More protection for children
Digital media holds a powerful fascination for children and teens. Help protect your children from risks by setting up parental controls and teaching media literacy.
Helping children use digital media with confidence is an educational responsibility parents need to embrace today. Technical solutions can help shield children from harmful content in ways that suit their age. These tips have proven helpful:
- It is best to set up separate user accounts for children on their devices. These accounts should not have full access to features such as the Control Panel or software installation. A separate account is required for parental-control programs in Windows and on Mac.
- When your child gets their first device of their own, take time to set it up. On tablets, you can often enter the user's age, for example. Some content is then filtered automatically based on this information. Keep in mind that you are liable for what children do online. For this reason alone, it is a good idea to keep a close eye on their online activities.
- Set up parental controls. A range of software is available to help parents monitor and limit their children's media use. On Windows and MacOS, you can set up parental controls directly in the operating system.
- While you should completely prevent younger children from making purchases or installing items from app and media stores, parental-control programs can require parental approval for purchases by teens.
In general, there is no one-size-fits-all solution for this issue. Trust and children’s maturity play an important role. The portals Schau hin and Klicksafe.de offer advice and support, for example. Deutsche Telekom also provides free, easy-to-understand materials on many aspects of media literacy through Teachtoday, Scroller, or Teachtoday Academy .
