Children today really enjoy using social media to learn, play, and watch the programs they love. They spend more and more time online, raising concerns that parents can't fully protect their children from social media.
Protecting children from social media by creating strong passwords for devices
Creating passwords that are hard to guess helps protect the safety of social media accounts. You should avoid using words that are too common or anything closely related to you, as this will make it easy for malicious actors to hack your account. Parents should use a combination of uppercase letters, lowercase letters, symbols, and numbers. At the same time, setting up a secondary password or two-factor authentication to add a layer of security for the account is also advisable. This will also prevent children from using technology devices without your permission.
Enable privacy and safety settings
- Most search engines like Google provide the 'Safe Search' setting to hide inappropriate results. You can enable this feature by going to the 'Options' or 'Account' settings.
- Parents can protect children from social media by setting their child's account to private to protect personal information as well as control who can view the profile, photos, and videos.
- You can use parental control software that allows parents to monitor how their child uses technology, such as setting screen-time limits, filtering out inappropriate content, blocking access to certain apps and websites, or restricting in-app purchases.
- Many apps and websites can determine your location — a feature that could reveal your child's location to strangers online, so disable this feature in the apps downloaded on the device your child uses.
Use child-friendly platforms
Protect children from social media by using child-friendly websites and search tools such as KidzSearch, YouTube Kids, etc., to help filter and hide sensitive content.
Streaming platforms such as Netflix, YouTube, and some platforms allow you to set up a separate account for your child. This will filter and restrict the TV shows and movies your child watches based on age-appropriate ratings for children under 12.
Filter out inappropriate content by choosing games and apps appropriate for your child's age before downloading.
Monitor and manage technology time with your child
Parents should keep an eye on children when they use phones or computers, because children are naturally curious and easily click on junk links with appealing thumbnails. Moreover, protecting children from social media by setting rules such as “no devices in the bedroom” will ensure they get enough sleep and do not play games or browse too long.
In particular, rather than forcing your child to stop using social media, parents can turn their child's online time into a family activity. For example, playing games together, watching movies together... This also helps children feel comfortable sharing their online experiences.
Teach children about online safety
Parents should use simple words to explain the dangers online. In doing so, children will understand what information should not be shared, such as full name, phone number, school, home address, and photos…
The five measures above, cited by UNICEF's technology experts, are adopted by many parents with success in protecting children from social media. Let's join Mykingdom in creating a healthy online environment, so that children can develop well.
