Monitoring is the only way to know things and get information. In case of raising a child in this fast-changing, urban, modern connected-online world, monitoring is the key.

Both offline and online monitoring is the basis of teaching kids right from wrong and helping them understand the world around them. It is essential for their safety and the safety of the society around them. So, parents should make it a priority to check their child’s phone. In short, be aware of what’s going on in their life.

But, what exactly would a parent do or check for in their child’s phone? A smartphone is not as simple as a feature phone, and there can be tons of storage folders, hidden albums, apps, cloud storage, password-protected files, images, videos, and more.

It is a challenging task to check a phone all by yourself. This is where programs and software come to rescue. By logging activity and reporting them to parent’s phones on a regular basis, you can be aware of what your kid is doing. For example, if your kid posts something damaging or inappropriate online, you can learn about it instantly.

The debate about whether parents should check their kid's phone or not
is a two-sided battle, where the right side always goes for “yes”. Here
are some important things to consider, and you can tell the two apart.

• Sexting

Teens might have any apprehension about doing sexy and naughty things, pranks, and do things like sending obscene pictures and messages, but this can be damaging sometimes.

Clicking pictures of themselves or someone else, sharing with others, or publicly might seem funny or just a joke, but can have unprecedented consequences for the parties involved. Because parents are more mature and experienced, they can step in and stop the behavior. This is the biggest use of smartphones and tons of apps these days where teens can find themselves lost.

• Cyber-Bullying

If not more but cyber-bullying is equally harmful can be this threat. This is not a big chunk in online abuse, but sometimes kids can face abuse online, either mental or physical, and they might even feel embarrassed not to let their parents know about it, or anyone know about it.

• Checking your kid’s phone lets you know if your child is being bullied or is bullying someone.
• This is best recommended for kids whose parents are unaware of their activities, many of which end up becoming bullies, and later rowdies.
• They can further develop to becoming cheats, involved in other crimes like extortion, or threatening people as they grow up.

• Online Predators

The largest and fastest-growing concern for young girls’ parents is being lured into trafficking and other kinds of businesses at a young age. Most of these are in school when they get noticed by the wrong people, from online posts like Instagram, Facebook, where they forget to keep their posts limited to friends rather than public and fall in traps.

Not all kids are mature enough or have a guardian around them, so keeping a check on your kid’s phone is very useful. Since most of the time, the online predators on the other end are adults; the cause of concern is on your side, as the father of a young girl.

• You should keep a check on your girl’s phone regularly, two to three times a week, or as often as you find the time.
• Try to be a friend and share with them things, talk about their stuff, and be in touch with everything they are doing online.
• With monitoring software, you can also keep in touch and track my child’s phone without them knowing.

• Identify Bad Company

When your kid is into adulthood, in college, in the transition from being a teen to early 20s, they are usually far away from you. Some even begin to stay away from when they move into high school, but this is not that common in the US.

This stage is the most difficult to stay in touch with their everyday life or know who their friends are and who they hang around with. But, as a responsible parent, you have to identify the bad apples.

• Some of them might be trying to convince them to try drugs, use their pocket money on their own bad habits, and so on.
• They might be luring them to do something against your family’s moral values and code of conduct, culture, and heritage.
• You should check their phone and remotely monitor them without them knowing with the help of apps to learn about these incidents.
• You should try to talk to them about these dealings, and learn about their emotions, feelings by talking about these things in a neutral way.

• Protecting Personal Information

It is more important than ever for parents to check their child’s phone before they give it to them. Most big brands like iPhone, Google, Samsung make phones that are safe enough and come with plenty of features that can help you have a peaceful sleep at night. But, there is a catch. You have to enable them beforehand and then give it to your kids. There are apps that can prevent your kids from installing a new app, removing apps, using financial information, sharing stuff online, and notify you immediately.

• As a parent, you should learn all you can before you buy a new smartphone for your child.
• You should teach them about the safety features on the phone, in different apps, they use such as Messenger from Facebook, or Instagram such that they know how to keep themselves safe online.
• Teach them the use of different app features where they can safeguard their personal info, prevent other strangers from following or attacking them, seeing their posts and sending them messages, and stuff.
• You must teach them the ways they can save their personal info, and not share it with anyone online.

After All

As a parent who doesn’t want to track their child’s phone without them knowing, but being responsible offline is equally important. Being a part of their daily life will keep you informed, and allow you to help them.