Boredom Leads To Overuse Of Devices! – Handle It with a Limit Screen Time App

“I am getting bored” – parents ignore this statement. Instead of finding them a healthy activity, they leave them on their own thinking it is temporary. Kids are full of zeal and zest. They need to put their energy to work or otherwise they get bored. It usually happens when they have ample free time. This is when they usually turn to their digital devices and play games, surf the internet, watch videos or kill time on social media. Even in school days, when they have a little free time they prefer spending it on the internet.

The use of devices is the destructive outcome of boredom. This becomes a habit and soon they try to find free time so that they can use their phones. Often it happens that they have different things to do, but they go for their devices instead. These are the signs of addiction.

Overuse of technology is harmful to them in a lot of ways. They lose interest in physical activity and social interaction. It damages their metabolism, eyesight, posture and mental health with the risk of depression and anxiety. The worst outcome is screen addiction. This becomes a way of their life and stays with them for the rest of the time.

You don’t want such a life for your kids. Here is a two-step procedure to help them overcome boredom in healthy ways.

Step one: Limit the use

The first step is to limit the devices so that they don’t reach for their gadgets whenever they feel bored. You can do this by restricting their device access with a limit screen time app like FamilyTime. It applies screen locks for restriction. When the lock is activated, kids cannot use their devices. It gets deactivated on its own accord. Time is managed and set by the parents. Limited access means their devices are not going to help them. They would have to do something else. It can also be used to limit distractions and disruptions at the dinner table or at night. Try this app for free. 

Go to Google Play or Apple store or tap on the buttons below:

Step two: Constructive activities

Step two is the old-school method of involving them in healthy activities. The easiest way is to enroll them in a dance class, music lessons, drawing lessons or a game. If not you can always arrange that at home. Bring them art supplies, ask them to help you with cooking, do some deep cleaning in the living room or simply play darts. There is so much more to do once you get a break from your devices.

Keep them going!

The key is to not let them get bored and arrange different constructive things to do – anything that doesn’t result in overuse of digital devices. It is important to keep them busy as boredom also leads to depression and negativity. A limit screen time appis perfect for ensuring productive device-free time for them. So the next time they are bored and scrolling up and down on Facebook, ask them to write a poem about it instead!

Ensuring Safe Screen Time with a Limit Screen Time App

Technology and electronic devices are now considered a part of human life. It is no longer something foreign but an integrated component of our daily life. The kids literally grow up with these devices. They do most of their school and other daily tasks with the help of internet. The screen time is now called simply as “time”.

While the normalcy can’t be denied, it is also a fact that excessive or continuous device use is injurious to health. It not only affects the physical health, but also the mental well being. It is responsible for obesity and eye damage at a young age. Body pain, incorrect posture, sleep deprivation and hormonal imbalance are also caused by the blue light emitted from these devices. It increases the risk for depression and social anxiety. The human attention span is also shrinking due to it.

Reduce Screen Time

In this situation, the fitting solution seems to be the reduction of screen time and keeping it within a limit. Instead of fretting over the health of our kids why not control their device use and schedule it in a way that it becomes safe. Screen addiction is pretty much real and it works like any other drug addiction. Its withdrawal causes irritation and agitation. That is why it is important that parents control it right from the beginning.

How to Reduce Screen Time?

Technology itself has proposed a way and that is in the form of a limit screen time app. Apps like FamilyTime allow parents to schedule their kids’ device time. There are different limits or rules that can be set. It works like a digital curfew during which kids cannot use their devices.

The device locks down and the kids cannot do anything about it. They have to do something else. This way they are engaged in other activities like games and spend time with family. Apply screen limits during meals so that the whole family can have uninterrupted dinner together. During study hours so they can solely concentrate on their assignments. At night so they can have proper sleep without any beeps or dings intruding and wake up fresh in the morning. Other than that you can make a schedule for weekends and holidays when they have more time to spend with their devices. Do other activities instead like outdoor games, yoga, cooking, baking, art and crafts etc.

Get FamilyTime for your Android or iOS device.

Limiting For the Good

So it is clear that a midway solution that suits both the parents and the children is to keep the screen time within safe hours. It can be easily done using a limit screen time app. Most parents are taking up digital monitoring and parenting. Screen time management is also a part of that. Keep your kids safe and give them a better digital life, establish screen time limits for your house. It fulfills your kids’ basic need, all the while keeping the health hazards at bay.

5 harmful effects of sexting and how a text monitoring app can help parents

Sexting is the rising danger among kids. Teens and even pre-teens are involved in the sending and receiving of sexually explicit messages or images. This is done either by text or internet messaging apps. According to Pew Research center, 15% kids have received “sexts” through text messages and 4% have admitted to sending nudes to others.

