Music, Phones and Internet Safety for Kids

There is an IT revolution going on these days. While it is positive in some ways, it could also negatively affect the way our children grow up. In the old days, it was easy for our parents to monitor and control the contents of what we watch on Television; that was when there were limited TV channels and localised ones at that. These days however, children no longer depend solely on the television for informative contents, they rely also, and mainly on the Internet. With the advent of i-phones, black berry phones and other smart phones, it becomes very easy for kids to hook onto the Internet. This, therefore, allows them access to materials that could not easily be controlled by parents, as they treat their phones as their second skin. They are, therefore, exposed to music, videos, and other materials that are obscene and harmful to their growth. The following tips will help in monitoring what our kids listen to and watch.

• Spend time with your kids when they surf the Internet; make them realize the dangers of the internet
• Listen to their kind of music and advise them appropriately
• Music with sexual innuendoes or explicit sexual connotations should be discarded; you also need to inform the kids why the music is inappropriate
• Teach them never to share private information with people they don’t know; “meeting” someone on a social website does not amount to knowing the person, no matter how long you have been “friends” and chatting
• Set their phones and computers to age appropriate searches; this will filter the obscene sites. Use the Parental Control Setting available on some Cable Networks
• If the family is using a shared computer, keep this in a central area like the sitting room
• Set the limits of internet use; however, where a child is using a smart phone, you have to ensure he is not always locked up in his room at odd times
• It is actually advised that you don't buy such smart phones for them at a much younger age
•  Encourage the use of Google for kids search engine
• Be a role model for your kids in your good use of the internet and the kind of music you listen to