There was a time when the thing that children least looked forward to in life was their report cards. Yet it came every three months, with clockwise precision, presenting to the parents, in black and white and sometimes in red, their Key Performance Indicators or KPIs’. Of course, they may argue, but numbers are cruel in their infallibility. (TOI)
Numbers tell stories – of mastery of a subject or the lack of it, but also attests to the strength of a child’s character. The marks on the report card are proportional to the sacrifices they have made, the afternoons and evenings they had not played with their friends, and the shows they had not watched on the television. The ability to go against instinct indicates their success in the future. According to a famous Bengali saying, “Those who study ride the car”.
If mild controls can be applied in those ‘feary months’, the exam’s tempest may reduce to a trickle! What can the parents do?
Parental Control Apps like Family Link (by Google) monitor children’s app usage. It especially works wonders if your child is very young, or is about to enter their teenage. Apps to monitor app usage implement digital ground rules from your device to help guide them as they learn, play or explore online. It is applicable for children under 13 (for India, or as applicable age of consent in your country).
Parental Controls on Prime Video (by Amazon) enables parents to set restrictions for the video content that can be viewed or purchased by their children. It works by requiring entry of your PIN to bypass any purchase or viewing restrictions that parents have enabled. Parents need to enter their PIN to bypass any purchase or viewing restrictions that they have enabled:
(1) Amazon Fire TV devices (Fire TV and Fire TV Stick),
(2) Fire Tablets running FireOS 5.0 or older
A parental control app can be downloaded to a parent/caregiver’s device (Phone, TV, Tablet) and to their child’s device to allow monitoring, tracking, blocking, and limiting activity on their child’s computer, laptop, phone, and/or tablet.
Sometimes such controls are already in-built into the device or an existing app. For example, Prime Video already has an in-built parental control feature. Alternatively, to monitor more than one apps, parenting control apps can be created and installed into the monitoring device’s hardware.
Parental control isn’t straightforward. It consists of a mix of techniques for blocking websites. It monitors API to observe web browser or internet chat application and match it with the database of banned words. Such software includes a password, or some form of authentication to prevent unauthorized users from disabling it. It also makes use of the proxy server, a web browser to send requests for web content to the proxy server instead of directly to the intended web server. The proxy server fetches the web pages from the server and passes the content to the browser. It inspects the data being sent and received and interrupt depending on various criteria according to the requested URL.
Parental Check Applications like Family Time are specially designed to include features that make an app truly useful and meet all parenting needs. It is a popular choice for parents, co-parents, and single parents. They can restrict adult content, and disallow rental, purchase, or playback.
In General, parental monitoring software is used to check on child’s social media progress, track their whereabouts, filter their content, set screen time limits, help kids with managing time, monitor app usage, and block access to threatening or inappropriate content.
According to Wikipedia, parental control applications can be chopped into four broad categories:
Content Filters – These limit access to age-inappropriate content.
Usage Controls – These constrain the usage of these devices by placing time limits on usage, or restricting adult content.
Computer usage management Tools – To make parents regulate gaming.
Such apps might sell data to third parties and are not entirely open about how they secure the information they collect.
It can also damage your relationship with your child, particularly as they grow older. It barges into their freedom and privacy and makes them rebel, and makes them lose trust.
Others: Life360, Canopy, NetNanny, Qustodio, Google Family Link, haandle
Further, Parental Supervision Software contains:
The cost of app development depends upon the app and may offer different pricing plans with a bit more freedom and flexibility in choosing within a budget. It comes close to USD 20K – USD 35K.
To decide on one parental control software, check their pricing plan, feedback, reviews, real-time monitoring alerts, call-message tracking, emails and content blocking, location tracking and screen time management.
Application Development Companies create Parental Control Software to let parents set boundaries, and teach internet safety to their children early on. As a parent, nothing you do is ever enough. If one number looks to be improving, the other does worse, and just when you think you have done kind of “ok”, along comes another expert who takes a look and raises the alarm, and their solution is to get more exams done, generate more reports, and continue the inevitable spiralling – inducing further restrictions – making the child live more of the life by living less of it. Maybe, now that you think you did ‘ok’, the quarterly school reports weren’t all that bad in comparison.
Neeti Kotia is a technology journalist who seeks to analyze the advancements and developments in technology that affect our everyday lives. Her articles primarily focus upon the business, social, cultural, and entertainment side of the technology sector.
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