Officer Schild, your College Place School Resource officer, here with another tip. Today I wanted to build off of the previous Snap Chat talk. As parents, making the decision to allow you child to have a phone is and should be a big decision. Phones improve communication while providing access to your child, which is great. As we know, there is responsibility connected to a phone. Kids with phones have full access to the internet. This is good, but does come with some precautions. Despite all the warnings and conversations, we have with our kids, there can be some dangers associated with a phone. Kids will do things that they are not supposed to be doing no matter how much we talk to them sometimes.
Speaking with some parents it has come to my attention maybe not all know there are apps and ways to help restrict or limit your child’s access to be able to use the phone and time on the phone. This can include time of day, minutes, and parental controls
For the parents who have Verizon there is a free tool with your family plan; the app is called “My Smart Family”. On this app you can set when the phone can be used and what times. Just so parents know, when you limit their screen time or restrict the usage, the phone will still accept phone calls and text messages from the trusted people on the phone.
There is a spot to filter content by selecting from a variety of content to block or accept. This includes social media, messaging, games, videos and more. Kids can find ways around certain things but this is a way to at least help with the amount of screen time and for parents to be able to reach your child.
There are other apps out there you can pay for and also have free subscriptions that will have less bells and whistles. Some apps only have screen monitoring time, some have location only. Some apps to mention are Bark, Qustodio, Familytime, Google Family Link, Canopy, and Life360. All of these have different features on levels of subscription and what you can control. You will have to look at these to decide what might best fit what you are trying to do.
Remember this won’t be able to catch everything your child is doing. This is just another tool to help in the ever-growing digital world. Parents should have the hard talks about being responsible with the phone and appropriate ways to use cell phones. Telling them about some of the dangers out there when getting into social media and always being diligent with social media is important because there are always people out there looking to take advantage of our youth or vulnerable people.