Maintain Netiquette Rules for Your Kids with Smartphone Monitoring App
When your kid asks you, “Mom, should I install this app?” these words a bound to make you smile for sure. It is a feeling of great satisfaction when you get to know that your guidelines to netiquettes are finally paying off.
Buying a phone for kids and setting parental controls is the story of every parent. Once you buy a smartphone for your kids, you get another worry of guiding them about its safe use. The reason is not the smartphone. It is in fact the world of technology that has reduced the gaps between people and makes kids vulnerable to a few drawbacks.
Unfortunately, kids are fast forward as compared to parents. They have the eagerness to explore their digital life. This calls for a dire need to implement netiquette rules for your kids’ well-being.
Why You Need To Establish Netiquette?
There are lots of facts that you need to consider before establishing netiquettes for them. According to the National Sleep Foundation, teens need about 9 hours and 15 minutes of sleep each night to perform best. Another study reveals that only 15% of teens get the amount of sleep they need.
Too little sleep can affect your kid’s health. It can even limit the ability of kids to learn and communicate and can lead to aggressiveness in nature. As a part of netiquette you should keep the phone out of children’s bedroom. In case they are still taking it with them by promising you they won’t use it, you should monitor it. You can use a monitoring app like StealthGenie to monitor their instant messenger chats and call logs.
You can look at messages with date and time stamps. So, if they are hiding it, you can check it straight away. You can look at the chats of WhatsApp, Viber, Skype and other similar messengers.
According to one news report by Fox news, sleep texting is a growing problem for teenagers. Dr. Keith Ablow talked about it and how it is affecting teen’s health.
Setting Netiquettes For Pictures
Sometimes the pictures that children and teenagers post online can be bad for their online reputation. To avoid such issues, parents need to ask them to put privacy restrictions on their pictures online. You know one of the biggest problems today is sexting and teens are coerced to send their nude photos. If your kids, whether intentionally or under any pressure share such messages, they qualify under child pornography. For parents it is of prime value to monitor the kind of photos their kids have in their mobile.
With access to their multimedia files, you can view their picture gallery and remove the photos you feel could turn out to be harmful to them.
Netiquette to Avoid Juvenile Cyber Crime
Many kids overlook the cybercrimes. Researchers found that illegal downloading of music is OK with the kids and it does not violate their moral instincts. If your teen is sharing and downloading digital music and movies without the permission of the copyright holder, then it would be problematic.
May be you would say that my kid won’t get punished, but it’s ethically wrong. You need to tell them to avoid the ways that are illegal. So how you can set netiquette to curb downloading illegal music and videos?
In order to monitor their safe cyber surfing and downloading activities, check out their internet activities by searching browsing history. You can even look at the installed apps to see whether they are legal or illegal.
Netiquette Rules to Stop Rumoring
Gossiping is a problem in one’s life. It can take many forms and the internet provides easy ways to spread rumors. One netiquette is to keep your kid safe from cyber bullying, another is to check whether your kid is a part of cyberbullies or not. You need to guide them the difference between cyberbullying and gossiping. You know it is as easy as saying Hi.
Many times it happens that your kid may receive emails that are in a continuous circulation. These emails can be harmful and should not be forwarded. You should talk to them about the risks and how they should put a restraint while forwarding such emails. As a part of your role monitor their emails and messages though.
Do you know, out of 11 facts about cyberbullying nearly 43% of kids have been bullied online and 1 in 4 have had it happen more than once? It’s a serious problem and can even lead to suicide by kids being bullied. Many cyberbullying cases have also been reported. Such kind of hate messages can have the worst impact on a kid’s life.
You need netiquette rules to protect digital reputation of your kid. You may understand it, but your kids not. Your monitoring can play a key role in maintaining these netiquettes. You have to put an effort to make your kid understand that whatever they do online, they are creating a permanent digital footprint. Guide them to avoid flame wars and practice good rules of netiquette.
Last, but not the least, talk to your kids about the rules.
Tell your kids why you are setting parental controls. Remember, you are your child’s greatest protector. Don’t think that monitoring is invading their privacy. Help them see and understand the key factors behind it.
