How to Protect Your Kids from Online Predators

We hear a lot about online predators who abuse kids of different age groups. When we hear such stories, they sound shocking and frightening. But most of us think that these are just stories, or don’t happen in our social circles. But this is untrue, we should be well aware that these things happen around us.

However, many cases of child sexual assaults remain unreported. Due to this problem, it is very difficult for the other kids to identify the danger they might face. It means that if the child comes under the influence of a child predator, it is very tough to understand. This is the main reason parents need to be educated enough to protect their children from the harms of predators.

These days kids spend most of their time online, hence giving a chance to online predators who can assault the child even when the parents are watching TV in the next room.

What is an Online Predator?

Before we talk about the protection of the child from online dangers, let’s understand who is a cyber predator?

Online Predators are mostly adults who seek those kids who are vulnerable to sexual, emotional, or psychological abuse. They generally look for those children who are under some difficult emotional conditions. They come in contact with those who experience difficult emotional circumstances and have problems inside the family and befriend them.

The Predators thrive best in the online chat rooms, forums, and instant messaging apps so that they can locate and communicate with the kids. Online predators are usually between the age group of 18 -55 years.

They slowly gain confidence in the child through attention and kindness. They spend a lot of time befriending them, listening to their troubles, sharing their hobbies, and playing the role of a caring friend.

They move step by step and start discussing vulnerable stuff and gradually extract explicit content from the victim. In the end, they might harass the kid and demand their naked photos and videos and pressurize them to meet.

How to Protect Your Child from Online Predators?

Five Steps to keep your Kids Safe from Online Predators :

1. Educate the Kid about Data Privacy

Everybody wants to be popular these days and chased by the popularity on social media, kids often neglect what will be the consequences of revealing their personal information online. As a parent, it is essential for you to teach them how to protect their personal details on the internet. (For more parenting tips, click here)

Check out the basic safety rules

• Don’t share your phone number or address
• Consider using your nicknames instead of real name and surname
• Avoid sharing your locations
• Don’t message back strangers
• Don’t let everyone comment, disable the option
• Never follow the links of unknown people.

2. Become a Digital Parent

If you want to know what your kid is doing online, you need to be updated. create social media accounts and update yourself. Befriend your child on the social media platform. As their social media friend, you will be able to see what they share on social media and the web, and who comments on their posts.

3. Build Trusting Relationship with your Child

Children who are close to their parents are less likely to face such troubles. Setting a friendly atmosphere for the child is the key to open and friendly communication about your child’s safety.

Here are some tips that will help you become more indulged in your lives

• Talk to your kid as frequently as possible, Discuss their problems, and always suggest a way out.
• Don’t scold them for making every small mistake. Nobody is perfect, it is natural to be wrong at times.
• Give the kid space and privacy that he/she requires, but still keep an eye on them for their security.

4. Talk about being Safe in the Chat rooms

Parents need to teach their kids about the safety in chat rooms, as it is being used by the predators to reach the victim. Explain to them to maintain distance from strangers and never engage in private chats, especially those with a video cam involved.

If they want to be included in the chat, they need to be in public chat rooms with the people they know.

5. Use a Parental Control App

It is very essential to tell your kids the difference between right and wrong. It is a challenging task, but make them aware of the concerns kids face and the tasks they should do, and the ones they should never do.

It is better to install a parental control app like Phone Agent 007 on your child’s phone. This will help you keep an eye on your child’s day-to-day activities.

With the help of Phone Agent 007, you can

• See the messages on social media apps
• View call logs
• Track location
• View the list of visited websites
• Check out the connected Wi-Fi locations

Although Phone Agent 007 can protect you from such online dangers, you still need to make your child aware.

Final Thoughts

Parents need to be aware and involved with their kids all the time. They don’t need to take part directly, they can even monitor their kid’s phone remotely by a parental control app.

Using a monitoring app such as Phone Agent 007, you can see all the activities of your child. So, if you see any online predators targeting your kid, you can stop it before it’s too late.

Also read: Is It the Right Time to Monitor Your Child?