The internet is like a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the internet offers users endless opportunities for knowledge, entertainment, and research. It is also an excellent source of information on almost any topic imaginable. However, this same tool is also home to offensive, hateful as well as adult content towards which you as a parent would indeed be concerned.

In spite of the endless restrictions that you have imposed to protect your child from being exposed to the side of the internet that he is not mentally capable of comprehending yet, there is still room for the kids to come across it.

Parental concerns

There are numerous concerns that you as a parent have and I’ve listed down a few and you surely would relate to them.

1. Antisocial and addictive – Nowadays’ kids have mostly lost their ability to communicate because of internet use. Children are more interested in online communication than in engaging with people in person. Students may become quite dependent on the internet. Kids disregard their schoolwork by squandering too much time online. A student may become diverted from their academics due to the abundance of entertainment alternatives that are easily available on the internet.

2. Vulgarity and hateful content – Students may encounter different sorts of vulgarity, including violence and pornography, when using the internet. Underage minors have no difficulty in accessing such content as there is no reliable technology to confirm the user’s age, even while pornographic websites strive to restrict access to just an 18+ audience. Moreover, the internet is a place where everyone is entitled to their opinion and views which gives a green flag to people promoting hate, and violence and which can easily influence the young generation.

Apart from these, health concerns such as lower back issues because of spending a lot of time on the computer, laziness, etc are always present.

What can you as a parent do?

While accessing YouTube, the recommendations play a vital role in which direction is your child headed too. The recommendations while watching a video are not always related to the video. For example, YouTube may also recommend an Andrew Tate video to your child who’s just watching the highlights of a cricket match. YouTube algorithm is to blame but we can’t just sit and wait for YouTube to get the issue fixed. So what can we do?

You can build a browser extension on either chrome or any other browser, which is pretty easy to make, that limits YouTube access to only the channels that you and your child agree on ahead of time. Giving him the freedom of choice, of course with your consent, while having a positive conversation about what it means to be internet safe. This is a very compromisable way to not be a ‘not-cool’ parent, while also having your child exposed to the content that he actually should at his age.

Here’s the link to add the browser extension:

https://lnkd.in/eSYnxNCZ