In these times of lots of ready Internet contents you might not even want to view as an adult and you want to ensure your child has an understanding of technology for better learning, you need a BALANCE.
A father shared a true story of his three children, the oldest at nine already used to code and design and can even program an app. He, however, makes sure he “monitors and protects” his kids’ online presence and manages to do so by making sure that:
1. each of their iPads are connected to a single apple account created by me and designated as a children’s account. It is not wrong for a parent to want to make sure that their children have access to the internet to aid in bettering their learning process, but there however should be a restriction to how much they can do. This is one of the ways to which this boundaries can be put in place that they cannot access some content that they don’t need to see and still learn and entertain themselves with age appropriate content.
2. a mandatory password is required before a new app is installed. This is to make sure a new app can’t be installed on their device without my knowledge and permission. They don’t know the complex password.
3. Their devices have no sim cards and this means their only access to the internet is via wifi.
4. assigned a dedicated IP to each of their devices, and with a dedicated IP, I was able to use a firewall to permit only 8 websites that can be accessed. Every other website is blocked off.
5. I synced their devices to my device and with a virtual Screen Team Viewer app, I can practically see in real-time the screen view of my kid’s Ipad. There’s no hiding place.
6. None of them have access to social media and they can’t install the app on their device. Doing all of this is not to deny the child of the full experience of learning but just to make sure that this underaged children are not exposed to what can destroy them early on. Things are thrown in their faces online and because they are naturally inquisitive, they always WANT TO KNOW. It’s a dangerous mistake to have your children online unmonitored. It’s also a dangerous mistake not to expose them to technology.
The key is: Find balance, supervise and monitor.