Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, children around the globe are staying at home. Those children who used to spend most of their day time in school are burdening their parents at home and parents have a straightforward solution to skip that – giving their smart devices. Children get busy with those internet-connected devices, mostly playing games, watching videos, or chatting with family members and friends. For some days those activities looked okay, but nowadays parents started worrying about the time their children are spending in front of the screen. As smart devices and the Internet is mandatory for education and entertainment, balancing other activities and screen time seems challenging. Parenting is getting tougher as the lockdown progress, and they needed to find out ways to maximize the extraordinary benefits of the Internet, reducing the possible harms. Online sexual abuse, Cyberbullying, Sharing of Harmful Content, etc. are commonly seen risks children are facing. Strangers or even the known person may send sexual content to the child. They may also receive mean comments, messages, and posts on social media. Similarly, harmful contents such as incitement to suicide and self-harm; violent or xenophobic content; misinformation about COVID-19; or marketing that is not appropriate for children may also reach their screen. So, parents should stay aware of what their children are watching or doing on the screen and talk to them about what the children learned or experienced.
To keep their children out of potential hazards, parents need to make the rules for ‘Internet and device usage’ in the house prioritizing the learning and creative activities. A most important part of such rules is that those should be properly followed by the parents as well because children imitate the behavior of their seniors – no smart devices while eating or in bed means no one is allowed to do so not just the little ones. Here are some tips parents need to follow, consider the age and maturity factor of a child before applying rules.
- Set the screentime for various activities: Set how much time you want your children to spend online – how long for games? How long for chatting? Or learning? Or can they use the device while eating? Or in bed? Define it in a way that your child will not be disappointed with you.
- Give access to appropriate content: The Internet is full of various contents but parents have to find a way to show the contents suitable for the child. For example, YouTube Kids provide the curated selections of content, parental control features, and filtering of videos deemed inappropriate viewing by kids. Similarly, other media-services providers such as Netflix, Prime Video also have the children version. Help the child to identify age-appropriate apps, games, and entertainment materials.
- Talk to the child about what they are doing online: Due to lockdown you are also free like never before so why don’t you talk about what children are doing online, what they learned, or any problem they faced. Talk about what is good to do on the Internet and what is not in their understandable way. Teach them life lessons, social values, respect, moral behavior with the help of stories, they will learn with enjoyment.
- Make aware of science and technical tools and inventions: Make your child familiar with various scientific inventions and how those inventions are making the world better. Teach them how they can learn by search it on the Internet. Teach them how to send mails. Show them the technological advancements happening around. When you let your child work on their own, make sure to activate parental controls on devices they use and the content they are working with.
- Set rules about using social media: First of all, creating an account on social media requires following age restrictions specified by the application. Social media are the tools for interactions among people and a great way to create, share, and/or exchange information and ideas. But they may not always have a positive impact. If your child met the people with unsocial behaviors s/he may become the victim of cyberbullying. Parents must safeguard their child form the unsocial behavior that can happen in social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. Talk with your kids about smart social media habits and the best ways to use them. Teach them what to post or share and what to not. Help them identify trusted people or peers, to talk and interact with. You can also set social media limits, and use privacy features and content filters.
The Internet is full of opportunities, so during the lockdown, enhance the knowledge and skills of your child by providing them the effective tools. Make them active with recreational activities. Spend time with them – digitally as well as physically. Keep them far from negativity.
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