Managing Technology Access at Home:

There are many tools available to parents that enable you to limit or manage internet access at home. Please make use of this updated list of resources both to secure your network and to help your children manage their internet and social media usage.

You work hard to keep your children safe from so many different dangers, but they may also be exposed to threats online. Predators, disturbing content, identity theft attempts, and other things you wouldn’t let them experience in real life, are all waiting for them on the internet.

Young people today consume social media and internet content constantly. It is responsible for their cultural narrative – that which sustains connection and communication between them, but also which causes incredible and devastating breakdown of mental health and safety. Social media, no matter how little access you think your kid may have to it, is changing how your kid is growing up. 

While that’s not always a bad thing, kids have more access to new sources of information, some good and some bad. Finding useful information on sites like YouTube is easy, but so is stumbling across harmful or even malicious content.

Youtube

YouTube has everything: children’s shows, toy reviews, video game footage interlaced with player commentary (known as live streaming), and so much more. YouTube’s content creators are more than eager to provide content that appeals to young children. 

But you can’t expect everything to be kid-friendly. Plenty of malicious and racy content can be found on YouTube. While users have the ability to flag objectionable videos and YouTube offers a kids’ mode, these solutions aren’t perfect. The only way to ensure safe browsing for very young children is to be aware of what they are watching.

• Let them watch without headphones so you can listen in.

• Check their video history from time to time.

• Understand the current trends when it comes to questionable content (more on this later).

• Encourage them to watch channels that you know are kid-friendly.

There are countless channels that appear harmless on the surface, however, a deeper look will reveal how disturbing the content actually is.

The Logan Paul Generation

Logan Paul is a popular YouTuber with millions of subscribers, including many young fans. The online celebrity experienced controversy in late 2017 after posting a video of a dead body while exploring Japan’s infamous Suicide Forest.

He was heavily criticized for exploiting the man’s suicide for his online show. Logan eventually took down the video and issued an official apology but it was deemed “too little, too late” by many. Today, he still regularly posts content and despite having millions of young fans, his content is often mature in terms of language and subject matter (especially his podcast, which features guests like famous porn stars). 

Elsagate

Another YouTube controversy is the Elsagate scandal. Recently, several videos featuring iconic child-friendly characters like Spiderman, Elsa from Frozen, and Peppa Pig emerged in videos that contained disturbing, inappropriate themes. These videos were produced illegally, without permission from the official owners, yet many children watched them daily.

While some of these videos were clearly fake, others featured standard animation, making it difficult for kids to tell the difference. In these videos, the characters would often:

• Inject each other with needles.

• Attack, steal, and break things.

• Get another one of the characters pregnant. There were countless videos featuring pregnant Elsa and other Disney characters.

Bizarre Disney and Marvel Live Action Content

There are also popular videos in which actors dress as Disney characters and create live action skits. Once again, these videos are full of disturbing content that is far from kid-friendly.

The majority of these questionable videos are often ranked well because their creators know how to manipulate the YouTube algorithm. A simple search for Spiderman or Elsa will often result in these videos near the top of the search because they were viral.

Suggested Content

Another issue parents have to deal with is suggested content. Many children are still building their attention spans, and after a few minutes in one video, they might click a suggested video from the sidebar. Suddenly, they’re falling down the rabbit hole that is YouTube’s suggested content feature.

YouTube displays suggested content based on a set of specific ranking factors. If a video is extremely popular and somewhat related, it will be displayed. So, if your children click suggestions after watching a Frozen clip, it won’t take long for pregnant Elsa and Spiderman videos to pop up in their feed. As parents, this means your children are being served content that even adults would find creepy.

How can you stop it? There’s virtually nothing you can do to stop this other than strict parental controls and monitoring your kids’ internet use in real-time.

YouTube Parental Controls

Parental controls exist on YouTube. They are far from perfect, but you can minimize the risk that your children will see something disturbing. Here’s what you can do through YouTube’s parental controls:

• Block specific content types and creators. If there’s a specific channel or a genre of content you are aware of, you can block it.

• Allow approved content only. Parents can also limit what their children watch by approving specific content. Children will only be able to watch this content and nothing else.

• Turn the search off. The search function on YouTube can be turned off. This is a great option for parents of children who are able to read and write.

• Limit use to YouTube Kids. This is a popular option for parents who want a kid-friendly version of YouTube. While it doesn’t block everything, it does remove a lot of the adult content.