Some kids are forced by their partners to send such messages and some think that it is normal because they don’t realize the dangers associated with it. Sexting can backfire in multiple ways, which is why parents need to start text messages monitoring as well.

Harmful effects of sexting

Here are major harms of sexting, which can damage kids:

Sharing

Kids may send sexts to their partners because they trust them, but they can misuse these messages. They can forward their messages to others and make them a gossip item for people.

Digital Footprint

Anything that reaches the internet can be tracked. A digital trail is created and it can cause a lot of trouble. Most kids don’t get proper jobs or have disturbed relationships because of their past that can be easily searched on the internet. A nude sent just for fun can later become a big problem for them.

Bullying

People can use such information for bullying. As a result, kids may face harsh remarks and receive hate from peers. The bullies leave no chance to embarrass the victims.

Depression

The embarrassment causes depression. Kids become socially withdrawn and wish to stay at home. If not handled timely this can also lead to suicide.

Body Shaming

It is possible that the images sent may turn into body shaming by the partners. This can also happen if the images, go online. Other kids show no mercy in saying bad things and this shatters kid’s self-esteem completely.

How can you stop it?

Here are a few tips to help parents stop it:

Parental Controls

A text monitoring app can help you detect if your kid is involved in such activity. Apps such as FamilyTime allow you to do so with its SMS tracking feature. You can access their messages and read them. It is easy and convenient. You can also keep a 24/7 watch on their other cellphone activities, block apps, and manage device usage. Get it and try:

It will help you to spot:

• Sexting slang
• Sexual offers
• Hate speech
• Depressive thoughts

Block Apps

You can block the sexting apps or other apps that are being used for the same purpose. Snapchat, WhatsApp, and Kik are the popular apps for sexting.

Talk

Have a talk with them. Tell them about the dangers of sexting and how they can be safe.

A little prevention can go a long way!

By using a text monitoring app you can prevent all these harms from happening. Bullying and shaming can have long-term effects on kids. They might do this thinking it’s just for fun but it can come back to them later in time. To lose a job or good opportunities because of a mistake in teenage doesn’t sound good at all. So protect your kids in time and make parental control apps a part of your digital life.

4 Reasons Why You Need a Family Locator App!

Kids are risk takers and tend to explore new things. They don’t think much about the troubles they can get into before talking to a stranger or visiting a new place their friends told about. They just do it, leaving their parents fretting over their well-being.

The worry is not unjust because they can get into numerous problems. Here are the major reasons why you should consider a location tracking parental control app as your solution.

Panic Situation

They can get into any emergency situation. It can be a medical condition, a fight with friends, or if they feel they are lured by someone. Someone could be following them. Child predators are on a look out for such opportunities. They can get kids to disclose their location or frequent places and kidnap them.

Daily updates

Kids have their schedules set, they go to school and after that soccer or dance practice. They have study groups or regular hangout places. You cannot call them again and again if they reached safely, they would get annoyed and call you a helicopter parent.

Sneaking

They get tempted easily and may sneak into places not right for them. Like going to a bar or a stranger’s party.

Out of Town

If you have to go out of town for several days you can keep worrying about their whereabouts. It can also give them a chance to lie and go to places they are not supposed to go.

Location Tracking – Wise Solution

To get rid of all these worries you can use a parental control app. There are several apps such as FamilyTime that provide location tracking and geofencing services. You can get auto check-ins and check-outs throughout the day. Your kids can send you SOS alerts in panicky situations with complete location details. They can also send you pick-me-up reminders. You can create virtual fences around places you don’t want them to go and get alerts if they try to go there. Apart from that, you can retrieve full location history over an extended period of time. Android and iOS compatibility is not a problem at all. You can try it here:

Kids are kids after all and they are susceptible to risks. Ease away your paranoia by keeping a constant check on them. Stay updated. You are not butting in, using a parental control app is just a smart away of knowing their whereabouts and handling any harm before it gets out of hand.

Steve Jobs Was Smart, Are You? - iOS Parental Controls Advice

Did you know that Steve Jobs bannedthe excessive use of iPhone and iPads for his kids when he was running Apple? It comes as a surprise! One tends to think that his kids must use technology all the time. Turns out that’s not the case and Mr. Jobs actually restricted his kids to use i-devices in the house all the time. His words regarding the use of technology are:

He limited the use of iPhones and other Apple devices on school nights. Children were allowed to use them on theweekend for a short amount of time. Other tech parents of such companies also take the similar stance. They are well aware of the dangers unlimited exposure to technology can cause so they made sure that they kept their children safe from them. They didn’t want their children to end up like them- tech addicts.

