk to Your Kids about Cyber Bullying?

As parents, the most important thing to look up for is to protect your child from anything serious and mostly like Cyber bullying. In fact, it is one of the most heinous crimes that can take place to a child because of unprotected internet use. According to a research, more than 34% of the kids of total internet users have experienced Cyber bullying and has changed their lives horrifically. There is actually no time for Cyber Bullying to occur with your child.

It can happen at any time and at any place. The most critical source of Cyber Bullying comes from social media. To get your child safe from this, try to have a conversation with them. Ask them about their state of mind; know if they are upset about anything or a friend. To know more about the ambiance they face at school and also talk about Cyber Bullying itself. Let them know what it actually is.

Side Effects of Cyber Bullying

1. Fear of Humiliation

One of the biggest effects of Cyber Bullying is the fear of humiliation they may have to face. They try to avoid schools or public places because of this humiliation which is never a good sign at all. In fact, such effects may lead to severe problems for your child in near future.

2. Upset

If your child is upset about something, it is always ideal to go and talk to them. Your harsh words may not only be the reason on why they are upset. Often such comments of Cyber Bullying on social media may make them upset about something.

3. Lonely

Cyber Bullying makes everyone feel lonely. We fear if our close ones get to know such things about us and we may get exposed in a bad way. This also happened with your child. Thus, they stop talking to people and avoid public places more. They feel lonely and they choose only the PC or tablet to be their companion.

4. Heavy Depression

The fear of being benched by someone or gobbled publicly always affects us. It is quite the same with your child if they are being bullied by their own friends or any known person in a public platform. This leads to severe depression in many ways.

5. Being Angry

If your child is angry on every respond, you may not be the reason. The side effects of Cyber bullying also make any person to be angry on the one who did it. This personality may reflect on them unless they get their revenge.

How to Manage Your Kids about Cyber bullying?

Do not directly use the term Cyber bullying right from the start, it may leave out a bad impression on the child. Use some familiar terms like drama, upset which will be much more meaningful for them.
Always try to be beside your child and let them know that it is not your fault. This will help your child to become confident and it will not make them feel depressed at all.
Teach your child not to respond to Cyber bullying every time they face it. Often these bullies may feed off the reactions which make them feel more depressed.
Try to be the one with whom your kids will share everything and make you their trusted adult. Make sure that you teach them to share you every difficulty they face.
Teach them on how they can avoid these bullies from social media. They may face such bullies throughout their entire life. So try to make them understand on how they can avoid these bullies.

How to Talk To Your Kids about Safe Messaging?

Smartphone, tabs and even cameras are now easily available to every home around us. Thus, life with texting or messaging our close ones, our friends are always easier. There is no bar of sending a message and any one can send anything to others. This happens with kids also. As parents it is always important to teach your children what is the most important thing about sending messages, what they can send and even what they must never share.

According to the recent studies, almost 20% of the teens have sent sexually explicit messages to others. This number also increases to 48% in case of receiving sexually suggestive messages. So it is always important to teach your children on what is right and what is not while your child is sharing such messages.

To get a better response from your child, you can ask them a few questions which include what are the thoughts they have while sending pictures to others. Know more about have they ever received any type of inappropriate messages on their social media accounts. Teach them on what to do with it. Try to know more about have they ever been engaged on a sexual conversation?

Side Effects of Sexual Messaging

1. Cyber bullying

One of the major side effects of sexual messaging is the Cyber bullying. Your child may think more about getting exposed or sexually abused though messages on social media. Strangers may share such messages on your social media posts which are much more abusive.

2. Embarrassment

Sending or receiving such sexual messaging in the public platform may lead to social embarrassment and In fact they can get embarrassed being in front of the public. You do not know who is sending your child such messages ad even if your kid is sending them to others. This may lead to social embarrassment in future.

3. Child Pornography

One of the biggest threats to sexual messaging is child pornography. Your child may send some explicit messages about sexual grievance to any other friend. This may lead to child pornography with some serious charges. So it is very important to talk with your child and make them understand what is right and what is not.

