Fighting Child Abuse with the Help of Parental Controls

As a parent, you can leave nothing to chance while engaged in an uphill battle against child abuse. One of the biggest challenges that you are likely to face throughout the battle is timely detection of the threat. While physical abuse is easy to spot, detecting psychological, emotional, and sexual abuse is a different ball game altogether. Fortunately, technology has provided an excellent solution to the problem in the form of parental controls. Often described as an essential parenting tool in today’s day and age by popular tech sites like TechoMag, they allow parents to spot signs of trouble in time and pull their kids out of nightmarish situations. There are several ways in which parental controls have been playing their part in the war against child abuse.

Unblinking Supervision of Online Interactions

The advent of web-connected devices and social networking sites has massively increased kids’ susceptibility to emotional and psychological abuse. The kind of freedom and lack of policing on digital platforms has resulted in kids being subjected to insults, name calling, threats, blackmailing, and rejection on frequent basis. This is precisely why anxiety and depression has grown so common among the younger generation in recent years. Parental tools resolve this issue to a large extent by empowering parents to view everything their kids do and come across online. It not only allows them to quickly become aware of their kids’ ongoing ordeal, but also counters the problem of kids remaining silent about their sufferings and trying to face everything on their own.

Defense Against Dangerous Elements

Internet is a huge and unpredictable beast. Allowing kids to roam it freely is perhaps one of the biggest mistake a parent can make. The cyber space is plagued with threats like online predators, sexual predators, blackmailers, and so much more. Equipped with a cunning mind and the skill to persuade the impressionable minds of their young targets, these dangerous elements are relentless and unforgiving. Parents have a better chance of keeping their kids safe from the clutches of such people by deploying a parental control on guard duty. Aside from supervision, these tools also allow internet filtering in order to erect an impenetrable digital wall separating kids from web areas where dangerous elements are known to exist in abundance. Of course this may not go down well with the kids, but there is no other reliable way to keep them at a safe distance from predators and other threats.

Protection That Extends Beyond the Cyber Realm

When parental controls are mentioned, the first thought that pops into mind is digital protection. Yes, they provide digital protection, but their capability and benefits do not end there. As a matter of fact, parental controls are known to have played a considerable role in helping parents save their kids from becoming victims of sexual abuse by revealing their exact coordinates through GPS tracking and allowing them to reach their kids in time. Location tracking has become a standard feature in parental controls, and has been serving its purpose exceptionally well. If the prevalence of smartphones and popularity of social networking sites among the younger generation gave predators and other dangerous element the idea that they would be able to freely hunt their prey, they are mistaken because as long as parental control tools are around, parents will continue to have the upper hand.