Child-Proofing Your Devices: How Much Control Is Too Much?

Children and young adults are growing up in a vastly different environment from their parents. Although Millennials did have some access to the internet in their early years, the World Wide Web is an unrecognizable landscape compared to the one adults remember. 

As many parents probably know by now, cutting the kids off from the online experience probably means alienating them from the social one as well. Those of us that want to raise healthy individuals have to allow our little ones to experience the web. There are ways to go about that in a safe way and give our children the necessary freedom while practicing caution.

Biggest Online Threats for Children

The first concern for parents is the exposure to unsavory content, and the majority of child-proofing measures aim to tackle this very issue. Another one is the exploitative nature of some platforms that are chasing profit at the expense of children’s safety, privacy, and self-esteem. 

Apart from letting your child roam freely online, the biggest mistake you can make as a parent is to let them roam too much. No online time is definitely an extreme measure that is bound to leave a negative impact on your child’s mental health. But on the other end of that spectrum is the excessive use of devices. This is a uniquely modern mental-health hazard and we’ll need to see a whole generation grow up to assess the damage it can make. 

Controlling the Content

Luckily, there are plenty of things parents can do to ensure the wrong content is being filtered out. Windows has plenty of built-in parental control options that allow you to restrict access, monitor websites your child visits, and keep track of time spent online. You can view these options by going to Settings > Update & Security > Windows Security > Family options. 

Another popular option for parents is creating separate password-protected accounts, giving your children the account with restricted access to the system. You can do this by simply going to Settings > Accounts > Family & other users > Add someone else to this PC, and choosing the I don’t have this person’s sign-in information > Add a user without a Microsoft account option to create the account. Although this is effective in giving your child the perfect balance of privacy and security, some parents take the opposite route and make sure they use shared accounts both off and online. By having joint Youtube, Spotify, Netflix, and other profiles, you can easily see the recommendations and history and get a picture of what your child does online. This may be a good option for younger children, but tech-savvy youngsters can easily circumvent this. 

A more intrusive method that is usually recommended for younger children, up to the age of 10, is Keystroke loggers like Kidlogger. These tools record your child’s activity and take periodic screenshots so that you see what the child does online. A less intrusive but more restricting option are Child-safe browsers, but the search results are very restricted, and older children will probably refuse to use them.

Data Protection

Privacy is a growing concern for parents, especially since exploitative algorithms that collect our data don’t discriminate when it comes to children. According to recent studies some even target them. If your child is young or not very tech-savvy, they can be easy prey to identity theft, fraud, and malicious websites. Sometimes, just visiting the website can install malware to the child’s computer and give hackers free access to their personal information. The best way to avoid this is to get proper antivirus software and update it regularly. Many parents invest in family identity theft protection services, as this makes for an all-encompassing solution to protect the whole family. Some services like Identity Guard alert you if your child’s personal information is making rounds on the black market, which is one of the more useful features of this and similar software. 

Open Communication Is Key

While cybersecurity software can help you with data security and virus protection, no one can alert your child about the existence of predators and dangerous people but yourself. This is where good parenting skills and healthy communication come into play. If the child is young, you can easily protect them by completely restricting, controlling, and monitoring their device usage. But as they grow older you have to give them certain freedoms, which include them having their own email, and personal social media accounts. For this reason, it’s important to talk openly to your children about meeting strangers online, and explain that they should abstain from giving any kind of personal information to people they don’t know well. 

Since most children already give away their identity on social media and post pictures of themselves together with locations they visit, just withholding information won’t do the trick. It’s also important to let them know they should under no circumstances agree to meet people they’ve met online without asking for your consent. Always ask to know who your child is meeting, where they are going, and whether any adults will be present. Social sharing doesn’t only concern children and the ‘sharenting’ phenomenon is another danger to children’s privacy. This goes for you too, parents. Data shows that 75% of parents share information about their children online. Make sure you’re not one of them. 

Balancing Out Control and Freedom

The hardest part of providing your children with a safe browsing experience is giving them enough freedom to explore. If you restrict them too much or if they feel you are snooping on them, they’ll quickly find a way to take their business elsewhere, where you have even less supervision. This might seem like a nightmare, but it’s the same thing every parent that’s ever imposed a curfew had to do. The only difference is the new environment. Although every time you hear about an unfortunate event that involves a child, the internet, and strangers the first impulse is to become paranoid and tighten the grip on your child’s online experience, therapists still claim that trust is superior to control. 

The desire for independence is a natural urge and if we know anything about human nature it’s that those urges will always find a way to be fulfilled. Verbally imposing rules and regulations, educating your child on safety measures, and explaining why they are necessary usually does the trick. The explanation is the crucial part of this because children are more likely to comply if they understand why they need to do it. 

Parental control, safe browsers, and protective software are encouraging developments offered by the digital world, but good-old open communication and wise parenting can never be replaced.