The internet world has created a storm that no one can avoid. More than half of the population of the world has access to the internet. The online world has become our second home.
You may want your child to focus on study rather than scrolling the Internet? But this is quite difficult due to online study, school, and college assignments. Children are quite dependent on the Internet.
The internet has trillions of content and all the contents are not appropriate for the kids. Contents on the Internet have both positive and negative impacts on a child.
During adolescence children are more attracted to negative aspects of the internet rather than positive, it is either due to peer pressure or due to curiosity of wanting to know more. You should monitor the contents that your kids are viewing and try to remove inappropriate content by using parental control software.
Why do children browse undesirable Content?
Every parent knows that their children search for inappropriate content on the internet. The reason for a child browsing undesirable contents are:
Curiosity
As the proverb says, “Curiosity killed the cat”. Unnecessary curiosity leads to a bad direction when you are browsing content online. The more curious your kid is the more risk of browsing inappropriate content.
In a report, about 44% of teens admit that they have watched online content which their parents wouldn’t approve of.
Friends Circle
It’s always better to have a good circle of friends as friends influence more than parents. If your kids have a good influencer they will likely go in the right direction.
But when the companion your kids keep goes wrong, it will affect them for a long time. You may have seen many children going in a bad direction due to friends’ influence.
In today’s context, the sharing of information is easier, group chat, messaging have paved the way for the interaction of unknown people. This has led to the sharing of inappropriate content on the internet.
Accident
There are many links online which direct inappropriate content. After opening the links, the content may create curiosity. As a result children and teenagers may go and search for it again which will become their habit.
In a report, about 70% of children from age 7-18 have encountered pornography online while searching for their homework content.
Undesirable Content that Your Child Explore?
Online Gaming
First, Online Gaming brings addiction to children and this addiction affects the mind. Even if they are not playing games, they are constantly thinking about it.
You may have seen lots of inappropriate content in online gaming. There is a large amount of adult content and use of inappropriate language. The advertisement consists of adult images and videos. This leads to searching for inappropriate content.
Nowadays online gaming has the features of text chat, video chat, and audio chat. People can communicate with different people due to social networking. This has also increased racism, bullying, hating, and different inappropriate behavior between people.
Social Media
Social Media like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter is known for communication. But often when communication is built with different people, it leads to conflict, bullying, hating, and sharing of inappropriate content.
Social media makes it easier to convey emotions, but strong emotions such as hate make people sensitive and delicate. This often leads to not being able to control disturbances.
It is the platform where people are free to express their feelings and thoughts. Social media provides freedom for people to bully and disrespect others.
And many youngsters are not able to endure the constant hate and bullying. Which leads to various crimes, suicide, mental and psychological disorders.
Pornography
The largest group of online pornography consumers are children from the age group of 12-17. They come across online porn through different social media links, video sharing, curiosity, and searching content.
Pornography consists of content like porn videos, images, hentai (porn in form of cartoons), violence, and abusive content. This brings a negative impact to children’s minds and psychologically affects them.
They may not be able to distinguish between realities and illusion. Some children who watch porn frequently may develop an addiction to porn.
Swearing contents
There is a lot of swearing content on the Internet. Using vulgar words with vulgar meanings is common in these types of videos. By watching such kinds of videos your child may develop the habit of speaking in vulgar languages with others and in public.
Kids might think it is ok to use such words and it is not a big deal to use such languages.
Self-Harm Videos
Self-Harm Videos consist of harming themselves physically and showing it to others. These people might be mentally unstable or they may be trying to earn money online.
You can see many stunt videos that people post to gain views and money. When kids see these types of videos they want to try themselves and in the end, they hurt themselves.
These types of videos affect your child’s mentality. They bring disturbance and uneasiness to a teenager’s mentality.
Violence and Abusive contents
According to research Sites belonging to the ‘Cruelty and Abuse’ group are most commonly visited in Mexico (8.6%) and the USA (7%), and in Europe, especially in the United Kingdom (UK) and Spain (both 4.8 percent).
These contents are mostly targeted toward the woman. They contain activities like physically harming others, bullying, and abusive content. These contents could bring mental and psychological disorders.
Gambling
Online Gambling includes online games like casinos, poker, bingo, lottery, card games, and many more. Your teenagers might start playing simple gambling games which do not involve money. But things may turn out serious when they become addicted to them.
