How parents monitor their children in the age of social media?

It is more of a matter of “should” rather than ‘how’ parents monitor their children’s activities in the age of social media. Thankfully, I do not have any personal experience for this but asked a few children and parents about it.

A 12-year-old girl, Anam, tells me that when she is using Facebook her mother comes to her room and stands still in front of her, asking what she’s up to. “It’s really annoying,” she says.

There is a rule on Facebook that no one under the age of 13 is permitted to join it. However, there is no real way for Facebook to truly enforce it, because anyone can lie about their year of birth.

There is another family I asked this question, they were too afraid to reveal their names. They said, “Our kid uses internet around 12pm till 1pm, after that we monitor our kid’s internet history.”

This was a ‘Wow’ moment for me. I should have told them that there is an option to remove your entire internet history. So, I asked them if they had come across any inappropriate searching content. They replied in negative, saying: “There was just science and social studies content in search history.”  

I think they are too naïve as someone as young as that kid can’t possibly be searching such stuff at 12pm.  

Mind you, there are some intelligent parents too. They use Filtering Software. This software searches a child’s internet usage; many even enable to view the exact keys that were typed, time spent online and all computer activity.

I happen to come across one such family. “It allows us to monitor social media sites’ block chats, filter content and we can even monitor our child’s cell phone with a software program like this,” they told me.

And this was something truly unknown to me before I was enlightened about it. I couldn’t have ever imagined Pakistani parents of being able of going to such an extent. I guess we are really progressing.

It is wiser for some parents to install computer in a central location in their homes as it becomes easier for them to keep an eye out what the kid is up to. Setting down a limit of usage hours is not a bad idea at all.

Where many kids don’t seem to understand the complexities of the online world, it is a duty of their parents to guide them.