Why Parents Should Monitor Technology and Internet Usage

My parents were great, especially at this, but how many other kid’s parents were good at monitoring their kid’s usage?

Disclaimer: In no way am I TELLING you how to parent, but I am ADVISING why this element is needed for today’s world!

Huh?

Yeah I know. You’re wondering why I am saying that parents should monitor their kids when it comes to electronics huh? It’s because this is a newer element of parenting that really has started at the turn of the last century (the 1990s). Not many people really understood the internet above the age of 35, and that makes many parents susceptible to not knowing what their kids are doing. Watching or playing NFSW type content, can lead to addiction, which comes from anything on the web, video games, many other electronic platforms.These are all things millennials and Generation Z are faced with.

Socializing becomes worse as the children growing up with the new technology become more and more detached from their surroundings and the people around them. It’s good for the parents to monitor their kids and be able to see what they’re doing on their devices. A lot of the things that affect you is when you’re young, and can be very traumatizing and affect how you approach life after reaching adulthood.

Reasons Why

There are many reasons why. For those that don’t realize it, the internet is comprised of three sections, the surface web, the deep web, and the dark web. Most of what we do on the internet is on the surface web and the deep web, but most don’t know that the dark web (4% of the internet) is where a lot of illegal activities are happening. They’re (criminals) the ones providing those creepy or enticing ads on your websites, or texting your game group chats for “webcams invitations”. These leads to so many bad things;

Losing personal information due to revealing things that aren’t needed to be shared. A certain level of comfort on the internet and the wrong type of conversation can lead to Identity Theft and boom, that person’s identity either wipe out or sold.

due to revealing things that aren’t needed to be shared. A certain level of comfort on the internet and the wrong type of conversation can lead to and boom, that person’s identity either wipe out or sold. Less time exercising and socializing (horrid lifestyle) , and more time on the screen lessens our ability to connect with people. As Michael K. Spencer’s article “ The Loneliness Epidemic ” states, we as humans naturally crave human interaction. Evolution, for example, doesn’t just mean we progress, but we evolve to what we continually do. If the next generation continues to become more isolated on the internet via online gaming or watching videos on YouTube, then what becomes of social interaction?

, and more time on the screen lessens our ability to connect with people. As Michael K. Spencer’s article “ ” states, we as humans naturally crave human interaction. Evolution, for example, doesn’t just mean we progress, but we evolve to what we continually do. If the next generation continues to become more isolated on the internet via online gaming or watching videos on YouTube, then what becomes of social interaction? Can lead to pedophiles and sexting, which are things that really tick me off because it can lead to sexual deviants that can come down and hunt your kids, or traumatized them by sending them lewd pictures.

which are things that really tick me off because it can lead to sexual deviants that can come down and hunt your kids, or traumatized them by sending them lewd pictures. They can join the wrong group as many know that people that want to belong go to the internet to find solace in a community that’ll accept them. This can lead your kid to do dangerous activities you weren’t expecting. He or she could join hate groups, cults, and many other types of fractions to harmful to the majority of society.

as many know that people that want to belong go to the internet to find solace in a community that’ll accept them. This can lead your kid to do dangerous activities you weren’t expecting. He or she could join hate groups, cults, and many other types of fractions to harmful to the majority of society. Cyberbullying is real. I was never affected by it and I don’t feel I ever will, but it’s a real thing that happens to a lot of people. Kids through their adolescent ages are shielded in their environment, and seeing a whole new world they aren’t used to can make them feel self-conscious, and overall lose self-esteem. Online Multiplayer in video games was a platform back in the mid to late 2000s that was rough, to say the least.

is real. I was never affected by it and I don’t feel I ever will, but it’s a real thing that happens to a lot of people. Kids through their adolescent ages are shielded in their environment, and seeing a whole new world they aren’t used to can make them feel self-conscious, and overall lose self-esteem. Online Multiplayer in video games was a platform back in the mid to late 2000s that was rough, to say the least. Just Desensitized over everything you see. Making the abnormal we see on the internet normal, isn’t right. Yes, the world is a crazy place, but the internet should have limits to what an underage people can or cannot see.

All these things are things that can really affect your children before adulthood. Parents have to be careful as little things can really influence their kids in the worst ways whether it be their personality, how they treat people, their ability to succeed in society, etc.

