Originally posted on February 2, 2016 @ 9:51 am
The computer is a very important tool not only in schools but also in the home today. While adults in the house may use it for work or business, children also need it for their assignments or sometimes, for entertainment.
While mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones are growing in use these days, the laptop and desktop computers remain in many households. Their sales are recovering, according to the July 2014 figures from Gartner.
Microsoft, for its, part, noted that people will still be using PCs and that tablets can’t replace the PCs. The company added that laptops and desktops are still necessary.
Controlling Your Kids’ Laptop Use
“At home, parents need to supervise the way their kids use laptops,” stressed lawyer Tony Dunne, a San Diego Child Support Attorney. “Being a portable device, children can easily bring them anywhere in the house thereby leaving you with no idea what they are viewing or doing online. Sometimes, they can even lock themselves up in the bedroom if they want to keep from you the content they are reading or watching.”
As such, setting rules on laptop use is strongly recommended for parents with growing kids. Use of computers for homework is not a major issue but rather it’s the screen time at home in front of these tech devices particularly when playing video games that moms and dads should be concerned about.
Parental controls are provided by operating systems such as Microsoft Windows. They can control the hours children use the laptop at home for certain days of the week and specify the websites kids can see. In addition, this tool enables parents to ensure that their kids use only age-appropriate apps and games and block downloading of certain content.
Some of these parental control tools are built in but if you want added protection, you can purchase software. This way, you can further monitor or block the online content being viewed by your children depending on their ages.
For Mac users, parents can share screens with their kids and you become an administrator to your child’s Mac. This is one effective way of monitoring the online activity of your children.
Experts are also reminding parents not to expose their kids to gadgets at a very young age. They point out that this can lead to addiction to entertainment screen media for the rest of their life.
Keep in mind that longer screen times affect not only children’s health but also their academic performance as proven by several studies. It results in obesity and lower grades. A 2015 study done by Cambridge University researchers found that 14-year-old kids who spent an extra hour each day on screens resulted in a drop in their GCSE results.