Managing Your Teenager's Privacy Online

 

As we are now living in a more digital world, it makes sense that your teenagers would have quite a lot of access to the Internet. We depend on the Internet as a primary source for education, communication, and entertainment, but that doesn’t mean you can’t monitor the teenagers' usage and ensure that they are being safe. As much as the internet has brought a lot of good to our generations, there are also dangers. 

It’s not always possible to separate off-line and online friends, and that’s gonna just go through a period of their lives where they have a consistent need to be liked, it’s very easy for them to slip through the cracks and believe that they are being spoken to by their own peers. Unfortunately, it’s not always the case.

It’s for this reason that parents have to do everything they can to ensure that they are managing the teenagers' privacy online. From learning how to delete search history on Google, to being able to identify potential predators,teenagers have become more savvy about being secretive online and parents have a lot of work to do to ensure that teenagers are safe. Teenagers want to be protected online, but that doesn’t mean they’re not going to be hard on chat messages and videos. So what could you do to protect the team and they are online?

  • Establish a safe connection. The biggest and best way to ensure that your teenagers are safe online is to implement a safe connection. Putting passwords on your Wi-Fi, and ensuring that you have the right protection for malware and viruses will stop any uninvited emails or pop-ups from attacking your computer system. Understanding online habits may mean a difficult conversation, but if you can limit the time online, as well as password protect the connection to your computer, you’ll be able to protect your children and that’s the goal.

  • Learn how to protect yourself. If you want to protect your teenagers then you need to do some research and learn how to protect your own interests. Antivirus is a cornerstone of online protection, which means that you need to have sought security suites that cover you, your computer, and all mobile devices. You need things like firewall protection and password management, a VPN and phishing protection as well.

  • Consider protecting your identity. Identity protection services monitor your family’s accounts and personal information for suspicious use or unauthorized activity. They should be of the highest possible caliber so that your teenager remains safe. They shouldn’t need to be worried about being embroiled in a digital scandal, as it seems like going on the Internet will follow them for the rest of their lives.

  • Use apps to protect devices. You can use protective apps, and you can also use pin numbers, password protection or even facial recognition. Something they just made prefer the ease of use of a fingerprint scan. For any apps, you can use multifactor authentication by possible and insure that your teenagers feel like they’re getting the most out of their protection.

  • Keep software updated. If you update your apps and your operating system with the latest features and enhancements, you’ll be able to stay one step ahead of hackers. Plenty of updates to the operating system include security success, and that can keep bad actors from taking advantage of exploiting holes in your devices.

  • Communicate. If you want to ensure that your teenagers are safe online, you need to have this discussion with them. They need to understand what to look for to know that they are safe in the first place. Talking to them about their life at school will also help, because it will help you to ascertain whether any potential problems or bullying has been carried back into the house. The one downside of digital life today is that playground bullying or any teasing doesn’t stop at 3 o’clock when the school bell rings. You need to understand their world, and you need to understand what they are looking for from the Internet to be able to meet their needs.

  • Keep a weather eye out. You need to ensure that you are watching activity online. If your younger children are playing online games on the Internet, being vigilant about conversation to strangers is important and this is a conversation you should have at the moment they are able to offer an iPad. The privacy online is important, but so is no safety.