My generation: Millennials and Generation Z

Source: feedough (Not too much of a difference)

My age group and I are prime examples

I’m a millennial who is two years away from being in Generation Z, so I was brought up on the age where computers and the internet started to becoming way more commonplace than it was even in the 90s as the internet was slowly booming. I remember being on a desktop at seven, and I accidentally went on a pornsite, and it was so traumatizing because I saw some of the weirdest images of a man and woman doing stuff ever at the age I was. I was racing to delete the history and other things like cookies. Even though I had the state of mind that I wasn’t supposed to be viewing something like this, most kids aren’t taught that. I realize most of the kids I grew up with, would get the discipline to not do the bad action again, but they wouldn’t be taught to why the bad action was wrong. It was told to them that it shouldn’t happen again, and of course this leads to the bad action happening again.

There is a bunch of inappropriate stuff on the internet that kids can see when they’re under the age of eighteen. I remember being in high school and people I was friends with just look up pornography, and I was just surprised how comfortable they were talking about it publicly. Do you see how weird that is talking comfortably about that high school? How would their parents react if they knew their kids were doing that in school instead? Unfortunately, they never knew, so no reprimanding happened.

How I was Prevented from Addiction and Bad Mishaps: Strict Restrictions and Guidelines

Stopping my dependence on technology slowly

To ensure I wasn’t addicted, after getting glasses at 10 years old, and spending hours on the weekend on my PS2 and GameCube playing Madden, NBA Live, and many other games either too close to the screen or for far too long, my parents went took a different route. For about two years of my childhood, I was only allowed to play a total of two hours of video games each weekend. I wasn’t permitted to watch TV, go on the desktop (unless school related) or play games on school days at all for forty weeks out of the year.

I got my first smartphone in the year 2012–2013. It helped me to not rely on the internet so heavily, and to only use it for school/learning at places such as the library and for HW help. Not for ways to beat a video game level that was too hard. I wasn’t even allowed to play certain games until I was old enough to play them (ESRB rating scale), so no Call of Duty at my house. I won’t lie, I heavily disliked this at the time, and relished when I could play those types of games at my friend’s place. Now looking back, wasn’t bad as I wasn’t supposed to normalize seeing images of blood and killings with knives and guns every 5 seconds on my screen when I was too young to understand that it was for entertainment only.

People have the ability to get addicted easily, and my parents knew that. I got glasses at an early age because of being too attached to the computer and the TV, which is why my parents did what they did. There has been reports of people gaming or being on their computer screen for far too long, even if it’s not for bad reasons, it can cause isolation and unhealthy lifestyle habits.

Prevent mishaps

Also to prevent any mishaps such as identity theft, or scams, in general, to get my information, if I even saw some sketchy website for advertisements, I was taught by my parents and told repeatedly not to give in to doing any online forms unless it was from an actual company that had a secure website. They know that kids will surf the web for all types of things, and with millions of results, there can be many things that can take you to bad websites (dark web).

I was told even to notify them if something wrong as a virus popped up. I prevented that because those times meant I went on bad websites that caused the said virus. The whole thing taught me to be safer on the web, and not to be so reliant on it. The thing is, most children try to hide evidence to not get in trouble from parents without realizing that those actions on the internet are the actual consequences for getting so wrapped up in the internet and not identifying the traps. Such as losing perspective in life by just being in front of your screen(s) all day, or doing whatever we know on the internet.

Final Thoughts

Source: thestar (This mom gets it lol)

Fun fact, most game designers, most rappers don’t let their kids grow up listening to the content they created. You know why? The influence can be addicting, or even potentially bad for the kid’s brain. It’s the parents that get tricked into buying this stuff like tablets and laptops for kids that need guidance with it. If more parents can put restrictions as mine did, a lot of addictions we see to technology wouldn’t be the way it is.

People from the ages of 8–28 spend nearly 45 hours a week on a digital screen. That’s really bad as that’s one-fourth of our week spent on our devices. My parents are always telling me how people my age can’t live without their phones or laptops, and I couldn’t agree more. Technology in those forms has become the third hand in a way, an extension that we got by some sort of weird technological evolution.

Technology is great, heck, I even wrote about the benefits it has given us since the end of the 19th century. It’s just that the internet is another place where kids can be advertised to join the wrong crowd, develop low self-esteem, allow invasion of privacy possibly, and more. Addiction to their devices makes them lose sight of your own world, and less ready for it, and the internet is like being in the Matrix. So any parent out there, make yourself even more strict on your kid’s usage on the web and electronics. It might help them in the future to be well functioning members of society.