Children are way smarter now than they were earlier. They catch up things easily and due to their immature mind things get engraved in the mind easily. Due to widespread access of internet and television it becomes difficult to regulate what they are viewing and what they are doing. Also when both parents are working then it is not always possible to keep a close watch on children. The mind of a child is always curious and wants to explore things and what better place can be than the internet or television. Parents in there busy life finds it easy to hand over the mobile to children to keep them busy and then do their own work. It becomes easy for the parents as children get engrossed in the mobile and now they can do their work without any hindrance.
But it is necessary to keep a close eye on the activities of children. I will say about some activities which should not be allowed for children in the before teens age group.
Do not let them use social media.
Social media is an unregulated place where hundreds of types of ideas and topics are floating. Children don’t have the mental ability to understand these things, for them what they see is what they believe. In this growing age if they start believing in wrong things then it will have a long term effect. Though some social media sites may have age restriction for joining but in a virtual world it is so easy to manipulate those. Children can easily create social media accounts and operate them. If parents don’t keep a close watch then this can continue uninhibited. There are not much productive things to learn from social media but children can easily learn those things which are actually to be avoided. But such things are packaged such a way that they will believe that such things are to be imbibed.
Watching TV and movies not rated for them.
This is again an area which can have harmful effect on the mind of the children. Now a day’s even movies and TV programs which are rated as universal have contents which are inappropriate, but due to changes in society these things have become common. Once the remote is in their hands and there is no one to supervise then all those things are within the access of children. Channels like Netflix and others are now full of contents not suitable for children. Once they are exposed to these things then it would be natural for them to explore it in real world also. It is important that some sort of filtering or child lock be there to restrict them from accessing these sites.
Unrestricted access to internet.
The above two points are also related to this. Internet is a landmine of information both good and bad. It is also easy to get drawn towards what is bad. I have seen children in early teens getting hooked up to adult sites and parents are totally unaware of it. I have seen intimacy even in pre teen children due to this. As I said earlier it is easy for parents to keep their children preoccupied by handing them over mobiles while they do their work. Without a child lock to filter out adult content, it is a matter of time only when they will find those sites and starts exploring them.
Keep a check on their friend circle.
Children cannot differentiate between a good friend and a bad one. It may be that you have controlled the above mentioned points at your home, but if he or she has a friend circle who are exposed to these things then it will automatically reach your children also. Children find an excitement in doing what they are told not to do and coupled with bad friends they are always susceptible to taking the wrong path.
The growing years are the formative years of their life. Whatever impressions get imprinted in their mind stays for a long time, until they have reached a mature age to discern things. It is the responsibility of the parents to regulate their mind, whatever be their commitments. Otherwise they will have themselves to be sad and blame later on.
Thanks for this advice I am a teenager too So I will learn from this 😁.