What type of parental control do you exercise?
There is a curious inconsistency in what modern parents think and do in regard to their primary duty of exercising parental control over their precious children. On the one hand, almost every parent of a teenager is of a firm opinion that it is imperative to use any means possible to keep track of what is going on in the kids’ lives.
Nevertheless, they are most likely to give a negative answer to the question whether they resort to using any software to keep them keep abreast with children’s activities. And this is confusing since some parents seem to understand the dangers that may be lurking around in the modern age of technology, but they do almost nothing to alleviate the probable jeopardy and deny themselves a chance of preventing their kids from getting into trouble.
Most parents are generally very concerned about the safety of their children when they are surfing the Internet. Everyone would probably want to avoid multiple online dangers young generation is constantly exposed to:
- Violent content on the web sites
- Online bullying in social media
- Frauds and abuse
- Sexual harassment, etc.
And what do most parents do to curb the negative consequences of the teenagers doing what they want on the Internet without proper tools of control and supervision? Their parental control actions range from stepping aside and just watching to completely blocking some websites or even barring their kids from accessing the Internet at all. Speaking from experience, whatever approach from the abovementioned a parent may use, neither would seem to have any effect. In one respect, you deliberately condemn your children to multiple online dangers by doing nothing to protect them from those dangers. The other way round, when you prohibit the use of Internet, you drive your kid away from the remarkable and immense source of different information and data. You deny them a chance to maintain communication with their friends since chatting online is probably the main way children socialize. Aside from that, a teenager with no access to the Internet will always lag behind in any conversation about current events and happenings which they could have learned about from the hot news online.
In general, psychiatrists usually subdivide all parents into three groups in terms of enforcing parental control:
- Parents with liberal attitude
This category is blessed with blind trust. They are completely sure that their kids will never browse news with violent pictures and headlines, will never be tempted to read a story with inappropriate vocabulary or adult topic, or will absolutely avoid any contact with people they do not know on social media. Unfortunately, such trust is rare nowadays, and parents need to be careful with what their children may accidentally find on the web.
- Those who think that parental control is of utmost importance
Such parents do not hesitate to make use of all possible means to impose control on their kids’ activities on their personal computers, portable devices, phones, or tablets. They deem it necessary to monitor everything what is going on the life of their children. As a rule, such parents have special software installed on the child’s device which allows them to limit or even block access to the unsuitable content.
- Old school surveillance
This group of parents do not trust technical solutions and prefer to use techniques of direct first-hand control. They usually set up Wi-Fi zones somewhere in the house where they can watch their children personally. Therefore, their children are in plane view almost every time they use their devices, so parents are able to keep track of what their kids are doing at the same moment.
Whatever type of parental control you deem will fit your relationship with your children, professional family counsellors insist that it is a bad idea to neglect this responsibility and allow children be free in their use of Internet due to multiple perils that emerge every single day.