When they become addicted they try to go for higher gambling which involves money. They start to think of earning more money and they might try to steal money from their parents to invest in gambling. This makes gambling riskier for teenagers.
Fraud Activities
Fraud Activities include online fraud like online shopping fraud, identity theft, phishing, lottery fraud, and many more.
Teenagers can encounter many pop-up forms that offer a big deal and in course of getting the deal, they may give all their information. When your teenagers may reveal all their personal information on the internet online predators can easily steal them. This may lead to loss of money, property, and many other crimes.
Ways to Control Children’s Exploring Undesirable Content
Parents often try to use the strict measure of restricting the whole internet. This is not effective because of internet accessibility. Here are some tips to control children exploring undesirable content:
Parental Software
It has become easier to control and monitor your teenager’s activity. Parental software acts as a nanny for your children who guards and protects you from riskier content online.
Why do most people prefer parental control?
- You can track your kids’ device activities.
- Block and restrict the contents.
- The age restriction allows browsing only age-appropriate content.
- Block malware and phishing sites.
- Block sites like the Dark web.
Parental Software helps to give the required security and protection that your child needs. It monitors your kid’s device activities and shows you their screen time. There are many parental apps that you can choose to monitor your kid.
So, you may wonder which is the best parental control app?
Some of the best parental software that provides a number of features that you are looking for are:
OpenDNS
OpenDNS is used to block all the inappropriate content on the web. It fully provides security to every electronic device in your home and works by directly filtering the contents.
It mainly gives malware and phishing protection to the user. So that online predators, identify theft, hackers, and thieves cannot obtain your personal information.
Safe Browsing
Many browsers, apps, and social media provide security options. These security options consist of safe online, safe browsing, and internet filters. We can easily activate and enable safe browsing.
Activities like phishing, malicious and inappropriate content can also be controlled to some extent. Try to activate safe browsing on all of your internet devices.
Safe Search Engine
To protect your kids from viewing inappropriate content you can use a safe search engine, that ensures your kids are not exposed to inappropriate content when they are using search engines.
These safe search engines filter all the inappropriate contents that are on the internet and only show appropriate content. Some of the safe search engines are:
- Kiddle
- KidRex
- Safe Search Kids
- Wacky Safe
There is a safe search option in every browser which helps to surf the content safely. In the case of google chrome you can:
- Go to settings.
- Go to security inside settings.
- Select Standard Protection
Cyber Security Protection
You can maintain the security of your home devices by yourself. Cyber Security Protection is all about protecting and defending the devices against malware, phishing, identity theft.
You can apply different security protection software like antivirus, installing firewalls, windows defenders, and updating every software. Some of the tips for cybersecurity protection are:
● Two Factor Authentication:
Even if you keep a strong password it doesn’t ensure 100% security from hackers. So, try to apply two-factor authentication which provides a layer of added security protection. Hackers will not be able to hack passwords easily if two-factor authentication is used.
Even if the hackers try to hack your password, you will be sent a notification that keeps you aware.
● Phishing Scams:
The Internet contains many scams in the form of advertisement, promotion. These online predators try to hack all the personal information of a user and use it for their gain. So, look out for it. Don’t open a suspicious link or any files or documents from an unknown person.
● Keep Updates:
Update all your antivirus software, window defender, security software so that you are fully protected. You should also update your phone frequently because, with the new update, you can get new security features.
● Digital Footprint:
You may have created an account for various platforms. But some of them are not used. You should delete those accounts as your information is saved in them. Online predators may try to use it for their gain. So, you have to regularly change the password in all your accounts and those which you haven’t used should be permanently deleted.
Talk with your child
Precisely talk with your child. Act like a friend and well-wisher. Speak about all the online risks and give logical reasoning. If your kids’ have any queries, try to solve their queries. So that they would never search it online.
Conclusion
Kids and teenagers explore every corner of the internet. You know that your teenagers might come across undesirable content that will harm them. As the saying precaution is better than cure, try to install different parental software.
If possible use advanced protection otherwise you can use basic protection of parental software. There are different ways that you can also provide security to them through updating security protection software, installing a firewall, and using a safe search engine.
Always talk with them and try to solve their queries. As a parent, you must explain all the important stuff about online issues and online activities. Don’t hesitate, your child is growing, tell them the difference between desirable and undesirable content on the Internet.