4. Sex Offender

Using sexual messaging as a mode of conversation with others may make your kid use such intentions publically. This may not only lead to making your child a sexual offender but also may lead to serious charges against them. In fact, most of the children facing such heinous issues are facing their life in jail.

5. Depression

The biggest impact of being exposed as a sexual offender and sexual messaging with friends or closed ones is to suffer from severe depression! You kid may break right away which leads to depression as well as different other side effects.

How to Manage Your Kids about Safe Messaging?

Do not wait until something big happens with your child. To get your child safe from this, you need to make them understand what sexual messaging is. This will help you to make them understand about what is right and what is not.
Make them understand that messaging is not something that can be reversed back or denied. Once your kids send someone explicit messages, they cannot be taken back. Let them understand that your kids need to think before messaging anything to anyone.
Try to teach then to not to forward any type of explicit messages. They may not be manually made by your kids, but sending them will just be another problem for your child. So make sure that you teach them not to forward such messages to their friends and closed ones.
Sending Sexual messages to closed ones are not the only thing to be worried about. Your children may also receive such messages from your closed ones. Let them not feel depressed and thus, it is always important to make them feel more comfortable to be talking to a trusted adult.

How to Talk To Your Kids about Self-Esteem?

The advent of social media is wisely increasing and similarly like us, our children are also getting addicted to spend most of their time in sharing pictures, liking pots and even playing games on social media. Little do we know that the social media plays a big role in the Self-Esteem of our kids? It is very important to understand and to educate our kids.

According to studies that have taken place, almost everyone now uses social media as a tool to stay happy right from the age of 12. Most of the kids do find it more curious about how they look, what other friends have and what they do not and about the comments they receive on the social media sites. Most of the kids receive negative comments on a simple photo posted online. But to make your child stay safe from this, you need to make them understand how important it is to not concentrate on such things.

You can ask them about their social media posts and about selfies. Ask them on how many pictures they take before posting a selfie and how it makes them feel when they get many likes on posts. Try to know about how they feel when they do not get such number of likes in their posts. How do posts from other friends make them feel about their own image?

Side Effects of Self-Esteem

1. Frustration

One of the major concerns of Self-Esteem is that your child may get frustrated easily. It is not possible to receive a large number of likes every time and so this may make them feel frustrated at times. So try to make sure that your child is not being frustrated because of the low number of likes.

2. Often Deleting Images

They may not like to keep images with a low number of likes. This happens to most of us when we are self-conscious about choosing any type of brand image. If Self-Esteem is high for your child, they will start deleting the images which are not so good and even contains a lower number of likes.

3. Pointing out to Flaws

Your kids may start put to point other flaws from people around you or more about their friends. It may not just be because of the fact that their friends have said anything, but it is more about creating Self-Esteem and making themselves superior than others. So you can see this change in behaviour easily.

4. Being Tired

Always thinking about how I look on social media, how much likes I shall get, how many people know me gives you a number of stress situation. In case of kids, this amount of stress increases. So it also reduces the time of sleep for any person. This, it makes your children to be much more tired.

5. Giving Up

One of the most rapid side effects that your child may face is the issue to give u easily. Yes, they may not know about how the technology works and not get enough likes as desired. So they stop to become presentable and thus easily give up on things.

How to Manage Your Kids about Self-Esteem?

Teach them all about social media policy and the norms. Make them sure to understand the privacy and the right amount of photos they should share. Try to make them understand that Social media is not only about sharing or getting likes. It is also about discovering things.
Make your child understand that life is not all about social media. There are a lot more real-life activities that they can wish to enjoy and get better results. Set a 50 per cent rule about sharing time on social media and on-field activities.
You need to teach your child that it is not always about the results that you get but the efforts that you make. This will help your child to stay away from depression.
Make them understand that social media is not the only way out to make Self-Esteem. There are numerous other ways by which you can adapt to make their Self-Esteem.

