In case you are a parent of a teenager, one of the first things you should do is ensure your computer is protected with parental controls. In such cases, you will know what your kid is searching for and watching online. But what about Android parental monitoring? Today a great number of teens are using mobile devices as the main tool for web surfing, and it is essential to consider securing it as well.
What Are the Online Threats for Your Kid?
Besides having tons of inspiring and educational materials, the Internet is full of other websites and resources that would not bring your child any good. These include pornography and gambling sites, sources that encourage eating disorders, and promote drug abuse.
Another part of reason for setting parental controls on Android phones of your children is the great number of cyber criminals that might hurt people online. These are spending their time looking for people of different ages to troll them. Sometimes this process may go literally make a person’s life a nightmare. In light of such hazards waiting for your kid online, an app for parental controls on a kid’s Android device looks like a necessity.
Why Are Parental Controls Important?
Today, kids are always online
Statistics show that children aged five to 16 spend an average of 6.5 hours every day in front of a screen. Monitoring apps would supervise them for you and alert you about any inappropriate materials.
Kids make friends online
Most of the time, kids making friends online is a good thing. But there are plenty of adults who may pretend to be children in order to lure youngsters into forming friendships. Android tablet parental control would help you with checking social interactions and blocking any suspicious users.
Not everyone online is who he or she claims to be
Catfishing today helps millions of frauds in getting access to personal information and even payment details. Your monitoring of their activities would allow deleting any suspicious and dangerous emails and messages.
You cannot be everywhere and every time for them
Pity but fact – no matter how much you want it to be another way, time lack and kids’ desire for independence would not allow you were looking over everything. Yet, parental controls in Android are backing you up and leaving time for other tasks.
Teaching about limits
If you are trying to set an online regime for your kid and teach him or her responsible online behavior, parental apps would help in this task. With the functions for limiting time children spend online and reporting on their activities, you will be able to create your own policies.
What Are Cell Phone Monitoring Apps for Android to Choose?
The full list of parental apps is a topic for another article. But generally, there are several types of apps to choose from. There are apps that would:
- protect the phone from accidental unlocking;
- restrict seeing certain websites and content;
- help parents limit time use and calls/texts making and sending;
- extend usage time for their phone by completing tasks like doing homework or chores.
How to Set Parental Controls on Android Tablet
Having kids imposes many responsibilities. Taking into consideration the time they spend with mobile devices in their hands, finding out how to put parental controls on a tablet or smartphone sounds like a reasonable part of parental duties to start with.
For this and many other purposes, multi-feature mobile monitoring apps are created. With such software at your command, you can track location, control app usage, manipulate the device remotely, and follow online activities, including social media, chats, and browsing, which are issues causing many parent concerns these days.
Alternatively, and at your own risk, you can turn to built-in restrictions of the operating system that runs your child’s device. However, they will hardly provide your children with enough security to resist all online dangers, not to speak of those kids may face during daily activities.
For now, let’s take a closer at how to set parental controls on an Android tablet. There are not many, but some ways to protect your kids by using options coming right out of the box.
The first one is to create a separate account for them and limit the number of features allowed for use. Go to Settings > Users > General and create a new profile. Set your secret password so that kids can’t bypass your restrictions and log in on your behalf. Right after, you will see a list of applications installed on the device. Mark those you let your children use. The others will be hidden from them without any chance to play or access them somehow.
Another way of parental security is restricting in-app purchases. There are many cases when children buy some bonuses available in so-called “games for free,” wasting enormous sums. Sure, sometimes the companies responsible for neglecting limits for the underage using parents’ bank accounts had to refund the money spent. However, those were rather exceptions than a rule.
To prevent kids from wasting their money on games and other applications with in-app offers, open the Play Store app and proceed to Menu. Go to Settings > User Controls and tap “Require authentication for purchases.”
Additionally, you should better disable the option to download and install applications from other sources than Play Store. Go to Settings > Security > More and turn off the option “allow installation of apps from unknown sources.”
In conclusion, apply content filtering. Open Play Store and proceed to Menu once again. Go to User Controls > Parental Controls. To turn it on, first set a secret key to prevent your children from changing the settings. Right after, you will be provided with a list of categories on restriction with age limits. You can specify an age for apps, games, movies, TV, and music. Thus, your kids will have no possibility of coming across inappropriate content on the web.
Now you know how to set up parental controls on Android tablets. However, there are many more perils your children may face. Cyberbullying, online predators, sexting, and online abuse are among them. And built-in restrictions won’t cope with them.
Summing up, we may say that parental restrictions on Android are essential for all parents of teenagers – with the time kids spend online increasing dramatically, you should be sure they are safe and sound even when you are not around.
What kind of parental restrictions do you apply? Please share your experience with us on social media or leave your comment below!