Tips for Talking to Your Children About Online Privacy and Safety
Have you been feeling a growing sense of distance between you and your children because you have been too busy with work?
Often, our packed schedules do not allow us to bond with our children the way we want to. We are left running between our office and home chores, and by the time we are done, we see that night has already fallen and it's dinner time.
You hope to talk and bond with your children over dinner, but then they are busy with their work, assignments, etc., and have dinner at their own time or rush through it so that they can go back to what they were doing previously.
I know it's not a great feeling. Along with the growing unease that usually comes with long gaps of no communication, guilt also arises because you are not making time for your bonding sessions.
You start to find yourself juggling between work, chores, and your children, but since things have already begun to fall apart, your conversations do not seem to have the same spark as before, nor do your children share openly whatever goes through their minds. You also struggle to find the words and think of topics to discuss with them, but come up empty.
This distance may seem like an unproblematic thing at times, but allowing it to keep growing only invites others to wreak havoc in your family.
Those who prey on others, thrive in chaos, and toy with others' feelings, try to find such susceptible families where there is a communication gap between the members. They lure them into a false sense of comfort by creating the impression that they are being heard, if not within the family, then outside of it, and unfortunately, innocent people fall for the trick.
This can be your children if you are not keeping an eye on their interactions. However, the most important thing to keep in mind is that these predators are not only encountered physically but also in the online world.
The Concerns With Online Privacy and Safety
Your children are part of many social media groups with lots of connections. During their interactions with these virtual friends, they tend to share details about their lives and the problems they are facing. But that’s not all; they also share about their familial relationships and their emotions. If someone with bad intentions becomes their friend, then the information is sure to be misused.?
The issues of online scams are prevalent, but there is more. Your children may start getting blackmailed for the information they have shared.
Cyberbullies like to impersonate the person whose information they have and spread it to falsely frame that person as the one who shared this information. As a result, they may get mocked and bullied by others on the internet.?
This can be especially traumatizing for an innocent child; the very thought that will come to their mind is that they have shared that information with a friend and how it is on the internet now. It will not only be unbelievable but also a life-changing event for them.?
While we don’t want our children to ever experience these kinds of events and go through the emotions they invoke, it is imperative that we keep an eye on their online interactions, and talk to them about concerns related to online privacy, threats, and the safety measures to take.?
That is why you need a tool that can monitor your children if you can’t do that due to your busy schedule. The name of that tool is Mobile Spy App. It can monitor your child 24/7 while you keep busy with your work, and then at the end of your day, or whenever you find a suitable time, you can check this tracked data to stay updated on their life and see what they do all day and on the internet.?
However, if you are concerned about which monitoring app to choose, then refer to the next section.
The Best Parental Monitoring Apps
There are many parental monitoring apps available in the market, and while the competition is at an all-time high, you need to keep a clear perspective on what you need.?
Go for the ones that offer all monitoring features, such as an Internet history tracker, live location tracker, social media monitor, and a call tracker. These are some of the most important features that a monitoring app should have; however, for comprehensive monitoring, having a keystroke reader is a plus. There’s no need to get confused; we will talk about them below.?
An Internet History Tracker, as the name suggests, tracks the history of every browsing activity done on the Internet. It also brings useful information, such as the title and URL of their search and the date and time when they did it. Secondly, parental monitoring apps also let you take action from their monitoring dashboard to block any website that you don’t want your child visiting.?
The live location tracker monitors the location of your child’s device in real-time. With its help, you can check where they are at all times, and these tracked locations will be accurate, as they will be taken from the GPS of your child’s device itself.?
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Now, as for what you get with this tracker of a mobile spy app, you can check the addresses of the locations your child visits, along with their latitude and longitude. You may also get to check this location on the map with their map view of the address and the date and time when they visited this location.?
The social media monitoring option of a mobile monitoring app lets you check your child’s activities on different social media apps installed on their mobile.?
It can check activities on social media apps popular among children, such as WhatsApp, Instagram, Snapchat, Telegram, Facebook Messenger, Tinder, etc. They can also monitor video conferencing apps like Skype and Google Hangouts, as well as social networking apps like LinkedIn.?
With the social media monitor, you will be able to read the exchanges they have on these social media apps, along with the contact information of the person with whom these exchanges have taken place.?
Moreover, you will be able to check the date and time of their interactions and even mark them for keeping a close eye on any particular chat thread. Even the audio and video calls made with some of these apps can be recorded by the social media monitor, but you will only be able to listen to their audio and not get the visuals with the recording of video calls.?
The call tracking feature of the mobile spy app lets you listen to the call recordings of every incoming and outgoing call and check the call log with details such as which calls were taken, made, missed, or rejected.?
With its comprehensive insights, you will be able to see with whom your child has exchanged calls, on which date and time, and for how long. In addition, you will be able to check whether these calls were made or received and the cellular location of the caller of the person they called by checking the cell ID and LAC (Location Area Code).?
However, the most helpful feature that you will get with the call tracker is the option to block any contacts that you deem are threatening to your child.?
A keylogger is a last resort that can help you keep a close eye on things. What it does is track the keystrokes your child makes on different platforms and show you those with the timestamp when they typed those words, so that when your child exchanges message with someone on gaming apps, you will be informed, or if they type something in incognito mode, you will also be able to see it.
These are some of the features of a mobile monitoring app that can help you keep your child safe by tracking their online activity and location history. However, they do not end here, they also provide SMS and email monitoring, so that you can protect them from opening any malware link or giving OTPs to suspicious callers.
There is also a feature to track the installed apps which shows the list of apps installed on your child’s phone, how much time they are spending on which apps, and when they were last active on the particular app. With this feature, you will also be able to block unnecessary apps from your child’s device.
Then comes the feature of Live Screen Stream, which lets you watch a live stream of the screen of your child's device. You can use it to see what they do on their phone anytime and from anywhere.
Look for these features when you go searching for a parental control app.?
The other things you need to keep in mind when looking for a spy app are:
If you made your selection based on these pointers and look for the features mentioned above then you will have no problem navigating the talk about online privacy and safety with your children, because now you will have all the necessary information to initiate the conversation with them.
Your Takeaway
As your takeaway here’s a bonus material - the best mobile spy apps to choose from - ONEMONITAR, CHYLDMONITOR, and ONESPY. All the features mentioned above can be found in these three parental control apps, plus they offer monitoring solutions at a reasonable price.
ONEMONITAR and ONESPY are available for Android and iOS devices and offer 60+ monitoring features, whereas CHYLDMONITOR is only available for Android devices and has more than 65+ monitoring features.
You can visit the websites of these apps to explore more about them.