Row.co.uk Blog

Approximately one in five children in the UK have seen something on their mobile phone or gadget that has upset them. Are you keeping track of your family’s mobile activity? 

Earlier this year, a report published on BBC Technology highlighted that the majority of parents allow their children to use SmartPhones unsupervised. What else did the report reveal? 

• Parents are unaware of the dangers faced by children on their SmartPhones. 
• Approximately one in five children have seen something on their devices that they found to be upsetting. 
• 20% of parents do not monitor what their children are doing online. 
• 90% of parents have spoken to their children about staying safe online.
• Teenagers aged 13-16 are more vulnerable to cyber bullying than those aged 8-12. 

Aside from child safety, one of the biggest problems with the increasingly ‘tech savvy’ young generation, is the number of app store purchases without parental consent. Earlier this year, Apple was told to refund $32.5m (£19.8m) to parents whose children had made purchases without their parents’ consent. 

An even bigger problem is the amount of cyber bullying taking place on a daily basis. A recent report from Ditch The Label revealed that 7 in 10 young people are victims of cyber bullying, with 54% claiming to have experienced bullying on Facebook. It’s important that parents recognise how vulnerable their children are online. 

If you are concerned, what can be done to control and monitor your children’s SmartPhone activity? Firstly, you can set restrictions and control your family’s actions via a personal passcode. You can even block certain websites completely and restrict their viewing to age appropriate content. 

We recommend WebWatcher and SpectorSoft – both allowing you to monitor and log SmartPhone activity. You can also set up keyword alerts so that you are notified instantly if any inappropriate behaviour commences. Furthermore, there are useful services like Sprint Family Locator, which enables you to track the location of your child’s mobile phone. This is helpful if they are prone to wandering off and not telling you where they are going! 

It might also be a good idea to establish ‘no phone’ time zones in your house. How about setting aside a few hours every evening where nobody in the family can use a mobile or gadget? 

Dr. Jenny Radesky, a US pediatrician, who specialises in child development, reported earlier this year that parents need to watch how absorbed they are in technology when around their younger, more impressionable children. She commented: “(…) is a big mistake. Face-to-face interactions are the primary way children learn. They learn language; they learn about their emotions, they learn how to regulate them. They learn by watching us how to have a conversation, how to read other people’s facial expressions. And if that’s not happening, children are missing out on important development milestones.” 

Worried your children are spending too much time on their phone? Tweet us @budgetmobcover and let us know whether you monitor your children’s SmartPhone activity, or whether you leave them to it!

*The information in this blog is designed to provide helpful information on the subjects discussed. Please seek a professional for expert advice as we can not be held responsible for any damages or negative consequences upon following this information.

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Are You Considering a Digital Diet?

Row.co.uk Blog

Are You Considering a Digital Diet?

It’s hard to put your smartphone down sometimes and with a constant stream of messages, different apps for different moods and a thousand and one addicting games to choose from it isn’t hard to see why. The time we spend on our smartphones each day is not something we often think about; we pick it up for five minutes here to reply to a message and to check Twitter, we grab it a little later to check the weather or to check Facebook, we spend half an hour at night playing Candy Crush or Bubble Witch. Whatever it is you use your smartphone for, the chances are you are not aware of just how much time you are actually spending on it and with everything, it all adds up.

Though a little time on each app doesn’t seem like a lot, smartphone habits die hard and it is beneficial to take a step back every so often and consider a digital diet.

Taking a Digital Diet

A digital diet is not about stopping digital usage completely, after all doing so is relatively inconvenient when you consider just how much we rely on our gadgets for, but cutting down slightly and curbing your bad digital habits may highlight just how much time you spend in a digital world.

The Digital Diet App

Quality Time app has been purposely designed to help you monitor how long you are spending on each app on your smartphone. Through the use of a timeline, it highlights your smartphone habits and highlights what apps you use and when. Additionally, it allows you to set usage limits on specific apps on your devices and alerts can be set letting you when to take a step back and take a break.

Quality Time app is a great way to ensure your digital diet is working as well as you think. Often we lose track of what apps we use on our phone and time can fly away from us, but this app allows you to closely monitor it to see how well your digital diet is going.


Would you consider taking a digital diet? Let us know by tweeting us @budgetmobcover be sure to check out our services for keeping your gadgets safe and sound, visit our website for an instant quote today. 

*The information in this blog is designed to provide helpful information on the subjects discussed. Please seek a professional for expert advice as we can not be held responsible for any damages or negative consequences upon following this information.

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Comments are closed