8 mobile phone safety tips for children

Last week, The CSR Journal took you through scam calls and cybercrimes against women. The attention shifts to the dangers of the mobile phone your child is using. Parents must understand the risks and benefits of their child’s digital life and take the right precautions and safety measures when using mobile devices. Here’s what parents can do to ensure their mobile phone toting kids are safe.

1. Discuss cyberbullying

Cyberbullying is a crime. Emphasize that your child should not respond to cyberbullying. Instead, they should tell you about it as soon as possible.

2. Set a strong password

It’s basic but helps prevent bullying, sexting, or breaches of private information. Encourage kids to create unique passwords featuring numbers and symbols, and to change them often. You also might want to invest in a password manager.

3. Recovery phone number

Some 50% of those who find mobile phones have the best intentions and may return the phone, according to a Symantec survey, so tape a recovery phone number to your child’s phone.

4. Install security software

Security software is instrumental in blocking malware, phishing attacks featuring dangerous links, and unwanted calls and texts.

5. Turn off geotagging

Although useful for mapping and security services, you should talk to your child about when and where they should share their location. Emphasize keeping the location feature on their phone turned off unless absolutely necessary.

6. Charge at night

This is particularly important in improving your child’s sleep and school performance by avoiding the temptation of late night gaming or texting. It will also limit exposure to mobile phone radiation if your child tends to keep the cell phone next to or under the pillow.

7. Discuss spam and phishing

Teach your child not to reply to unknown senders or callers. Scams, phishing, and spam texts — they can lead to racking up premium charges or giving hackers access to your accounts.

8. Set rules for new apps and games

The world is full of apps these days, most of which are not relevant or appropriate for your child. Make sure you review all apps your children want to use before they download them.

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