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How can you stop your kids viewing harmful web content?
As concerns grow about the effect of harmful social media content on our children, we look at what tools are available for parents to regulate what kids see and how long they spend online.
The struggle to prise them away from a life spent online is a familiar one for many beleaguered parents. Our youngsters spend hours on Instagram chasing "likes" - and often coming up against cyber-bullying - or playing games, obsessing about YouTube influencers or surfing between different "friendship groups" on WhatsApp.
So how can we keep them safe from harmful content?
Content filtering software has been around for many years, but parents have often been too tech-shy to work it properly. And it often required children to hand over their passwords - a potential cause of family rows.
But now a new generation of digital parental controls has arrived on the market, promising to help parents take back control more easily.
Circle with Disney, Koala Safe and Ikydz, for example, are systems that claim to be able to control every digital device in your home with a few taps on a smartphone app. use, but is ?
The new products work by connecting to your existing household wi-fi router. In the case of Circle you plug in the white cube - clearly inspired by the Apple school of design - and it immediately lists every connected phone, laptop, tablet, and so on in your home, and offers a variety of ways to control them. (…)
(…) Anne Longfield, the Children's Commissioner for England, thinks it is good parenting to set limits.
"The internet can be a great resource, but it can also be the wild west for children. We wouldn't think it was OK to drop our children off in the park at night if they were younger," she says.
"In the same way we shouldn't think it is OK for them to roam the internet without any guidance or restrictions."
There are disadvantages with these latest filtering devices, though. Some don't work once your child's phone leaves the home and is no longer on home wi-fi. And they won't all work if the wi-fi is switched off and the internet is accessed via mobile data. Other products are also incompatible with some UK routers.
Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47853554(adapted) Access: APRIL 18th,,2019