HONEST DISCUSSIONS ABOUT RESPONSIBLE DEVICE USE

Parenting experts have emphasized the importance of open communication with children from an early age about the use of such devices.

Questions parents may ask themselves include: Why do they spend too much time in front of the screen? Are they missing human connections and therefore seeking companionship by playing games and chatting with friends online?

Using this information, parents and children can intentionally create rules together for how they want to balance online and offline time, Mr. Tantri suggested.

To avoid future conflicts, parents also need to be transparent when discussing the types of content allowed and have an active dialogue about their children’s media consumption.

Carol Loi, digital wellness educator and family coach, said: “Openly discuss who your kids follow on social media, why your kids follow those influencers, and what they learn from them.

“Listen actively and be open to hearing their perspective. Creating a culture of openness and transparency will reduce conflicts within the family because the focus will be on how we spend life together.”

He added that when disagreements occur, they can focus on the values ​​the family holds dear. For example, they might talk about why a particular influencer is or isn’t making a positive impact on society.

Ms Lim, a mother of a 15-year-old, said she had managed to develop this level of trust with her son, who showed him his social media feed so they could discuss what was trending and what he liked watching online.

Although he sometimes disagrees with the content he consumes, his son is open to a discussion on the subject.

For example, he asked a gaming YouTuber to unfollow his channel due to the influencer’s significant use of profanity in his speech.

However, his son assured him that he would not swear like the YouTuber. She watched his language carefully and did not insist that he unfollow that influencer because he kept his word.

Mr Tantri stressed that parents need to ensure their children see that any dialogue is coming from a good place and that they do not want children to be disadvantaged by the consequences of irresponsible screen use.

Parents should also adapt the rules at home as their children grow. For example, 12-year-olds often need close monitoring and precise communication in explaining strict rules, whereas 16-year-olds need less of this because they need to understand such rules and their consequences.

TIPS FOR KEEPING SCREEN ACTIVITY UNDER CONTROL

Beyond conversations and setting boundaries, parents can also turn to a few common apps, such as Microsoft Family Safety and Google Family Link, to monitor their children’s screen activity.

These apps allow parents to set screen time limits and filter out inappropriate content that may be harmful to children of certain age groups.

But parental control software isn’t foolproof. Young people can find ways to bypass parental control software by looking for loopholes in online discussion forums, and those familiar with hacking through gaming and coding experience likely also know how to deal with technical situations such as corrupting the system’s configuration, Bay said. Tantri.

Technology blog editor Alfred Siew added that it would be good for parents to change their passwords once in a while. He said that the children decrypted the mobile phones of other adults in the family because the adults wrote down the passwords in front of the children.

“They’ve done this over and over again. It’s problematic because they log in as adults and there’s no parental control,” he said.

Media Literacy Council member Dr. Jiow added that in one of his studies, he found that a child placed a video camera at a strategic point in the house and could see his parent typing the password.

It’s not always easy to stay ahead of these techniques, but Mr. Tantri suggested parents can start by thinking from a child’s perspective and understanding how they might choose to bypass parental controls.

When it comes to preventing educational apps from being misused as distractions, Mr. Tantri said parents should take the time to check in with their children on their progress to ascertain whether the time spent on these learning apps is producing the intended results.

But digital family educator Ms. Loi points out that the most effective parental control software is “heart software.”

“Invest time and energy to create a strong bond…The best tools are the internal filtering and monitoring tools our children create so they can discern for themselves what is right and wrong, what is healthy and what is unhealthy,” he said. .