When should your child get a phone and how do you keep them safe online?

Safety is one of the reasons why parents are equipping their young children with mobiles, but often the devices come with their own risks.

There’s a couple of tips and warnings for parents with kids who have, or are about to have a mobile phone.

When do you get your child a phone?

It depends on the child. There are really no hard and fast rules for when the right time is to give your child a mobile phone.

Choosing the phone

If we are getting a child a phone for safety, the fact is that if they are unsafe, they are actually not going to be able to make a phone call or text so we want that location option on there.

There’s that SOS call that can send out their location to their contacts.

Set up an account for your child

Setting up a separate account for your child.

Creating an account for your child was an ideal time to teach them about what information was not appropriate to put online.

Set parental controls

Setting parental controls such as those that let you limit screen time or control which apps your child can download.

Disable in-app purchasing

Make sure they cannot access credit card [details] because sometimes they might not be aware that they are making in-app purchases.

Set boundaries

Setting boundaries around usage early on. It’s much easier to set the boundaries in advance than it is to pull them back later.