How to talk to your Kids about different Technologies?

With the advent of the internet in our hand with the help of PC, tablets and also smart phones, almost everything is easily available for us to use. It is also very evident that we do love to use smart phones to play games, do a lot of social media activities and also explore different websites. But the one thing that our kids do not understand is how the technology works.

What limit of browsing or playing games is good for them and what limit can harm your child. We often believe that technology helps us to run and work throughout the day, but when we become overwhelming to technology, it may slowly engulf us. Kids often use video games, become addicted to smart phones and banter online security. As parents, it is always important to make them understand what the different technologies are and till what limit we shall use.

How to Talk to Your Kids about Smart Phones?

Smartphone is now becoming one of the major components for us to regularly go through the day. We often do not know how much time a day we are facing the phone and how harmful can it be. Smart phone addiction can be very harmful to your children. Maybe they are using it for messages or social media activities, but at the same time, it is also very harmful to them to overuse the devices for a day. We often see our kids with a Smart phone in their hands right from the age of 10 while the recommended age is just around 14. This means that almost 70% of the teens own a Smart phone of their own which makes them more addicted to things.

According to researches, most of the parents have given a Smart phone to their children because they are not being able to spend so much time with them. Not only because of this, but most of the parents want to know about their children’s locations and want to get a hold of them while they are way from home. This makes the kids use smart phones more and thus it becomes a slow addiction. So what you need to do is to make sure that you follow the best guidelines to prevent your kids about smart phones.

How to Manage Your Kids about Smart Phones?

Try to be with your child as much as you can. Smart phone has become a companion for most of the kids because they are not available after work. Thus, the kids do not feel the need for any other companion apart from the Smart phone.
Try to raise the awareness and make sure that you make your child understand the side effects that they might face. You can also increase the concerns about addiction, sexting and much more that they must stay away from.
Try to be a role model. Every education for a child starts from home. So if you maintain time for using the Smart phone at home and in front of them, they will try to learn from you and understand what the need is.
Try to create a family plan together. If you give sufficient time to your child, they will never feel lonely and In fact, enjoy more time for home. This will make them feel more comfortable and gradually they will stay away from the overuse of Smart phone.
Try to get them more involved in other activities such as playing outdoor games, drawing, listening to music, dance and much more. So to make this happen, you can simply keep them always from non-tech based activities for most of the time.

How to Talk to Your Kids about Social Media?

The use of social media is vividly increasing in every standard. More kids are getting addicted to the use of social media in different ways. In fact, there is a more growing number of teens opening their social media accounts at a much lower age than most of the others. According to recent studies, most of the kids open their social media accounts right from the age of 11 when the recommended age is around 13. Apart from this, there are 53% of kids who have their parents on their friends’ lists while some of them do not have this.

Most of the users on social media as kids do have complained about being bullied or receiving abusive messages. This means that most of the teens are more addicted to social media chatting than connecting with people personally. So this also reduces the number of in-person contacts. Slowly these numbers are increasing and it may lead to a vivid increase in the addiction to social media activities. As parents, it is always important to know what your child’s behavior is on social media. So try to be friends with them which will allow you to know more.

How to Manage Your Kids about Social Media?

Let them know how the Social media platform works and how good it is to use them. Explore more with your child and understand how they feel about the concept of Social media and its uses. Ask them to teach you how the platform works.
Let your kids know more about privacy settings and the importance of using social media regularly. So educate them more about these features and let them know about how important it is.
Discuss more the adverts of Cyber bullying and sexting. Let them understand how harmful it can be and how important it is to understand the importance of such messages. Let them understand why they should never send such messages.
Teach your child about the good rules of using Social media. Make them understand the value of privacy and also the importance of good rules while you are allowing them to use social media accounts.

How to Talk to Your Kids About TV and Video Games?

