In up to the minute word, teenagers have been wholly consumed by gadgets, smartphones, internet, and video games. The spread of technology is so vast that it has overshadowed each and every outdoor game there was. Now teenagers only want to be in their digital world with their high-tech friends like gaming consoles and social media sites where they interact with the unsafe world. Along with emerging technology, diseases and crime have also proliferated. So as a parent, how can you keep your teen safe and sound in this technological era? Let us find out how.

Monitoring excess usage.

In this era, you cannot keep your kids away from technology and the internet, this will make them look like a fool among peers. What you can do is, limit their screen time. Teenagers often spend hours and hours sitting in one position, scrolling through social media sites and sharing pictures and videos. This long sitting harms the children’s health, costing them their metabolism. When teenagers start using the internet, the chances of them lying to their parents also increases, and this inculcates bad values into valuable relationships of parents with their children.

Cyberbullying: An anxiety trigger.

When your children share photos and videos online, they are exposed to the toxics of the internet. People pry over teens to bash them online and depress them by harassing them verbally or via texts. This takes a huge toll on your teen’s mental health and instills anxiety in them. Kids become self-conscious and their confidence is an all-time low.

According to research conducted by MDPI, 49% of teens believe that their educational institutes or their parents cannot or will not help them about cyberbullying. You as a parent, need to prove this wrong by helping your teen by understanding his/her problem and giving effective solutions.

Cyberbullying should not be taken lightly, as it is in for a long haul with destroying your teen’s health. When teens are bullied online, they are in isolation, triggering isolated anxiety of facing the bully in a dark room with a bright screen. All this leads to low-confidence and more anxiety, which makes your child vulnerable.

What can you do?

As a parent, you will always have a balance to strike. The balance of introducing your children to all the latest technologies and the internet and saving them from the preys online. You can follow these steps to avoid situations like deep anxiety and depression.

• Communicate:

For your teen, you should be the go-to person for discussing anything, literally anything. This gives them an open space for discussion and emptying their hearts out. You should have a frank and friendly relationship with your teenager so he or she could share all their joys or sorrows with you.

• Become a historian:

Not literally. By becoming a historian, we mean, you should keep a track of your child’s browsing history and track their online presence. Tend to what they are visiting and see for yourself if it is safe or unsafe. Also, if you see your child online at odd hours, ping them and urge them to go to sleep. Who knows what they might be seeing online?

• Use a Virtual Private Network

A VPN hides your IP address when you visit websites. You can use this for your children to disguise them from cyber bullies. Because once these bullies track your teen online on an unusual site, they are prone to giving your child anxiety attacks.

• Introducing adult filters

You should update your browser’s settings to not show the adult website that is toxic to your teenage children. This way you can prevent teens from seeing something they shouldn’t, with little to no effort.

• Abreast them with outdoors

One prime reason that today’s teens are stuck on their screen are we only. We as parents, don’t have time out of busy schedules to introduce our new generation with the wonders of outdoor games and activities.

Parents should take time out of their schedules and take their children on brunches, hiking, running, playing, or swimming. These outdoor activities will take their minds off from the toxic world of the internet that awaits them.

• Improve home aura

Often teenagers tend to go to virtual dreams when they want to avoid the reality that creeps them. The inadequate environment at home triggers teens to find pass times on the internet, which often grows into an addiction. This addiction is so strong that it can ruin a person’s life. So you need to keep the atmosphere at your home light and full of positive vibes. This way your teenager will take more interest in the real world than the virtual one.

Above were some do’s and don’ts to tackle teenagers and technology hand in hand. We hope you understood our point well and will act upon these pressing issues like an adult. Happy parenting…!!