Studies show that children under the age of 10 have more tendency to become dependent on technology. They can develop unhealthy habits and sleeping issues. They also have difficulty in social interactions and paying attention to things for longer periods.

Kids under 10 should not use such devices for more than half an hour. Kids from 10 to 14 can use them but only for homework tasks. That should only be allowed for 2 hours.

Kids love their iPhones and iPads and it is the new way of doing things. They need them for several purposes. Technology has become the need of the time which is why we can’t completely ban them for our kids. However, we can make its use safe for them.

What can you do keep your kids safe from the overuse of technology and potential risks?

Spend Quality Time

The best thing to do is talk to them. Spend time with them so they don’t feel the need to use technology. Quality family time spent is so much better than several hours in front of a screen. This not only strengthens the family bond but keeps your children safe from possible social and health issues.

Use Parental Controls

In this age, it is difficult to completely cut off your kids from technology. They do need it for their homework and research purposes. Which is why parents can go for a middle ground. You can use the inbuilt feature to monitor and control your kid’s use of technology. Apart fromthem, there are severaliOS parental control apps available such as FamilyTime which allows you to limit screen time by locking the phone for specific time periods. In this way, their phone use gets limited to few hours a day. You can set your own priorities on weekends and school nights.

FamilyTime – Smart Parenting App

FamilyTime is a smart tool to handle all your parenting needs. You can manage all your kid's accounts from a single dashboard and get constant reports. It is available for all iOS devices at iTunes.

Here is how it can help you to limit the use of iPhone and iPads for your kids:

Screen Time

It provides you the best solution to limit and regulate the amount of time kids spend on their devices. You can set specific times like bedtime, dinnertime and homework time in which the kid’s phones get locked. In this way, they don’t miss meals and get distracted by fancy games or social media apps during their homework time and get a good night’s sleep.

Custom Rules

You can also make rules for other time intervals. All you have to do is give the start and end time and number of recurrent days. This app makes sure your kids follow the schedule you made for them.

Block Apps and Web Surfing

You can block system apps such as Camera, Siri, and Safari etc. to stop them from spending unnecessary time surfing the internet. You can also block the 3rd party apps. This can be for specific time periods or permanently.

Now you know how important it is to regulate the time your kids spend on their iPhones or iPads. So go ahead and talk to your kids about using their mobile devices moderately and talk to them about using iOS parental controls on their phones. Regulating and supervising their technology use is not only important for their safety but also for their psychological wellbeing. Be smart like Steve Jobs and ensure a happier, healthier life for your kids!

Digital Health of Teens and Screen Limit Apps!

The current world has changed a lot in a few years in terms of the technology and now it is usual that a house has more phones than people.

We today live in a digitized society, where young people are called digital natives and parents are recognized as digital immigrants. This is because technologically, they occupy the same space but were born in different cultures. At this point in history, for youth to access to information and communications technology is not a privilege, as it was for previous generations. Now it is a right. The sooner you learn to use the law to their advantage, the better.

Parents are frightened by the risks of such digitization. They fear losing contact with their children, abducted by screens, data, music and photos. They fear them accessing inappropriate information for their age or being harassed by undesirable people through the internet. They fear that their children no longer live in the real world and abandon the sport, excursions or physical and real social contact. Parents fear their children are immersed in a parallel world and become zombies when they return to the real world. In their fears, parents make the bad choices. A bad solution they usually pick is cutting off access to the digital world. This is wrong as we must begin to become familiar with the proper use before we give them their first ever device. We need to establish the basic rules of use when the child is young, not during the war of hormones and rebellion. They have to get used to basic rules such as not allowing device use during the different meals, establish areas of the house where they cannot go on, arrange schedules logical use or distinguish between use for academic work and leisure use. I know this is a little difficult task to make kids follow your established rules but this certainly in not impossible. Screen limits apps like FamilyTime are there to help parents with all mentioned concerns. With the app parents can:

Keep an eye on their kids’ browsing history along with the date and time for each URL.

• View their bookmarks and favorites.
• Monitor call logs and check the caller details and view their call timing along with date stamps.
• Mirror contacts and view every contact saved in their kid’s phone along with the listed details.
• Watchlist contacts and get instant alerts on the connection.
• Check all of their installed apps along with app version and date of installation.
• Block questionable apps & games.
• Check location-history and stay in the know where their kids were the whole day.
• Add specific places to Places list and get alerts when their kids enter or exit those places. 
• Receive SOS alerts in case of emergency from the kids with location details.
• Receive PickMeUp alerts from your children and stay informed when it’s time to pick them up.
• Schedule auto screen locks for certain time durations such as study hours, meal breaks and sleep time etc.
• Put screen locks at any time they don’t want kids to use their smartphones.