Instagram 

The dangers of Instagram are evolving and are very different today than what they were when the app was in its infancy. 

Instagram today is dominated by celebrities, influencers, and micro-influencers who command major followings – many of whom, your kids probably follow. While many of these pages are benign and may only advertise minimally, many more are known to heavily advertise products like “Flat Tummy Teas,” “Detox Teas” and appetite suppressant lollipops and spread false and harmful information about diet culture that can easily reach young and impressionable followers. These can be especially dangerous when considered in the context of Instagram’s recent updates, which allows users to make purchases directly through the app. 

I caution parents about this side of Instagram as it is very active, not only through advertisements, but through a very alive practice of glorifying diet culture and disordered eating throughout the app. 

Apps in which scrolling and ‘liking’ are the dominant features of participation, like Instagram, are also found to be much more addictive than any other apps. 

Of course, other primary concerns with apps like Instagram are the possibilities of cyberbullying, online grooming, and chatting with strangers. Having a private account greatly mitigates these risks but they do still exist and it is important to maintain open dialogue with your kid about social media as long as they have it. 

It’s also important to understand that your kid might be running multiple accounts. 

• “Rinstas” vs. “Finstas” - “Finsta” means “fake Instagram” and is meant for only someone’s close friends to follow and is kept private with far fewer followers. Depending on where you live, this may also be referred to simply as a “private.” A “real Instagram” or “rinsta” is highly curated, public facing, and projects an ideal. This is the account that kids allow their parents and family members to follow. While the account may still be set to private, it probably has hundreds if not thousands of followers. Not every kid maintains multiple accounts, but this behavior is common. Oftentimes, finsta accounts are where kids will share personal stories, jokes or even racy and mature content like drinking and partying with their friends. 

• As popularity in finsta accounts grew over the last few years, Instagram added privatizing updates, including “close friends” stories, where you can post stories (15 second photos or videos available for 24 hours) on any account, but the content will be accessible to those on the “close friends” list. Now, kids can have close friends list and post private content even on their “rinsta” accounts. 

The reality is that kids want to connect with their friends online, and keeping them away from popular apps like Instagram can even feel isolating for them. However, it’s imperative that they engage with Instagram in a way that doesn’t jeopardize their future health. 

What you can do: 

Instagram provides their own guide to helping your teen navigate the app safely: Find it here

Third-party monitoring apps such as Bark can give you a lot of visibility into what your kids are doing online. 

I also encourage you to begin open dialogues with your kids about their online presences without shaming or blaming them for wanting to consume it. Create space for your kids to come to you when something may be going awry on social media. It’s okay to take your time introducing your kids to social media; they may have more social-media savvy than you do, but adults have the social context and frontal lobe development that they do not. It’s important that kids understand what’s appropriate for them to post and what’s not. Vulnerable kids, who are not educated about the social repercussions about their actions online, are vulnerable to predators online. 

Part of the open, honest dialogue is an ongoing, editable social media agreement to have with your kids. Consider their own usage, who they follow, their account settings, and what your family values will be around account supervision – can parents have access to the kids’ accounts? Can you have occasional meetings to check up on safety? Can parents follow kids? Etc. You can start with the agreement template provided at the top of this page and build on it and edit as you find suits your family best. 

TikTok

In the last few years, TikTok has emerged as the most popular social media app among kids of all ages. While TikTok can have benevolent and even educational and creative content for younger audiences, it’s nearly impossible for kids to regulate the content they’re seeing on their own. TikTok content feeds are based entirely on algorithmic estimations of what the user might want to see. The “For You” feed curates a stream of suggested content based on your account activity, but because users often aren’t seeing the content of anyone they know or choose to follow, it’s very easy for kids to see harmful, dark, or mature content, even by accident. The “For You” page can suggest sexually explicit, physically dangerous or violent, and vulgar content. 

If your kid posts publicly on TikTok as well, it’s possible that their videos could end up on the phone screen of anyone, of any age around the world. 

Users between the ages of 13 and 15 automatically have their accounts set to private by default, which prohibits them from any private messaging and only allows friends to comment on their videos. However, with over 1.1 billion users on the app, there is massive potential for interaction with strangers through the app, even through the comments section on a random video. 

