Why Tracking Your Kid’s Online Activity is Vital in This Digital Age?
Come to think of it—have you ever realized why your children are spending too much time on their device? Do you often find them awake until the wee hours of the morning and using their smartphone instead of getting some sleep? Do you often find them stressed out, moody, or anxious? If these signs are evident in their behavior, it’s time for you to start monitoring their online activity.
You wouldn’t realize but there could be a possibility that your child is facing several online challenges and social media problems while using the internet on their devices. They may not speak about them but their behavior would convey everything. Most parents resort to monitoring their children’s online activity. This makes them look for the best iPhone monitoring app, best Android tracking software or any tool that could help them track their child’s online activity.
Most parents would get a little squeamish when it comes to parental monitoring. One of the reasons is that they wouldn’t want their children to feel that they are invading their piracy and that they are not letting them be on their own. Children do not want their parents to find out what they have been doing online so they hide their online conversations and activity from them.
This makes them secretive about their online activity. In an attempt to being private online, they may come across several online threats and pose to serious online risks that can leave a disastrous impact on their mental health and overall wellbeing.
No parent would want their child to feel sadness, go through depression or have suicidal thoughts by spending too much time on the internet. Those who resort to monitoring are basically concerned about their child’s safety on the internet. This is what parental monitoring is all about—ensuring your child remains safe in the digital realm.
Below, we have listed some of the reasons why tracking your child’s online activity is considered vital in this digital age. Let us go through them one by one.
Online Predators
Online predators are everywhere on the internet. They are easily found on most social media sites, secretly targeting young children as their victims. They lure innocent children with their sweet talk and gain their confidence only to become close to them.
Later, they take advantage of them by demanding inappropriate photos and videos from them. They use this content either to blackmail children and their families or sell it to the dark internet for a good price. The only way to prevent your children from interacting with sexual predators is to monitor all their online interactions.
Cyberbullying
Cyberbullying is one of the greatest evils of the internet. Gone are the days when your kids used to get bullied only in schools and colleges. The internet has allowed people to reach out to anyone and express their feelings and emotions, whether positive or negative.
Many children get harassed online by bullies. Consequently, they suffer emotional distress but are afraid to tell anything to their parents. They receive abusive and threatening messages but wouldn’t dare say a word to anyone. In such scenarios, parents should keep a close eye on their online activity to find out whether or not your child is being bullied by someone.
Sexting
Many tweens and teens get involved in sexting without knowing about its dire consequences. They exchange inappropriate messages, nude photos, and videos to others without realizing that those messages could be shared by someone else as well.
It doesn’t take much time for such type of content to become viral on social media. Therefore, children need to be extremely careful about who they are talking to and what sort of messages they are exchanging with them. Parents can also play a vital role here by monitoring their text messages regularly. Monitoring can help them protect their children from landing in serious trouble.
Pornography
Porn is everywhere on the internet. It’s impossible to get completely rid of it because no matter which site you open or which platform you visit, you will find a flashing inappropriate photo or video somewhere in the ads section.
Since porn is prevalent on the internet, you need to adopt some effective measures to prevent your children from watching it. You can either enable SafeSearch on their web browsers, install parental controls, or simply filter or block porn sites on their devices using the best iPhone monitoring software or Android tracking software.
Safeguard Reputation
Children have the habit of posting everything on social media. They put up private pictures and videos without realizing who may take a look at them. They shouldn’t post anything online that could harm their reputation or hurt their future possibilities for a job or admission.
Most children realize quite later that they have done a terrible thing by posting about their personal lives on the internet. They think they can be safe after taking the content down but in reality, nothing gets deleted from the internet. Everything stays there.
To make sure your child does not post anything embarrassing or damaging online, you need to monitor their internet activity all the time.