M1ndyDe31Gns

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Apps/ Monitoring/ Safeguard/ Training

Smart Phone Tips For Parents of Teenagers; What to Look For to Protect Your Kids

How do I protect my kids while they are on their phones? This is a question I hear from a lot of parents in my friends and family circles.

Simple Answer: Parental Controls.

Increasingly at an alarming rate, kids tweens and teens are on multiple devices per day.

Parents: did you know you can report self harm photos and generally bad accounts on social media?! Instagram supposedly banned self harm and pro-suicide posts yet they are still EVERYWHERE on that platform. Anything you see that’s inappropriate or bullying you can click ‘report’ and leave a comment of why those posts need removed. Suicide is the 2nd highest leading cause of death in kids ages 10-24. Lets join together and and make the internet safer for our kiddos!

How do we protect them while they are not on the home WiFi or home network?

I’ve put together a standard trifecta education and training approach for working together to achieve ultimate safeguarding your kids on their devices, specifically mobile phones.

A balance of these three objectives: knowledge, training, and monitoring should do the trick!

Lets first start with knowledge. I strongly believe an open door of communication is key for this step. Do your kids feel comfortable talking to you about what they are doing online? Parents who talk to their kids about the scary stuff online have more knowledge of what to be watching for. Educating teens of what they may encounter online and how to handle each situation helps prevent bad online behaviors and online predators gaining access to your kids. We can’t filter or protect everything, so open communication and knowledge is key! Examples of scary stuff they might encounter online is what to do when they see or experience cyberbullying or what to do when they see non age-appropriate content, etc.

YouTube recently has been under investigation when a group discovered child predators were using the comments section to exploit teens and kids. They have begun removing comments section of underage kids. But with thousands of videos going uploaded daily, it’s hard to filter inappropriate content fully.

A friend recently just happen to overhear what her 8 year kid was watching late one night, and was completely shocked to hear what he had access to. It was a cartoon on YouTube where halfway in the show the main character was having “feelings” for her stepbrother and went into very inappropriate dialog about it! This is NOT something her kid needed to be consuming at such an early age.

Technology is ever changing so is the need to stay up-to-date on the latest trends and resources out there. Hints this blog! 🙂

Next comes training. One way to stay up to date on all the latest apps is to download and use the newest and popular apps yourself. Most importantly self education and training on the latest trends, newest apps and what dangers are lurking! This helps when you are explaining the dangers online and how you are working to protect your kids, so they will know what to watch for. I would recommend downloading Snapchat, YouTube, Instagram and the games they play to start and get a feel of what content your kids have access to and who has access to them. Also ask your kids what apps they use and check their iTunes and Google Play stores for app downloads to make sure you have a handle on what apps they use the most. Healthy online habits at a young age can prevent your kids from being the target of predators. I will go further into details of which parent controls are best for smartphones below.

Third comes monitoring. This step works differently based on the level of trust you and your kids have and also their age. I will show you several ways below to monitor your kids on their phones in order to protect them. Watching their App Store downloads and content that comes across their phones is a great place to start! Once while driving a van of teenagers for our youth group, my lead foot got the best of me while passing a semi and one of the kids spoke up and said “My mom just text me to tell the driver to slow down, you are speeding!” There are many levels of monitoring even the exact speed of the vehicle they are in! But it’s ultimately up to you the level or monitoring you control and see so you can keep them safe online. Tools like real time GPS tracking, inappropriate search words filter, alerts for anyone outside your approved list of contacts who request information from your teens, etc; are what monitoring is all about.

Click to Download the List of Pros and Cons of Parent Controls for an iPhone and Android

Did you know there’s this app, Secret Calculator Photo Album? This app “Hides Photos and Videos behind a hiding Calculator, browse the internet privately without a trace, download images and files, hide everything!” This app interface is made to look like the standard calculator app, even works like a calculator, but when you enter the right password it unlocked the hidden features! Check it out for your self. This is unfortunately one app of many that your kids have access to and are encouraged to use by predators.

When talking about teenagers and tweens, good judgment and rules are meant to be pushed out the window and tried the the edge. Keeping your children safe online shouldn’t end their freedoms. However, the start of open and continued conversations and communications about how to build safe and smart habits online. You can truly be smarter than your kids online, and ultimately keep your kids safe online.

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General/ Safeguard

About

Welcome to my blog

 

Hi, I am Mindy. My day job is an online Graphic and Web Designer, working mostly in the digital marketing industry. I love all things technology, computers. devices, etc. Which means I am basically IT support for most of my friends and neighbors, a job I love as well.

Recently, my family was so blessed to build an orphanage in Haiti; so this became my mission abroad.  Once you have seen a hungry orphan in a third world country, it’s not something you can unsee. Check out our mission at Kenanke.org for more info!

Having no children of my own, I have just always felt the need to help protect all the children already born. Not only just helping orphans or hungry kids, but also all kids need protecting from online bullying and from adults who are looking to exploit them. Combining my knowledge of technology and how the internet works and my passion to protect the littles everywhere, I saw a gap. Teaching parents how to keep their kids safe online; thus this new venture was born!

My mission is to give parents all the resources, tools and best advice to be smarter than their kids on technology and be able to safeguard their children while on the internet!

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Education/ Monitoring

How much is too much: does too much social media use effect your mental health?

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Author: Jenny Linville

There is a lot to be said to/by parents when it comes to their children/teens and technology/social media. As a therapist, who works with teens-often times for symptoms of depression/anxiety/eating disorders, I also wonder if there is a big connection between a person’s use of social media/technology and a decrease in his/her mental health.

I have been hearing about studies for the young generation—the iGeneration, as some sociologists are calling them. This generation picks up right after the Millennials (the oldest of this group now in their very early twenties). This generation has grown up completely within a purely digital world, where all generations have been a part of the switch from analogue to digital. There are some differences in how this generation views the world, and particularly their use of technology and especially social media. One major difference that I have personally noticed while gathering information from my clients in session, is the amount of time my adolescent/teen clients they spend on their phones/social media/internet (this can include games, watching youtube, using messenging apps such as facebook messenger or snapchat, etc.). When I ask an adolescent client how many hours a day they are on their phones/technology, I am typically met with a laugh and “all day everyday.”  I will then push and ask to really think about total hours she/he might be on social media/phones. Most then answer, anywhere from four to six hours a day.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (2001), has recommended that no more than 2 hours per day per minor be given to screen time. This has continued to the be the standard recommended limit even as technology and use of social media has become more and more normalized. More recent studies have shown a pattern between a decrease in mental health to increasing screen/social media time per day.  This does seem to play out in real life in my office. If I have a client that is a teen or adolescent that is coming due to depression/anxiety, we discuss the amount of time he/she is on social media/technology. We then talk about studies and the AAP’s 2 hour recommendation. After we have discussed this I then say, “I am not telling you, that you have to give up social media or your phone.” I do want my clients and their parents to be aware of some risks of prolonged exposure to technology.

Where I like to keep the conversation for parents and clients is to know what studies are reporting, and offer options for having healthy timeframes for social media/technology use. We typically begin by having clients actually monitor/log their time, and then we look at making an achievable goal of reduced usage.  At first, this change is frustrating, but the long term effects can be helpful for teens having reduced amounts of anxiety and depression.

References

American Academy of Pediatrics. Committee on Public Education. (2001, Feb.). American Academy of Pediactrics: Children, adolescents, and television. Pediactrics., 426-6.

Hawi, N. E. (2015). Impact of e-Discipline of Children’s Screen Time. Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking, 337-342.