Parents are facing these days digital parenting challenges raising children. They are facing pressure and a hard time creating successful humans that really make them feel crippling at times. When a child enables one to speak and walk here and there freely, parents have to struggle to find out an effective piece of balance between discipline and leeway.
While regulating your child’s behavior, there will be forms of punishment that would definitely evolve likewise taking away certain privileges especially when they are not cooperating or don’t toe the line. The technology these days have become bread and butter of the children and its absence has become a major tool for parents to keep them into discipline. Moreover, contemporary cell phones and gadgets are, the go-to item for parents to take away to punish their children for certain reasons. Obviously, young kids and teens spending too much time on mobile phone screens. Parents on the other hand feel concerned when a teen using a smartphone seems quite happy sometimes seems down and worried. So, what is the problem behind parents being overprotective and why it is so and taking teen’s cell phone away from a better solution for parenting online?
Now parents do believe that for digital parenting taking cell phones and gadgets away from teens or limit the screen time is the right choice for them. Therefore, 64% of parents in the U.S claims that their ultimate punishment to their kids and teens to take away their phones and gadgets, according to the Civic Science Survey.
New York Times Report Stats: Facts that force parents to take teens phones away
- Almost 74% of children between the age of 12 -17 own cell phone device
- 90% of teens visit the web on a regular basis and 24% say they constantly remain online
- 77% of parents have concerns over their children that they get distracted and don’t pay attention while using cell phones and gadgets
- 78% of teens and kids have claimed that they use a cellphone at schools –it is a clear violation of the rules
- 91% of teens dramatically say that parents are responsible who paying for their phone
- New York Times report says, both teens and adults use their cell phones at least 150 times a day or every six minutes and send/receive text messages at least 110 times a day.
In accordance with the above stats parents usually want to snatch the cell phones of kids and teens as a punishment. But, in reality, this behavior may lead parents towards arguments and there are chances kids and teens start behaving like rebels and it ultimately it would be counterproductive. Moreover, according to a study manipulating your child by taking away the cell phone devices and gadgets would impact badly in terms of trust between you and your child. Therefore, in my opinion, parents should avoid being overprotective or to be helicopter parents. Apart from the above-mentioned stats, parents are worried about teen’s hidden activities in terms of social media apps usage, texting all day long, cell phone incoming, and outgoing calls. Moreover, dangerous activities with the use of mobile phones connected to the internet likewise rising issue of sexting in teens and as well as bullying and cyberbullying are the main concerns of the parents that forcing them to perform digital parenting on teens’ phones. However, no matter what teens are doing online using cell phones and gadgets taking their mobile phones away isn’t the best solution.
Parents Should Use Other Alternatives for Digital Parenting on Teens
When parents realize that things are going nasty and horrible for teens online safety and they feel they should think about it to take away their kids and teens cell phone, they should consider some alternatives. A healthy relationship between parents and teens in terms of trust is very necessary. Therefore, forget about taking devices away from kids no matter what reasons and threats you are assuming in terms of teens’ online safety.
Other alternatives will help you out to create a better opportunity to correct your child’s behavior towards the use of cell phones and activities they do all day long. Parents should find a way that can make them achieve their goal or get the job done without straining the relationship with your kids and teens. The following mentioned alternatives for digital parenting enable you to become more authoritative than ever before and maintain respect with your kids and teens.
Keep going in a natural way
The perfect parenting method means you know when to respond, where to respond, and how to respond. According to the (AAP) American Academy of Pediatrics best way you can use is to just let things play out “let your children be taught by their actions and natural outcomes”. So, ultimately your child will learn about the things online no matter it is good or bad. However, all you need to know when you should respond and when not to.
Give suitable punishment with respect to action or behavior
The moment you have noticed that the natural consequences of their activities don’t work anymore. Then tell your child about other consequences that really connect the action or behavior in question. Normally spending too much time on the cell phone screen is not an issue that you can set out naturally. But when things are going wrong in terms of online dating, bullying online, sexting and inappropriate adult content then respond spontaneously.
Talk with them about your expectations
Simply make a contract with your kids and teens while you are handing over the cellphone and gadgets connected to the internet. Tell your children about screen time and how much should they spend time on it. Moreover, guide your teens and tweens what to do and what not to do. However, if all the alternatives do not make a difference, then simply put parental control on kids’ and teens’ cell phone devices to perform digital parenting in order to protect teens from online threats and as well as prevent mobile phone addiction.
Use Cell Phone Parental Control app on Teen’s Mobile Phones and Gadgets
Install mobile phone parental monitoring app on your children devices and monitor each and every single activity happens on the target smartphone and gadgets within no time. It lets parents monitor social media logs in terms of text messages, shared photos and videos, conversations, and many more activity logs. Furthermore, parents can record and listen to the incoming and outgoing calls in real –a time of teens using secret call recorder software. Parents can spy on teens text messages sent/received and also track SMS, MMS.
Parents don’t need to make arguments with teens they can simply perform live screen recording on teen’s cell phones without taking away their devices. They can make short videos of the screen and get to know what they are doing on Chrome browser, social messaging apps, YouTube, emails, and what sort of passwords they are using to lock and unlock their cell phones.
You can remotely capture screenshots with screen monitoring app and get to know about the browsing activities of teens likewise visited apps and websites. Parents can remotely block the activities of teens on a cell phone by instantly responding with an android remote controller. You can simply block text messages remotely, block incoming calls, and even block internet access remotely to stop teens’ inappropriate activities.
Conclusion:
Use cell phone parental control app in order to perform digital parenting on teens rather than taking away their cell phones to end up with heated arguments.