Letting your kids understand more about TV and video games is very important for your kids to understand. Only getting addicted to smart phones is not the concern which you would be protecting your child from. To get better results, you need to protect your children from addiction to TV and video games as well. According to the recent studies, most of the kids spend almost 2 hours just watching the TV daily and almost 4 hours to play video games. This may also lead to screen addiction by the time they are just reaching to be teens.

Giving a proper education on the TV and video games will just be the right thing for you to think about. It is always important that you let them understand that what is a good time to watch the TV and video games and what is growing to be an addiction. According to a detailed study, most of the kids start watching and observing from TV habits right from the age of 9 months. This ratio increases to 50 % of the total kids when it comes to playing video games at the age of 2 to 4 years. So it is always very important that you keep a track on the period they spend to protect themselves from any type of heinous injuries.

How to Manage Your Kids about TV and Video Games?

Teach your children and make them aware of the time they are spending on TV and video games. To get better results, you can set up a family media plan together which will set the right limit for them to enjoy the show.
Try to choose a high-quality cartoon shows or even discovery shows which will help your kids to understand why they are seeing it and what their importance is. This will allow your kids to not only listen but to learn from the shows.
Try to play more games with your kids without the use of technology. You can bring in several board games to play with your children which will help them to understand better. Make sure that you do not use much technology at this time.
Try to use parental control software and technology which will allow your child to only view age-based contents. This will allow them to understand the usage limits and also make the screens inconvenient for use.

How to Talk to Your Kids About Online Security?

Online security has now become a major concern for anyone being online. Most of the adults face problems for online security for browsing into some websites which are filled with malicious files. Thus, the rate is a massive increase in the case of kids. Online security does not mean only about browsing into any other website, it also includes being targeted by online criminals throughout the web. It is very difficult to know who is targeting your child and even tracking them down. So it is very important to understand how important online security is for both parents your child to stay safe from the harms of the internet.

According to studies, almost 41% of the teens are now being targeted by the online security breaches and also by cyber criminals. This number increases to almost 69% when we talk about receiving private messages from strangers. This is just the process of slow transitioning which makes any user be successful in hypnotizing your child. There is also a massive increase in the number of inappropriate contents to children which makes it even more difficult for the parents to track them down. So it is always important that you understand how it works and how effective online security is.

How to Manage Your Kids about TV and Online Security?

Talk with your Kids about Sharing Personal Information like address, a number of people in the family, where do they study and others to strangers. Make them understand what a good conversation is and what can be a harmful conversation.
Educate your Kids about the Passwords and also the best practices of them. This helps you to understand how important it is to let them know about the importance of password protection. Make them understand to not give always these passwords to anyone.
Using Parental Control Routers can help you have control on your childs online activities as you can constantly monitor what your child is doing online. Also, you can block the sites that you don’t want your child to surf. Here is a deatiled review of Best router for Parental Controls. We hope this will help you find out the one for you.
Try to Install Anti-virus Software on the PC which will allow your child to keep the PC safe. So even if they download any unwanted and harmful files, the software will keep the PC protected. This is very important for your child.
Try to use Content Filters. You can use some parental control softwares which will keep their PC and personal information always protected. This not only allows your child to be safe, but it makes sure that you can use the possible measures of online security.
You can also take help of Wifi-Extenders to improve internet connectivity across your home. Here is a review article explaining the best wifi extender for comcast.

What can you do as a Parent?

As a parent, you always must understand what is good for your children and what is not. It is not always ideal to keep a restriction on everything. Being a child, they will forcibly want to explore more. So if you wish to keep your child safe, you must make them understand what is good and what is not. There is nothing better than parents having a healthy conversation with their children while teaching them about the good habits of internet and all about internet safety.

To make sure this happens to be good, there are a few things that you can do like having a complete discussion with them about safety. Apart from this, you can also create a family media plan with your children and using proper parental control software fro them. Here is a complete guide that you can follow.

How to Start the Discussion with Your Kids?

One of the most important steps that you need to consider is to take a proper step which will allow your child to understand internet safety. If you want to have a healthy discussion, here are a few tips that you can follow.