Data privacy is also a concern with TikTok. Kids are constantly advertised to through TikTok. You should also understand how your kids’ data may be collected through TikTok. TikTok collects location, internet address, and the type of device you’re using. While it’s not disclosed by their policies, it’s very possible TikTok is mining more data based on user preferences and interests as well. TikTok also has access to all private messages sent within the app. 

TikTok ‘influencers’ also constantly market products and clothing to their followers. New products are always going viral on the app and it’s very easy to get sucked into purchasing whatever the new viral product is. 

Here are the safety measures you can take: 

Family pairing mode is a new feature that allows you to manage privacy controls for your child’s account, but both the parent and the child must have active accounts for this to work. Once this is enabled, you can link your account to your child’s and manage important privacy features on their account. 

Here’s some additional information on what exactly you can control with Family Pairing:

• Screen Time Management: You can adjust how long your child is allowed to spend on TikTok per day.

• Direct Messages: You can restrict who can send messages to your child’s account (Everyone or Friends only), or turn off direct messaging completely. Direct messaging is automatically disabled for users between the ages of 13 and 15.

• Restricted Mode: This setting automatically filters out content from your child’s feed that may not be appropriate for young audiences.

• Liked Videos: You can adjust who can view the videos your child has liked (Everyone or Friends only).

• Comments: You can control who can comment on your child’s videos (Everyone, Friends only or no one).

• Suggest Account to Others: Control whether your child’s account can be recommended to others or not.

From https://www.pandasecurity.com/en/mediacenter/family-safety/is-tiktok-safe-for-kids/

You can also activate restricted mode on your kid’s account, which will restrict inappropriate content from coming up on their feed. But, keep in mind that without family pairing activated, you’ll have to do this directly from your kid’s device. To turn on restricted mode: go to profile, hit the three dots in the upper right corner, select digital wellbeing, select restricted mode, select turn restricted mode on 

You can also restrict who can comment on videos so that only people your kid follows and hopefully knows can comment on their videos. 

For the sake of total honesty, I hesitate to suggest parents allow kids under 13 to get TikTok at all, simply because there is so much potential for harmful and dark content to reach young kids on TikTok. 

Snapchat 

The primary risks of Snapchat include SnapMap, which lets friends see each other’s locations (this can be turned off in the settings by switching on ‘Ghost Mode’). Snapstreaks track how long two people have been snapchatting and can be a major time-suck. They incentivize users to get on the app everyday and keep up the streaks and are especially enticing to young users. The Discover Page on Snapchat features tabloid-style articles from outlets like DailyMail and other media content. It’s hard to regulate this content as it’s based on user preference and can be age-inappropriate, featuring violent or sexually inappropriate stories and content. 

It’s also important for parents to know that messages, if not saved in the chat feature, will disappear immediately after reading.  

Here’s how to protect your kids on Snapchat: 

First of all, make sure that your child can only be contacted by Friends (otherwise they will be available to any user on Snapchat) Here are step-by-step instructions. 

Here are more step-by-step instructions for you to ensure your kids’ safety through restricting who can contact them on the app and how to report other users.  

Online Gaming 

Video games have increasingly moved toward online multiplayer business models where players can interact and communicate with other players. Games like StarCraft, World of Warcraft, PUBG, and Fortnite are entirely multiplayer, while others like Minecraft and Call of Duty offer both single player and multiplayer modes.

It’s important to understand that the ESRB rating system for determining age and content ratings for video games typically doesn’t consider online interactions. So, while a video game like Fortnite may seem child-friendly on the surface with its colorful graphics and cartoony art style, adult players can say anything they want to in the game’s voice chat.

Online gambling

Video game controversies can be extremely complex. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) is an online multiplayer combat video game that offers in-game microtransactions, where virtual in-game items can be purchased using real money. In particular, CS:GO sells “skins,” or spray-painted designs to decorate a player’s weapons or character. Certain skins have been known to cost upwards of a thousand dollars.

It’s also possible to trade skins between accounts. This has led to the creation of websites built to allow players to wager the value of their skins against other user’s skins. Trading websites like these employ famous YouTube celebrities to advertise the service to millions of viewers as well.

Don’t fool yourself, these are gambling websites.

On these websites, players bet and win skins based on random chance and betting on live matches. While this setup is essentially gambling, trading skins manages to dodge the legal definition of gambling by not involving actual money, but rather virtual items that can be sold for money. Nonetheless, the game’s developers have been hit with class-action lawsuits over the possibility of underage players gambling on these sites.

