6 Best Features of Screen Time Android – A Great Parental Control App

Content:

Daily Use of Devices Among Kids
The Negative Exposures
Screen Time Android As Helper
Convenient and Helpful Features
What Every Parent Should Know and Do

We live in the era of technology where people are now bringing their loved device everywhere. People are like fixated to their phone in order to get much information that comes from friends, family, or newsletter from the Internet. With this handy device, people can do anything now. They can create communities, get the latest news update, and even start to write valuable writings that can be read by everybody.

Aside from those, there are still many reasons why we can consider the Internet as a positive thing in our life. But there’s always the other side of a coin. The negative impacts of it exist. We adults, can, of course, do several things to avoid all those negativity. But what about the children?

Kids nowadays are not only bringing their own smartphones but in a way, mastering them. They can use their phone for doing homework, chatting with their friends, and also diving to the Internet itself. With all the risks that lingering the Internet, what the parents should do to protect their beloved children?

Before answering that vital question, let’s dive into some facts about kids on online activities.

6 Best Features of Screen Time Android – Infographics

Daily Use of Devices Among Kids

Seeing the bad exposures that can give truly bad effect to the children, some of us may wonder, why kids with such a young age are getting the smartphones that actually require an open mind and wisdom.

Based on mobile kids research by Nielsen, there are about top five main reasons why parents are giving the device’s ownership to their kids :

6 Best Features of Screen Time Android – A Great Parental Control App

“I can get hold of her/him easily” (Solid 90%)

Most parents out there want to make their children calmer and easy to control. The hyperactivity can be troublesome for some parents, making their job at home harder. Phone devices can make their children focus on their activities (games or social media), while the parents do their tasks in the house.

“She/he can reach out to me easily” (90%)

Communication is one essential thing for both parents and children. The phone device can connect them easily with the messaging apps.

“I can track her/his location” (80%)

With the installment of location apps, the parents can easily monitor their children whereabout. If there’s something going wrong, parents can detect it easily by seeing the strange movements.

<“She/he has been asking it for a while” (66%)

Making children happy is the main purpose of being a parent. That’s why, when their kids asking for something, they’ll do whatever they can to make them happy.

“I want to get her/him familiar with mobile technology”

When it’s the time to move to more advanced life, one should always adapt to the newest technology, so he/she isn’t left behind. Any parents would love to see their kids smarter than them. So they want them to have a touch with the latest technology.

However, the kids who are given their own smartphone will use it as they like. The mobile device is like a gateway to entertainment paradise where there are countless game apps, videos, and kinds of music.

The data based on the children activities on their smartphones from 8 years to 16 years old. 85% the time used for taking pictures. Almost all phones are equipped with a great camera now, and the result is also pretty good. The children mostly use it for taking some pictures, both selfies or with their friends.

Playing games and downloading apps are the next activities, remembering that there is an infinite number of games or emulators in Play Store of Apple Store that they can download freely. Children also use their devices for social networking through media like Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.

In playing games, they rather use their phone on the go than their consoles 61% of the Kids use phones to get any new information from their device, either is bad or good for them. Without the parents' care, the children could access a content that’s not appropriate for their age.

The Negative Exposures

Aside from all the positivity that the children get when using their phones, there are always bad exposures that can give them an uncomfortable experience. Let us show you the facts and the statistics.

Online Predators

The Internet is a place to meet all kinds of people. There’s a good one, and the rest of them use the internet for bad intentions. Predators can always attract children with so many factors that they like. For example, the care and compliment that they give to your children can make them comfortable and trust those predators completely. This, however, is really dangerous because, in the end, the predators will try to approach via offline. Chance of kidnapping is unbearable this way.

Profanity

The Internet also a place where people from different backgrounds meet. The kids will be exposed to the people around the world who are talking with all kinds of language, including the use of curse, offensive, and racist words.

Pornography

It’s not a secret anymore that you can find all kinds of content on the internet. This, including the materials that supposed to watch by adults. Kids, however, are sometimes curious about things, including those sensual topics. If the parents are not aware of this, looking at those sites repeatedly can surely give bad effects to your kids.