The first thing that you need to consider is internet safety and how it works. You must understand the importance of internet safety with your child and equip knowledge about the internet. Let them know the online dangers and also the abuses and threats.
Startup the conversations early and do not wait for something big to happen. Never wait for things to happen and the basics that you need to follow. Make sure that you understand the difference between a good conversation and an experience.
Try to be open with your child. If you need to understand how he likes doing the internet, you need to be a friend of them. So make sure that you understand the factors and also the importance of using such sites.
Create the rules for using the internet. Most of us use the internet for different purposes and we often feel that we don’t need to abide by the rules. But to prevent your child from getting tracked down, you need to have proper rules of using the internet.
Be a good example. Since you are trying to make your kids understand you need to change the habits from home itself. Kids quickly adapt to the conditions which makes them easily available for better results. So try to change the rules of using the internet at home.
Just telling them and having a conversation will not be good enough for you. To make better results, you need to show them how things work and what should we use the internet for. If you give them a proper education, they will always follow your words.
Try to use analogies which mean that you can allow your child to keep the passwords and the data safe. Keeping the password safe is the most important thing that you need to look up to if you are willing to have a healthy relationship with your child.

How to Create a Family Media Plan?

Creating a time out from the technology world is very important for your child as well as your family health. Kids require more attention as a companion and also as a friend. So if you can plan up to give more time for your child, it will always be beneficial for you. So try to use the time for a Family Media Plan. Here is a guide that you can follow for the effective results.

Try to go for face to face conversations. Do not try much using the technologies for a conversation. This makes it a habit for users to only communicate via phones or digital calls. If you do not have the time to reach out for a one-on-one conversation, try to avoid video calls.
Once you go online, you cannot delete any type of messages. So try to make your kids understand how important it is to think before messaging. If they just hit the Enter button and the message is gone, it can never be deleted.
Try to go for board games which the child will like to play. Getting some time off the technology is indeed a great thing that you can opt for. So try to get some time off the internet and use them as a better way of spending the Family Media Plan.
Do make sure that you keep a restriction on watching the media contents. It is always better to Family Media Plan and includes your children in it. This will allow you to keep your child away from the media. Do not sit in front of the TV for more than 2 hours a day.
Try to be more conscious about the content that is being shown over the media TV. Do not try to choose the shows which promote any type of explicit content or even get the harmful results for your kids to understand. So try to opt for such Family Media Plan which will leave a healthy family time.

What Should You Know About Parental Control Software?

Using proper Parental Control Software for child safety is always important for you to use. Even if you are using it for your PC or the kid’s smartphone, it is always important for you to concentrate on safety. This is where Parental Control Software becomes helpful for you to use. Here is a guide on the Parental Control Software that you must use.

Try to use a Parental Control Software which will help you to monitor the searches. There is much professional software available which allows you to monitor the searches and lets you with proper reports. This will help you to keep a track on your child.
Try to use an Anti-virus. Make sure that the Parental Control Software is compatible with the anti-virus software. This will prevent your child from downloading any type of unwanted files from the internet. This now only allows you to get efficient results, but also helps you to keep the data safe.
Try to restrict the content. The one thing that you must do as a parent is to restrict the contents which your child is about to browse. It may be difficult for you to personally block the sites, but the Parental Control Software will do the job for you. You can take the help of the Parental Control Software to manually block the sites and the keywords to find.
Set a time limit. Most of the professional Parental Control Software not only help you to prevent any type of site blocking but also sets out screen time. If your child is a teen, you can set the screen time accordingly and make sure that you use them properly. Such activities will be very helpful for you.

Wrap Up

Are you still wondering about how to protect your child? If you see any unusual behaviors from them it is always important to have a good conversation with them. So make sure that you properly do thorough research on the How to Protect your Kids Online – The Ultimate Children’s Protection Guide and implement the ideas. This will help you to get immediate results and keep your child safe from any type of internet activities. It is very important to keep these factors in your mind before opting for such results.

How to Keep Your Kids Safe in The Online World?