How do smartphones affect children's psyche?

We have firmly entered the era of gadgets, when a smartphone in the hands of a child no longer surprises anyone. Not only wealthy families, but also parents with modest income equip their kids with the means of communication more often, because when done right, they bring benefits ranging from increased child safety to new opportunities for learning and development. The main difficulty lies in the competent organization of interaction with an electronic toy in order to make a smartphone for a kid a guard and assistant, but not a new source of danger.

Pros of smartphones for children

Even the most stubborn opponents of smart mobile phones will not argue with the fact that owning them provides many advantages.

Children's phone:

• Allows its owner to stay always in touch. The child can warn that he is late, report something important, ask for help in a difficult situation. It not only rids parents of unnecessary worries, but also makes it possible for the child to feel that the family protects him.
• Provides access to educational channels with puzzles, tests, educational games, and also allows the child to master technology skills from an early age, without which it is impossible to live normally and build a career today.
• Promotes a healthy lifestyle. For example, there are reminder apps for warming up or drinking a glass of water that can be set to child mode.

It is logical that nowadays mobile phones are becoming as natural and necessary as a toothbrush. However, a smartphone without a family control function is far from being as harmless as it might seem at first sight. 

Cons of smart gadgets 

Started in 2018, a large-scale study of 11,000 young Americans who regularly deal with a smartphone showed that without strict control of the time spent in front of the monitor, academic performance begins to decline, thinking abilities dull, the development of imagination and imaginative thinking decreases, and the ability to concentrate decreases.

In addition, the participants in the experiment, whose smartphones did not have a child mode function, developed a variety of health problems. So, children whose parents did not try to limit the time of interaction with the gadget,  had sleep disturbances, problems with the spine, decreased vision, headaches, excess weight and difficulties in socialization, since contacts with peers in social networks were not able to replace live communication.

Fortunately, today there are enough programs that allow you to exercise reasonable control over children and their electronic assistants, set child filters, monitor the screen time of a child's smartphone and conduct other activities, creating for younger members of families the most secure virtual environment. One of the most successful monitoring apps, without a doubt, isParental Control  – a simple, convenient and effective tool for family protection in the virtual space.

Parental guide: what is child monitoring and why is it needed?

Family monitoring is an ideal tool for protecting children and preserving the nerve cells of parents! So that your not yet quite intelligent child does not surf the Internet wherever he wants, does not acquire the habit of disappearing for a long time on entertainment sites, does not get lost in the city, turning the wrong way, does not acquire unwanted contacts, take the safe control of his activities in his smartphone.  So you will be calm for him.

What opportunities does child monitoring open up? You can:

• Always be aware of the child location. Set the geographical boundaries of the area in which he can be located and the gps parental tracker control will signal if they are broken. You do not even need to make a call to find out the location of the children.
• Be able to put a "parental lock" on potentially malicious sites and YouTube channels, as well as blacklist content.
• Block from children unwanted apps, such as those that encourage teenagers to gamble.
• Set an app time limit to prevent your child from playing their favorite toy for hours, forgetting about lessons and health.
• Receive information about the duration of the baby's stay on a particular Internet resource in order to be able to decide whether it is worth limiting the appplication time  in principle and installing a child blocker, or there is no need for restraining measures. If your son/daughter behaves sensible on the Internet, removing the screen limit will underline your trust in them.
• Control the list of contacts. Many criminals easily gain confidence in children and get the opportunity to monitor the child, persuade him to engage in antisocial acts or access important information via SMS. A parent block on a suspicious contact can prevent it.
• View pictures taken or received on your child's phone using the family monitor.
• Read real-time conversations and view call history. It gives the guardian parent another easy way to control children and prevent dangerous situations before they go too far.
• Have access to the list of all actions that were carried out on the gadget in a chronological order.
• Get access to a full lock of the phone, if the ability to simply limit screen time for some reason seems insufficient in this case.
• Not only monitor children, but also know the battery level of the phone, the amount of free memory and used Internet traffic in case the young owner himself does not keep track of the state of the gadget.
• Be sure that the child will not be able to uninstall the application on his own and damage the safety of the family.

Each parent has not only the right, but also the duty to protect children by all means available to him. In this regard, the application that allows user control over a child's gadget without special technical knowledge is truly invaluable! However, it must be used delicately so that too active interference in the privacy of a son or daughter does not destroy the trust between you, which should not be sacrificed even for the safety of children. Explain to your child that you worry about him, and don’t try to control him, tell him about the dangers of cyberspace, be ready to listen to his requests and provide him reasonable freedom – and the child control application will never make you move away from each other.