27% parents anxious about their child’s digital life

Imran Mojib, Special Correspondent

The worldwide Covid-19 pandemic has forced families to spend their free time mostly at home. Staying at home usually also means spending much time using different internet connected devices. For clear reasons, children’s growing online activity can cause lots of worries to their parents.

Thus, according to Kaspersky survey, 27 per cent of parents in the UAE claim that they have come across something in their child’s social media account that seemed suspicious. Elaborating on what it exactly was, 51 per cent of the respondents mentioned their worries about the people their children interact with online, 47 per cent were concerned about the posts that the children share, 45 per cent of the people surveyed were afraid about the groups their children join, while 44 per cent were anxious about video on their page.

What is more, 31 per cent stated that their child has seen or listened to something that seemed suspicious to them, be that videos (76%) or photos (31%).

Obviously, these data show the need to explore the interests of children, to make sure everything is alright or it is necessary to take action.

However, not all the parents realise it - only 36 per cent of them befriend their children via social networks in order to be connected with their kids - sometimes real communication is not enough and the parents have to look carefully at their children’s webpages.

“It gets harder and harder for parents to keep up with the pace of modern evolving world. They are often left out of the picture as they simply do not catch with trends that emerge way too fast. However, it is possible to stop this backlog by communicating with your child and ensuring your presence on the Internet - to build trust and good relationship with your child you have to know what you are talking about with them,” stated Maher Yamout, Senior Security Researcher at Kaspersky.

In order to eliminate groundless suspicions about your child’s digital life and to secure their presence on social media, parents must learn more on the topic of children’s cybersecurity, communicate with their child and define the borders which are not meant to cross, discuss with them safe locations both real and webpages and install a reliable security solution.