Cyberbullying

There’s a saying that goes, “the open-minded people are the ones who can survive the internet”. If not, they can use the internet as a media to hurt people, via bullying. Cyberbullying can give serious mental illness for the victims. With the bad rumors and gossips that can spread quickly, some serious cases always ended up with the death of someone.

Showing Private Information

Kids can accidentally show their private information to some new people. This information can be used by criminals to access the family identification information. The identity can also be stolen and used for reasons that up to no good.

Screen Time Android As Helper

So, with all those bad exposures that lingering the Internet, what parents should do to protect their children? The answer to this is Parental Controls. Parental Controls are the tools or software that can be installed on the children’s phone in order to allow parents to give some controls to their kids' online activities.

With the Parental Controls, the parents can see what their children see, and take actions from there. However, there are a bunch of Parental Control Apps out there. But the one that pops out is the Screen Time Android.

Screen Time Android app was created by Screen Time Labs, a development team that specialized to make parental control apps. Screen Time serves all the parents with supportive actions like the daily reports, child monitoring, and many others. The team consists of ten dedicating members from Bristol, United Kingdom.

They know what the parents' issues, and want to give this app as a solution for parents all over the world. They want to be reliable supports for them.

However, the app does have a set of useful features that can help the parents greatly for controlling their kids' activities.

Convenient and Helpful Features

· Child Monitoring, to see how much the time spend on the device

The first and most important aspect from the Parental Controls is the ability to monitor your child activities on their own device. With this, you can see how often they use their phone. If they use it too much, you can take some actions like restriction or distract them to do anything else like going somewhere, seeing movies together, etc.

· Notification when new apps installment occurs

Many parents don’t realize what their kids install on the phone. Sometimes, the sexual apps can also be installed with parents realizing it. With The Screen Time app, you can always have a notification when your kids are trying to install new software. If you think that the app is not suitable for them, you can talk to them about it and tell them reasons and understanding why they shouldn’t install it.

· Monitor the website that visited by the kids

The common activity on the internet is web surfing. Your kids can enter any websites in general. With the help of this app, you can understand all the websites that have been visited by your kids.

· See the time used in the specific apps

You can see how much time your kids spend on specific applications. If you think that your kid is too addicted to specific apps, you need to take an action. You can block the internet access to some apps to make them unusable.

· Pause your kids' devices in a click

Very useful pause button from the app can be a great help. With just one touch, you can pause all the activities from your kids' device. All of the activities will be stopped instantly. However, you can find this feature on the Premium version of the app.

· The Family Screen Time Pact, to make your kids understand the system

This feature exists in order for parents to make a better understanding of the whole Parental Control system for their kids. With some communication, the kids will understand. You can also make an agreement to make the whole system runs effectively.

Aside from the instant pause button, Screen Time Android can also serve you with the additional premium features such as specific daily time limit, blocking certain apps at specific times of the day, blocking all the activities when it’s time to bed, receive the summary of device usage, and the others.

The Screen Time app is also available in Apple Store. But, the IOS version of it still has some bugs to solve and seems unready to use than its Android version.

What Every Parent Should Know and Do

So, aside from using the apps, there are some things that the parents should in order to make Parental Controls run more effective. For all you parents, here’s the list of things that you can do :

· Install the Screen Time Android or IOS on all the devices that your children use
· Know what your kids watching, interacting or playing. Ask them about the applications that they always used, asking what is the application all about, why they installed it and why they love it so much.
· You should add an agenda to balance the kids' online activities. For example, set a time for when the kids should study and playing. There are dozens of interesting e-books that they can download that can give information through a nice looking media
· Make use of privacy settings in social media to prevent sexual contents and advertisements. You can also use the profanity filters for gaming applications.
· Set age restrictions on the mobile networks, so the adult contents will be hidden
· If your kids tell you uncomfortable online experience, listen to them and take your kids seriously
· Keep the communication going so you can have an update of what your kids like on the internet nowadays. You can also install the games that can be played by two or more people in order for family-bonding and build family trust. At the end of the day, you and your kids can play the games and have fun together.