Strike Up a New Conversation

Strike up a new topic of conversation each week with your child. This is a goal for every parent to have and an easier way to stay connected with you child. Parents can put a weekly reminder in their cell phone and even jot down something they may have encountered that they want to talk about. The conversations can take place in the car, at dinnertime or before bedtime (depending on the topic). The point is for parents to prearrange a time or day and topic so the talking begins and continues between the parent and child. Initiating these conversations will start to ease the way for opening the lines communications so parents can teach their children how to be safer when online.

Don’t know where to begin. Parents can start off with small conversations and then build on them over the weeks. Here are some suggested topics to help set the stage for more in-depth conversations of how to stay safe when online: 

• How do you like playing the new “XYZ” online?  Are your friends playing this game now? Do you want to play the game with me
• What is your favorite music to download
• Not everyone on the Internet is who they say they are
• Did you hear about the latest trend from “celebrity XYZ” or “celebrity XYZ” is donating money to “XYZ cause/charity” or what the magazines are say about “celebrity XYZ”
• Your personal information about where you live, go to school, name and age should not be shared online
• I have been seeing more and more pop-up banners, when I go online. I have to remember to close them right away so I don’t click on the banners or contests

If you have never talked to your child about the Internet, don’t get discourage if your child does not take to you initiating conversations with them about the Internet. They may think you don’t know anything about the new technology. Keep at for a few weeks because before you know it your child will start to look forward to them and maybe even start the conversations with you. Remember children get moody sometimes too, just like adults, so there may be some bumps in the road when talking with your child. Some days they may think you are just being nosy; however it is too critical to give up on talking with your child about the Internet.

I can almost see the evening news segment now: “Do you know what your child is doing with their smartphone?” Open on children using tablets in public, playing game after game of “Candy Crush,” and — most frightening of all — refusing to tell their parents what they’re doing with their smartphones. End with the narrator warning against the rise of “sexting apps” as the camera settles on the Snapchat icon. Fade to black.

Reality might not be as dramatic as all that, but parents are worried about how their children are using their smartphones, according to a new study commissioned and published by Zact, a telecoms startup. A whopping 73 percent of parents surveyed said that they are concerned about “the lack of parental control of a child’s activities on mobile devices,” the amount of time their child might spend texting or gaming on their smartphone, and other issues. (Zact, naturally, purports to solve some of those problems.)

Some parents worry about how their child’s safety might be affected by an always-connected, difficult-to-control device that’s always within arm’s reach. Others have wondered at how these devices might affect their child’s development, with both the Atlantic and the New York Times questioning how touchscreens might be twisting toddlers’ brains. “Are tablets screwing with kids’ heads?” is the new “Is Google making us stupid?” with a bit of added guilt for parents being the ones to hand over their smartphone or tablet, and let their kid interact with such technologies just so they’ll stop being a nuisance.

So, naturally, people are turning to other technologies to solve the possible problems associated with using a touchscreen. Zact promises to help parents control how often their kids are texting, set curfews, or block certain apps from being used. MetaCert recently released an iPad browser meant to block access to pornographic or otherwise questionable content across the Web. A growing number of companies are developing tools that disable smartphones while their owner is driving. In fact, the masses in general, and parents specifically, are turning to technology to solve their technological woes.

Parental Monitoring to Keep Teens Safe Online

Parental monitoring of your teen's cell phone can help protect not only them, but you. Here are some important tips to following to help protect your family when it comes to monitoring kids’ cell phones and social networks.

• If your teen has multiple social networking accounts that they are accessing from their cell phone, make sure they use a different password for each one in case someone hacks into the accounts and gets the password. Gaining access to passwords, gives wrongdoers the opportunity to scam your family and friends by getting access to everyone’s personal information. 

• If teens do have information that is public on their social networking account, make sure they don’t post where they hang out or live and especially don’t post if they are home alone.  I know many younger teens like to boast to their friends they are home alone, but this is not safe when it comes to social networks.  The best advice is not to make any information public in teens’ settings. 

• Teens should never become friends with any online that they don’t know. If your teen is unsure, have him/her think of it this way, would you welcome someone you don’t know inside your home or bedroom?  If you don’t know someone, always remember people can pretend to be anyone they want to be online and lie to people they meet online.  Remember everything you post on the internet never goes away it lives in the cyber world forever for anyone to see. 

How many parents have checked on their teen's privacy settings?

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Cell Phones Encourage Sexting and Cyber-bullying

Is the popularity of texting encouraging sexting and cyber-bullying among tweens and young teens today? It is the norm for 7^th and 8^th graders to have smartphones. But in reality are tweens really mature and responsible enough to be granted this luxury and empowerment of a smartphone? Tweens and young teens are under so much social pressure just to fit in and find out who they are in our society and then add the digital age with smartphones into the mix. No wonder why tweens and young teens are influenced by other peers to start sexting and cyber- bullying one another.

Parents really need to be persistent with tweens and young teens to respect themselves and others when using technology. If children are not taught to be respectful to others in person or online, how do they know it is wrong to cyber-bully? In reality, tweens and teens are unaware of the digital footprint they are leaving when they are sexting. They think it is just a part of growing up when they see their peers and older teens sexting. As a parent if you need help observing your tween’s smartphone, look into parental control monitoring software such as My Mobile Watchdog.

No Parental Monitoring for Tweens on Cell Phones

I recently discovered many tweens who have social networking accounts don’t have their privacy settings set to the highest level.  This is where parental monitoring is needed to advise tweens and teens about their privacy settings. It seems many parents are not monitoring what their kids are doing online.  

Do parents think their kids are safe enough online not to have any parental monitoring? Many parents don’t realize that online predators use social networking sites as their cyber playground for grooming kids.  When privacy settings are not set to the highest levels, then all social networking accounts are fair game for anyone to view their activities and personal information.  

If you are one the parents who think it is okay to permit your tween to have a social networking account, remember the number one rule for teens and tweens who have any type of a social networking account is always set your privacy settings to the highest level, so they are only sharing information with their friends not strangers across the entire web. 

If you are interesting in parental monitoring, check out My Mobile Watch Dog.  This parental control software for cell phones can help you be sure that your kids have their privacy settings set to the highest level.

Social Networks, Friend or Foe

The culture we live in today encourages everyone to post on social networking sites and tweet where they are and what they did all day. It can be great to know what your friends are doing to pleasantly surprise them by showing up at a sports event they are attending. But on the reverse side, having someone you don’t know show up at an event is not a pleasant surprise but a horrible situation. No wonder why so many online predators have a field day with all the information they can gather from social networking sites. Online predators know they can be whoever they want to be on a social networking site. They study what young girls and boys like and what the newest trend is, in other words, online predators do their homework on children. 

If online predators are doing their homework to friend our children, don’t you think as parents we owe it to them to do our homework on the latest digital trend, game or technology? 

The majority of the social networking sites require children to be at least 13 and these sites have policies stating the age requirement, but it is really up to the parents to keep children under 13 off these sites. As well as, parents need to make such their children are not sharing too much personal information on social networking sites and setting the privacy level to the highest. 

As a parent it is okay to be a pest sometimes (meaning you are involved in their activities), especially if it is for the safety of your children. Knowing what activities your children like to do online and remembering it can change every week or sometime every few days. Children hear about a new game or website from their friends and they will want to check it out, if they haven’t done so at their friend’s house or school. So being a pesky parent is okay if you want to stay in the know of how many friends they have on a social networking site and they actually are friends with them in real life. This is just part of doing parent’s homework.