As the Internet increasingly has more risks of putting children in trouble, parents begin to worry more about the harm to their children and from there, a series of new ways arise to enable parents to follow their child’s activities on the Internet.
However, should you spy on your kids to ensure children can be safe online?
The article will help you answer this question by yourself.
Why parents shouldn’t monitor their children’s Internet use
The line between protecting and violating children’s privacy is fragile
and
to lessen your fears, parents sometimes pay very high prices.
Infringing your children’s privacy
With tracking technologies, parents can monitor their child’s calls, texts, chats, social media posts, etc. Supervising children may indeed have less to do with keeping their children safe, but in fact, it has more to do with their burning desire to lessen their anxiety.
The goal of parenting is to create a mature, healthy, and self-controlled person. Developing healthy development begins from the moment your baby is born, says Nancy Darling, a psychologist at Oberlin University.
One of the most difficult things about parenting is that parents have to balance their child’s desire for spying on their kids with the worries about the risks they face.
Privacy is an important part of developing that autonomy. Privacy isn’t just important to teenagers, that is their mission. Because to mature and grow up, minors are self-personalized, free from parental control. Therefore, parents need to respect children’s privacy.
Destroy the relationship with your child
Although many parents do not believe it, the truth is that most children are more tech-savvy than their parents.
With just a few clicks of searching on the internet or through friends, your child will easily discover the apps you use to track them, think about how your child will feel then? Frustrated, and angry, some children even hated their parents.
Should you spy on your kids if you know that you also don’t like being spied it! So why do you make your kids endure it? Let’s respect the children’s online privacy protection act.
When you feel that you are under constant supervision, you will find more and more ways to get out and so you will become more secretive.
Like your children, your child does not trust and share with you anything if they know you spy on them. At this point, according to research, children whose monitoring parents are more likely to be affected by the harmful effects of the Internet than any other child.
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Your child becomes more and more secretive
Although many parents do not believe it, the truth is that most children are more tech-savvy than their parents. Your kids can easily figure out how to hack the system by letting their phone track their location in the locker when they drop out of school or set up a second secret Instagram account.
Should you spy on your kids or not if you know that they will find ways to hide their online activities? And if they don’t know how to do it, Google is here to help.
Not surprisingly, when children do not feel they can trust their parents, they become even more secretive.
According to research surveying children about whether their parents respect their children’s privacy, children of supervising parents reported more covert behavior and their parents reported they less knew about their activities, friends, and whereabouts compared with other parents.
This means there is a ratio between the level of secrecy and the privacy violations of the child. And these are the reasons why parents shouldn’t monitor their children’s internet use!
What online safety tips can I do to help my kids online safe while still respecting children’s privacy?
Talk to your child regularly about Internet dangers
Conversation is both a foundation, a catalyst in building a meaningful and intimate relationship between parents and children.
Talking is one of the best ways for children to self-aware and stay away from Internet dangers.
So you need to regularly share and chat with your children about Internet problems such as sexting, online bullying, oversharing on social networks, using drugs, etc. so that children understand and proactively protect themselves from these troubles.
Think of this as an informal conversation, not a lecture because your child has been exposed to these too much at school.
Besides, you also need to build an intimate environment where your children can trust you and share with you any problems they encounter, even the most sensitive issues.
Use Internet content filtering tools
As a modern and wise parent, don’t watch your eldest child’s text and all social activities. Although it is understandable that parents want their children to be safe and free from risk-free behavior on the Internet, there is a painful trade-off for their child’s privacy invasion and relationship with them.
Instead, you might consider using an AI content filtering tool that is unique and best featured:
- Block pornography of any kind (image/video/ad) and across all browsers, social networks, forums, search engines, etc. from reaching your child
- Hide horror content (ghosts, accidents, gore or violent pictures) from approaching your child.
- Detect and update inappropriate content in real-time to help protect your child promptly and quickly.
and more importantly:
- No feature allows seeing their child’s text messages or calls
- No feature allows seeing their child’s social media activities
This is probably the best balance between keeping your kids safe on the Internet but still not invading your child’s right to privacy.
Conclude
Just because you are able to supervise and track your child on the Internet doesn’t mean you should.
As a wise and respectful parent, you should not browse their social media accounts, read their text messages or emails, use child tracking devices, or track their cell phone, track your child’s text messages or calls. And don’t expect them to tell you passwords for their social media and email accounts.
There are plenty of tools and software out there that allow you to snoop on your baby, but you should firmly believe that you shouldn’t blindly trust any solution to keep your kids safe, instead, you should play an active role – talk and share with your child as mentioned above.
Technology can help, but it’s important to build an open, honest, and trusting relationship with your kids and at the same time, silently protect them from online inappropriate content.
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