How to police your kids’ internet usage

These days, most of our kids and teens will spend a lot of their free time on the internet. This can be at school but also at home; playing games, watching movies or chatting with friends via social media. Whilst this may give hard working parents will some welcome reprieve from being nagged at, it can also easily become a potential problem if left unchecked.

Firstly let’s consider the dangers of spending too much time online. Research has shown that spending too much time online poses health risks such as high blood pressure, anxiety, depression, obesity and increased chance of becoming socially isolated. They can also become irritable and less inclined to want to do healthier activities if they are solely reliant on the internet for entertainment.

So – the next question is what can we do about all this considering the internet is a vital part of all our everyday lives? Listed below are some top tips to help parents manage their kids’ and teen’s time online…

Don’t deprive them of the internet completely, instead agree certain times of the day they are allowed to spend online with reasonable justification and alternative things to do with their time outside of the online world.

Make sure the time they are spending online is not being wasted waiting for stuff to load as your connection is too slow. If it is the case then check out the top broadband deals and get a faster connection.

Set up content filtering either via your ISP (Internet Service Provider) or by downloading an application such as NetNanny which will make sure they won’t be able to access harmful or unsuitable content.

Talk to them. Teach them the good advice we were all taught, like not talking to strangers, having a healthy skepticism of anything that seems ‘too good to be true’ and most importantly not disclosing personal data online.

Keep the device they want to use in a communal area where you can keep an eye on what they are looking at. Alarm bells should start to sound if your child or teen repeatedly wants to go online alone or is secretive with their devices. Teens will always naturally start to seek more independence as they are in training for adulthood but the right conversations can still help reassure you that they’re being safe

Following the above advice should allow for reasonable and controlled internet usage without having to take away the benefits associated with letting our kids and teens use the web. Although it can be easy to caricature kids using the internet as just mindlessly playing games or watching inane TV shows, in reality, there are many positives that can easily come from them being online. For example, social media can help them keep in touch with their friends whilst playing games can help improve reaction times and is also social as well as promoting useful problem solving skills.

To summarise, the all encompassing nature of the internet means it will play an ever increasing role in all our lives now and for years to come. However, this should not be seen purely as a negative as there are so many benefits to this increased connectivity. Parents merely need to have a plan in place to monitor and manage internet usage by their kids.