The ability to monitor others while online is desired by many. Indeed several people are curious about what their friends and acquaintances are engaged in online. Imagine a situation in which someone else is capable of reading all your texts whether for mobile phones or emails. Imagine too that the same person can monitor all the sites you log into on the internet and can decide to cut you off anytime or completely block you from accessing it in the first place. Although these acts are irritating and may seem an infringement on other people’s privacy, it is actually what parents’ companies use monitoring software to do, and is ultimately very beneficial to children.
The software allows parents to monitor their children’s online activities. These are inclusive of outgoing and incoming emails together with chat room discussions. Parents are therefore able to protect their children from being misled by strangers. For instance, a child chats with a stranger just for a short time and he/she is already suggesting that they meet in a questionable place. A parent monitoring the exchange may decide to accompany the child for safety, deny the child permission to leave, or simply cut off the particular website. The measures protect the child from possible exploitation by the several strangers that they come across online. Some of the strangers may be pedophiles and sexually assault the children; others may be kidnappers and try to keep the children for a ransom.
Parents also block the children from other sites to maintain an educative gain from the internet. They gladly allow the children to access educative sites that nature their development, but not pornographic sites that quite a detriment a child’s development if exposed to at an early age. Children who are only allowed access to educative sites soon gain interest in them a move that greatly improves their academic performance. Other social activities such as the kind of internet games played by children can also be regulated to avoid children playing games that leave them in a lot of psychological torture. There are several of such that leave children depressed and are not intellectually helpful. This kind of monitoring helps to shape children’s behavior and personality development while maintaining moral ethics which are essential for healthy growth. The children are young and curious and are likely to make mistakes under such conditions. The guidance of a parent is surely welcome.
Monitoring children’s online activities help in managing their time. At an early ages parents control and children’s time. This is normally balanced between the imperative activities such as being fed and sleeping for a reasonable amount of time. Parents can block their children from most of their favorite sites creating time for them to do other activities. The kind of activities may vary from active sports to interacting with other children. Such kind of behavior reduces incidences of internet addiction which is starting to become a major problem in the world. The most affected countries currently are South Korea and China with rehabilitation centers already constructed for addicts. There are kids who would love to play internet games for a very long time if access is not regulated. This trend at best should be discouraged in order to raise children who are not too dependent on the internet since overdependence lowers the critical analytical abilities of children.
Based on the above discussion, it is more beneficial for parents companies to use monitoring software and allow parents to monitor their kids’ online activities than to avoid it.