There was even a major scandal in 2016 when popular Counter Strike YouTubers TmarTn and Syndicate, who were famous for creating videos of them gambling on these types of websites, were caught rigging bets on a website they owned. In these videos, the two players would gamble and show players how much they were winning. However, they never revealed to their audience that they were gambling on a website they owned. All of their winnings were staged, misleading their millions of supporters, many of whom were underage, and encouraging them to gamble.

Current parental controls 

Many modern devices, apps, and web browsers offer parental controls that restrict access to certain content for their kids but did you know that many antivirus software titles already include parental controls? It’s two layers of protection with one installation. 

Some popular options include:

• Bitdefender – the premium version comes with a lot of features, but some of them are intrusive. These features include a webcam filter, activity reports, history and alerts, social media and mobile phone tracking, IP monitoring and blocking, SMS and call monitoring, website and app blocking, and location tracking.

• Norton – this household name features time, web, search, social media, and location supervision, protection of personal information, access request, and support for up to 10 devices.

• Avast – the website blocking feature is less intrusive than the other options mentioned. Parents can block specific websites and keywords.

• Manage Wi-Fi network screen-time using a Wi-Fi router with family controls: Google Wifi

• Xfinity has parental monitoring as part of their home internet service

• AT&T and Verizon customers: Log in to turn off cellular access, set hours of use and set usage limits

• The new "Families" page — located at apple.com/families — helps parents understand and use all the features that are already floating around on Apple devices. Many parents may not know that they have the power to track their children's location, monitor and limit their purchases, and filter what content they can see on their devices.

• Such software as K9 Web Protection, Norton Family Online, and Net Nanny, allow parents to control what their children have access to on the internet.

Content Restrictions:

• Limit access to pornographic sites for FREE with Open DNS

• Schedule downtime from distracting apps and social media site with Freedom.io

• Use Our Pact to turn off ALL non-apple non-native apps for big chunks of the day

• Common Sense Media recommends www.bark.us

Remotely monitor and manage your kid’s tech use (remotely from your phone):

• Mobicip is a popular parental controls service with the widest multi-platform support in the industry.

• Check out Web Watcher to monitor your kid’s mobile and PC activity

• Circle is a nice way for families to manage content and time online, on any device.

• Another  great solution for managing kid’s tech use and app access is UnGlue.

A quick search will show you which antivirus software includes parental controls, but in my experience, the best way to encourage safe internet browsing is through education and conversation.

Some platforms, like Netflix, have built-in parental controls that restrict content with a passcode. Netflix supports kid-focused user accounts to block adult-only shows. iPhones also have parental controls in their settings menus.

Some tech-savvy kids can bypass parental controls by installing certain software. Prevent them from doing so by giving them access to non-administrator user accounts on your operating system. Most will only let certain accounts install new software.

Educating your kids on some smart browsing habits goes a long way toward ensuring their safety. You will want to teach them to:

• Never share personal information online, like your phone number, email, address, or personal pictures.

• Think before you post. Your name is attached to everything you say online, so don’t post anything you wouldn’t want a teacher, a friend, a family member, or a potential employer to see. Side notes for your kid: Your friend’s parents are reading your texts and your social media posts and they are making decisions about you based on what you post and say. You can easily be banned as a friend for texting shady, mean or offensive things. How might this affect you, you ask? Less invites to your friend’s houses because yes, parents become biased against certain types of kids, when they don’t like what the kid posts. Fair or not, know this.

• Understand that their actions online can have consequences in real life and make the consequences as clear as possible through stories of other kids who have “missed the mark” on appropriate behavior online.

• Take some time to go through the privacy settings on Facebook and other online platforms.

• Don’t share passwords. Likewise parents, don’t share yours with your kid either. 

• Don’t meet someone you’ve befriended online without parental permission.

These are just general guidelines. It’s worth looking into the specific services and platforms your children enjoy using the most to see if they offer any customized parental controls.

Lastly, when your kid is working on you so they can get a new app or a game, have them make a case by introducing you to the app or game in full. Have them present the upsides and the dark sides of that app (yes, they should be able to research this and report on it if they want the new privilege). When or if you feel ready to let them have it, set it up as a trial (for periods of 30 days at a time) so that you can reserve the right to shut it down if it turns out that your kid truly isn’t able to manage their behavior or impulses around the app or game in question.

Written and compiled by Anna Ely