Technology surrounds us in today’s world. This offers many online benefits for children and adults, but it can also become a problem. Besides offering lightning access to education, entertainment, and social networking, it can also lead to unwanted content.
And because we’re so immersed in technology nowadays, it’s difficult for many to manage their screen time. This article will explore such sides of our interconnected world and how you can monitor online activity, including screen time, to help you navigate the digital landscape safely.
Why Online Monitoring Is Important
Even though there are different points of view regarding the ethics of monitoring someone else, any parent knows that their children should be safe. That’s because the Internet is full of questionable content, but that’s not all. Healthy content can be so engaging anyone can lose track of time.
Here are some crucial considerations on why you should do it:
Harmful Content
- Harmful Content
There’s a lot of inappropriate content for children and people of various belief systems. This includes violence, explicit content, cyberbullying, and questionable social practices.
- Screen Time
Excessive screen time is problematic for anyone. It can lead to health issues such as eye strain and bad posture, among others. It can also reduce sleeping time and physical activity.
- Habit Building
Everyone needs a bit of discipline, and building habits on how to safely browse the Internet and consume content will put children and adults in a better position to manage their activities.
- Prevent Danger
There are a lot of unsavory elements lurking around, including child predators, scammers, and others trying to exploit unsuspecting victims.
How Norton 360 Premium Can Help
Norton is at the forefront when it comes to online security. The company requires no presentation, and its current accolades include Best of the Year 2021 by Pcmag.com and Best Protection & Best Performance by AV-Test for the same year.
Still, some people might not know or understand what its Norton 360 premium offering can do for them, more specifically, in its Deluxe tier.
Opting for Norton 360 premium will improve your online security. It’ll do so in a myriad of ways, including stopping account takeovers and blocking hackers. But let’s go into detail about parental controls and online monitoring, which is the topic of this article.
Because Norton takes the safety of your children seriously, they’ve developed a comprehensive package of features. Let’s take a look.
- Time Supervision
This tool lets you understand how your children spend using their online devices, including PC and Android. It lets you allot a number of hours, and users can request time extensions. There are even graphs to visualize this information in different periods.
- Video Supervision
No, this isn’t a Big-Brother-like scheme. This feature lets you check a list of videos your kids watch on their devices. It shows thumbnails, video descriptions, and titles and enables you to watch a small fragment of the video.
- Mobile App Supervision
You can also check which devices were downloaded and installed on Android devices. You can also check which ones were uninstalled and browse them by usage. This way, you can also gauge what interests your child the most.
- Web Supervision
With this feature, you can check what websites were visited by category, such as general, entertainment, shopping, etc. You can also block unwanted websites and check if there was an attempted access to such sites.
- Search Supervision
If you toggle this feature, you can check what your children are looking for in different search engines such as Google, Ask, Bing, Yahoo, and YouTube. There’s also a way to activate safe browsing filters for all these engines with a single click.
- Location Supervision
There’s a tool that maps the location of Android and iOS devices to check where your children have been. There’s a 30-day history; you can filter the activity by time and date.
- School Time
This is a boon for homeschoolers but suitable for all. Because remote learning requires the Internet, setting online limits is challenging. This feature lets you manage school time by blocking activities during certain hours and checking whether educational websites were visited.
As you can see, this solution has everything you need to keep your children safe, and it allows both monitoring and prevention. However, it’s just a tiny part of what Norton 360 Premium can do for you. Be sure to check the full features to understand how it can help against malware and boost your privacy, among many other things.
Safety Starts at Home
Even though Norton 360 Premium offers a comprehensive package that can help you keep your children safe, teaching your children about online safety and maintaining healthy communication is essential.
The first thing is you should be a role model regarding technology use. Show your child how to use devices responsibly, and don’t just talk the talk; walk the walk as well. Use your devices, keeping healthy screen time limits into account. Avoid using your phone constantly, especially during family time.
People change, and that’s even more pronounced with children. Be sure that you regularly check their needs and make the necessary adjustments. Negotiate so the outcome is positive for both parties.
In the end, monitoring screen time and activity is vital to being a parent today. But it requires a marriage of technology and communication abilities. Norton 360 Premium Deluxe will give you an impressive array of tools to help your children stay safe, but no lesson will be learned without guidance and support.
Remember that the key is balance. This means allowing them to enjoy technology while protecting their well-being, not outright banning everything. Only then you’ll allow your kids to develop skills and awareness to thrive in today’s world.
