There is no question that we live in a modern age, and as our children grow to be more and more digitally savvy in a modern period. Parents need an attentive sense of protection when it comes to the online activity of their children. Social media is a popular platform on the internet. Every kid, tween, teen, and adult are using social media excessively.
Read: How Social Media Affects Student Time Management
Children of a very young age are being more widely seen using social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, etc every day. There are many benefits that kids can get from social media.
Pros Kids on Social Media
● Helps to build their social interaction.
● Helps in their communication.
● Helps to explore new things.
● Provides general knowledge.
● Platform to showcase your hobbies or talents.
Read: 10 Proven Ways to Make Millions on Social Media
But it’s also detrimental for kids. When it comes to children’s Internet security, social media platforms are an important factor to fix.
Cons Kids on Social Media
● Exposure to inappropriate or mature content.
● Victims of Cyberbullying.
● Leads to digital addiction.
● Mental and physical health complications.
● Online predators, scammers, or cybercriminals.
Read: How Social Media Affects Student Time Management
Why It’s Important To Monitor Your Kid’s Social Media?
The number of social media users is increasing day by day. Parenting a child is a challenge in this digital age. Apps or online media platforms tend to shift quicker than parents can keep up. Kids aren’t aware of the negative effects of social media. For underage kids, social media is a very dangerous place to be. Social media is a very addictive platform. Once kids start using it they tend to get addicted.
They use social media to communicate with their friends & families, to share or post videos & photos, and do other activities. Majorities of the kids are being the victims of cyberbullying. It may lead your kids to mental health issues. In social media, there are high chances of viewing inappropriate content. They might encounter violent content which causes a bad impact on their thinking.
Parents will be unaware of their kid’s social media activities and they don’t know about what is going in their lives and social media. So, it’s important to monitor your kid’s social media in this digital era to keep them safe from threats of social media. You can know their online activities and can know whether they are safe from online predators or not. It will protect your kids from the danger of social media and helps to mitigate those harmful effects.
Tips for Monitoring Kids Social Media
Social networking platforms can be an ideal way to encourage kids to connect. However, parents still need to consider the harmful consequences and risks that occur on these sites. Every parent is concerned about their kid’s digital safety. Here are the 10 tips for monitoring a kid’s social media.
1. Let Your Kids Know about Monitoring Social Media
Firstly, It’s important to tell your kids that they are being monitored. You should make a rule for social media platforms. Tell your kids about the danger of social media. It may cause harmful effects on your overall development. Nowadays, kids are tech-savvy somehow they will get to know about parental control software. If they know that their parents are monitoring their social media without any permission.
It will affect their relationships and kids won’t trust their parents. So, it’s better to tell your kids earlier, they are monitoring social media for their safety. By telling them about the parental control apps, there will not be any relationship problems in the family. The main purpose to monitor your social media is to prevent and protect you from the danger of social sites.
2. Set Boundaries
It is important to have a clear discussion with your kids about what you should post after you have access to social media. When tracking your child’s behavior, you must set guidelines for social media use. Make sure that your kids know about what to share on social media and what not to.
Make their personal information private and don’t share it with an unknown person. If your kids are breaking the rule set by you then tell them they will have to face some consequences and it will be better to monitor their social sites.
3. Review Privacy
As most of the social networking sites have age restrictions and privacy settings. Kids need to be 13 years old or older than that to create an account on social networking. You should be mindful that if your kid is under this age and has a social site account, they accessed it with fake DOB and information.
You can set the privacy settings. For instance, who can send messages to your kids, who can be friends with him or her, and who can access his or her details? Check all data security properties of the apps allowed to ensure that accounts containing personal information are private and not publicly accessible.
4. Have a Conversation
You need to have a clear conversation with your kids often to know about their daily lives. Have a conversation with your kids about what kind of activities they are doing online. Talk with your kids about whether they are following the rules of social media or not. If your kids are using social media you should be there to observe their activities.
Parents need to be mindful of the social pages their children use, what social sites they used more often, how long they use them and who their peers are on their friends list. It also ensures that information is exchanged during visits to these pages.
5. Check their Activities
You should check their mobile devices and know which social media apps they are using. If you find any inappropriate apps on your kid’s device you should remove or uninstall the app. You can also use the parental control app to monitor those apps. The monitoring app will block those explicit content or apps.
You can also check their social media platforms from your trusted or closed people accounts. Make an account and add your kids from that account. You can check your kid’s social media activities, post, shared content, their profile privacy, and friend list. If you find something wrong you can monitor their social account with monitoring apps.
6. Educated Yourself
Parents need to be educated to know about their kid’s online activities. If they aren’t educated enough how they can know about the monitoring apps. So it is important to have a little knowledge about parental control software or to be tech-savvy. You can add your kids to your social media so that you can know about their activities. In this way, parents definitely would have a greater idea of what their child does on social sites.
7. Aware Them About The Danger of Social Media
The majority of the kids don’t know about the harmful effects of social media. Make them aware of the online predators and they can have a negative influence on you. You can also know if your kids are being victims of cyberbullying or not. You should know the signs and symptoms of bullying. If you find any sign then it’s better to take measurable steps to stop those harmful activities.
Aware your kids about the unknown people they talk to on social sites have the intention to harm them. If your kids see any inappropriate content online make sure they inform you about the content.
8. Place Devices in an Open Place
One of the easiest ways to track kid’s social sites is to ensure they keep the device in a free and open home location where parents can observe their activities. If the children use laptops, tablets, and mobile phones to access the Internet, they should be advised to use them on secure sites in open areas. Although older kids may prefer to use it in their private areas, this shouldn’t be recommended.
9. Choose Best Monitoring Software
The next step to online security and control of your kids’ social sites is to choose the best monitoring tools. These specially built suites monitor all your kids’ online activities. For instance, keystrokes, website history, received messages, apps download and all aspects of their operations will appear. There are many paid and free app, as paid have unique and unlimited features.
Choosing the best monitoring apps will provide you the complete features to monitor your kid’s social media. Fenced.ai, Bark, Net Nanny, Qustodio, are some of the best parental control apps for your kid’s online and offline activities.
10. Limit Their Device Uses
Kids are always addicted to their mobile devices. This addiction should be controlled by limiting their time. You should set a rule for their device usage. You should allow your kids to use mobile phones for one hour after the completion of their school work or assignment. Make a rule for not using the mobile phone at dinner or bedtime.
Conclusion
Therefore, everyone has a social media account. Even today’s kids are tech-savvy somehow they can create social media accounts and their parents are unaware of the kid’s social site activities. So, it’s important to teach your kids about digital etiquette and encourage them to follow the rule set by their parents.