And the list doesn’t end here. There are a lot of other features that you can discover by trying the app on your own. It is available for free download on Google play and App store. You can also get it from the buttons below:

The technology is here and is here to stay. Parents of teens today have been caught with this changed that is a luxury containing risks we can not afford. At stake is the digital health of their children. As the main character in the movie Matrix says and that could be the message many children to their parents: "I know that you fear, fear us, fear change. I do not know the future; I did not come to tell you how all this will end; just to show you how you will start. " So take a toll on your teens’ digital consumption and make use of screen limit apps to manage their digital diet every day remotely!

Apple would explore new ways to improve the App Store

According to Bloomberg , Apple would have been a secret team, responsible for an extensive overhaul Store search tool. One hundred employees of the company have already joined this elite roop, including Todd Teresi, vice president Apple and former head of iAd. One of the major developments currently being tested is to offer developers to showcase their applications in user search results, a privilege that would, of course, be proposed against a small financial fee. This method, already in place in the apps store on Google Android, allows Apple to increase profits from
the App Store, which is limited to the 30% tax levied on sales of apps and subscriptions. However, such a system could also harm the independent developers and new entrants in the shop, whose resources are often limited and that could well be more difficult to know and distribute the fruits of
their work. Other changes are also on the Cupertino test bench, particularly in order to improve navigation in the App Store.

Apple News will host sponsored articles

Launched last June, the app Apple News receives over time some adjustments. Today, Apple informed developers via a document that it intends to integrate articles in the app that will be displayed in the flow of natural products and will look the same except that the words "sponsored" will be added.

 Apple explains that besides being in the content stream, "the articles will have the default font used in the Apple app News. Each ad includes a title, a text and extract a small image, and is distinguished by a "sponsored" legend. The name of the sponsored advertiser is optional. If the advertiser's name is not provided, the reader will see "sponsored" in the banner. Please note that if the title has four lines (especially on iPhone and iPod touch), the extract will not be displayed.

" In absolute terms, this is an additional level of monetizing Apple News!

Kids of this age are born with the Internet and from an early age, they handle computers, smartphones, and tablets etc. This means that kids are way smarter than most of the adults today but it is not the complete picture. The risk of excessive consumption of screens by our children is there too such as depletion of memory. Once you get to know of this, the next idea that may come to your mind is how to stop them? Parents, teachers, researchers and we all look at these digital natives, "born with the Internet," as if it were of little green men. We know that the brain can change at high speed, what we do not know is what happens when there is more time for brain recovery.

Risks:

According to the experts, “for kids as young as 2-year, the non-interactive screens (TV and DVD) [...] pose negative effects such as weight gain, speech delay, attention deficit, and nonetheless adoption of passive attitude to the world. And if we talk about the interactive media such as smartphones and tablets etc. having one - console or a personal tablet - before the age of 6 years, means more risks than benefits." Taking the research a bit ahead, experts say that “in teenage, too exclusive use of the Internet can create a thought zapping, depleting memory, personal synthesis of capacity and interiority."

Solution:

To define the middle ground where traditional culture and that of digital mix it is recommended that that you ask your kids to exercise a reflexive awareness of their relationship to the screens and virtual worlds. Teach them the idea of “self-regulation" and once they learn it, you can take help of parental control app that enables you to assist them digitally. With any advanced parental control app such as FamilyTime, you put the access control on their digital devices which means that you schedule an automatic lock for their phone during:

• Homework Time: Schedule an automatic lock for your kid during the study hours.
• Dinner Time: Lock your kids’ devices during the set dinner time
• Bed Time: Restrict the use of digital devices during the night by setting the screen lock for the bedtime with FamilyTime.

You can download FamilyTime for free from your app store or click the buttons below:

Limiting Screen Time is Necessary!

Limiting Kids screen time is necessary if you want to save them from all the risks given above. So, use the parental control app now and help them use the digital devices safely!

Amazon offering refunds on all hoverboards sold

After several incidents being reported for the hoverboards blowing up, Amazon has finally come up to relieve parents. According to Elliot F. Kaye, Chairman of U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission Amazon is offering full refunds to their hoverboard customers.

In an announcement on Wednesday, Kaye referred dissatisfied hoverboard owners to Amazon's contact page to claim their refund and said he was " pleased that at least one leading retailer is erring on the side of caution”. He added, "I want to commend Amazon for voluntarily stepping up, providing a free remedy and putting customer safety first,".

Amazon itself has not given out any official articulation on the matter and has been reached for input with respect to whether the offer applies worldwide and on all hoverboards, paying little heed to the date of procurement.