Introduction
Nowadays, smartphones can provide most technical services to you, without having to purchase dedicated tools or electronic devices. For instance, most smartphones have built-in compasses and GPS, showing you your direction as well as coordinates on the world map. Phone cameras are usually advanced enough to obviate the need to purchase one separately. Scientific calculations can be made using an app developed for this purpose. There are also many games one can purchase from online stores that are available just for smartphones.
Let us not forget the original purpose of cell phones, namely remote communication. Besides making phone calls, text messages can easily be sent from one phone to another via mobile network. The latest smartphones support all forms of communication, including sending and receiving voicemail, online chatting and video conferencing. Instant messengers like WhatsApp and Viber can allow you to share stored videos and photos conveniently. E-mails can be received without having to log into your account, and attachments can be viewed on the phone.
With all these amazing features, it is not surprising to find teenagers these days glued to their smartphones, unaware of the everyday activities going on around them. Parents are mostly very enthusiastic about buying them a smartphone of their choice, not realizing that without receiving proper education on how to handle it, they are most likely to misuse it.
To prevent your child from overindulging in idle activities on their devices, parental guidance and control is necessary. Explain to your children the need to do everything in moderation and not to waste time texting their friends if their homework is not finished. Also, keep checking their calls logs, SMS and web browsing history. Make sure that your children are not spending too much time on their phones and are visiting child-friendly websites.
Tracking Apps
You might want to consider installing a tracking app on your child’s cell phone. These spy apps monitor the phone’s activities without letting the user become aware of it. Parents will find a lot of use for these since many a time children give up following the rules in their absence. Also, they might be deleting their messages, e-mails or internet history. Thankfully, spy apps have a solution to all these problems. Once an activity is performed on the phone, such as sending an SMS or opening a URL on the phone browser, it is immediately recorded and the information is uploaded to a secured online server. The logs can be accessed by the parents simply by signing in with their username and password.
In this way, you can track your children’s text messages, call logs, web browsing history, instant messenger activity and e-mails without them ever finding out. By monitoring their activities, you can rebuke them if they are wasting too much time on their cells and not giving enough to studies. Spy apps also come with app and URL control features. This means that any game the child is excessively fond of or website that he/she spends most of the day at can be blocked. Although without revealing to them the presence of the spy app it might be difficult to explain this occurrence, this feature can still prevent your children from overusing their smartphones.
Instead of being deprived of this privilege, children should be taught the correct way of using their smartphones as they are to become responsible adults tomorrow. By educating them on how to balance the time that they give to work and entertainment, parental guidance goes a long way in teaching children some essential lessons in life.
Set Limits
To ensure that your child does not use smartphones all the time, you need to talk with the child and agree on the time and place that they can use their phones. Phones may be good for communication however, with smartphones and internet accessibility smartphones may do good things as well as cause a lot of destruction. You need to install an app to monitor the child sits time online per date and even the people following your child. Also you need to establish the time child can stay online since without discipline there is not success.
Educate them on where they can visit
The generations of kids that are being raised are the kids who long games and movies and most of their free time is spent on computers. This is mainly because they live in most cases in urban setting and going for play is hard. But if you can give them an equivalent plan they will accept. Ask your kids to visit each other and in process get to know what life is.
Monitor your kids
Install apps that will monitor your child digital logins and when they visit any adult websites you can easily know and reprimand the child. Sit with the child and advise them to always ensure that they are not chatting with strangers online or sharing personal details with them. Children have been abducted without their parents knowing.
Give the child an e-free day
After being online for a week or throughout the week ensure that the kid gets to experience other games in life. Ensure that at least once in a month schedule a hike or a walk through the woods so that the employees may leave the stress.
Follow your instincts
It will reach a time when children spend most of their time online and it could be attributed the fact that the online community accepted her and they remain anonymous. People are sometime ignorant of the fact that children need them and instead of being with them as a parent you leave them to play with their phones. Create time listen to your children and discuss their problems.
Practice what you preach
The important thing as a parent is not to be using the mobile phone every time. The best things are leaned through watching and your children are watching you. Lead by creating rules and follow them. When you tell your children not to use smartphones and you are using it everywhere you are this will create the idea that you are not serious about the issue.
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