Is Your Kid Old Enough for the Cloud
How young is too young when it comes to kids and the cloud? Kids as young as six years old have tablets today. Kids under the age of six tend to know how to use a smartphone or to find their favourite Angry Birds app on a smartphone. It is a different world. A world that isn't anything like the world of yesterday.
Kids today want the cloud, they want what it offers, and they probably understand cloud computing better than most adults do. But, should you hand your kid that affordable laptop or tablet? Should you give them your phone and say: “go for it!” How do you know if your kid can handle the cloud yet?
Is Internet Danger Real?
Remember when you were a kid, and your mother told you stories that would scare you stiff? Like, what would happen if you kept rolling your eyes backwards? Well, most of those things were urban legends. Not so with the Internet and cloud-based programs.
There are real dangers lurking online. Dangers that many parents are not even aware of. Heck, many adults aren't too careful when it comes to the Internet, so it's easy to see why kids aren't. There's an additional problem, too. It's important for kids to know how to navigate certain cloud apps. Interaction is important too. So, how do you let your kids interact and become familiar with technology without placing them in harm's way?
Screen the Apps
The first thing that you can do is to control the cloud apps that your kids access. Some apps, like Facebook, need to be carefully controlled. Other apps, like Google's Art Project, are kid-oriented and a bit safer. If your five year old has a public Facebook account, you should be concerned. If you're not concerned, go ahead and Google the dangers of letting kids have a Facebook account.
Exercise Some Control
You kid might want to set up a website in order to blog, show off photos, or to promote some kind of cause or organization. That's perfectly fine, but you have to consider a few things that come along with cheap hosting sites. First, the site will be full of ads (that's how cheap hosting sites make their coin). Make sure that the ads are tasteful.
Second, double check that cheap host privacy clause. You really don't want the posts that your kids are creating to be public. So, maybe a login and password are a good idea. Lastly, make sure that cheap website host that you chose lets you have complete control over that site. This way, you can shut the site down if you have to.
Is Your Kid Old Enough for the Cloud: The Line Can Be Walked
You can have kids and let them use cloud-based services. You just have to be on top of online actions. What do you do if your child wants to access cloud apps? Don't deny the Internet altogether. Just make sure that you keep your eye on any Internet happenings.
Great article. Thank you for posting. I have 3 boys. The youngest is 7 and the other two are 10 years old. They all have electronic devices that give them access to the internet. We are not overly paranoid parents that we block everything on their devices. In fact, internet access is pretty open. If my boys are interested about learning about something, I encourage them to research it on the web. Of course they may encounter pop ups or advertisement for “adult materials”, and like all of us, sometimes curiosity will get to us. We are more concerned about them joining social network type sites. In this case, we do monitor their activity on their facebook page. We continuously warn them about responding to people that they don’t know and not to give any personal information to anyone online – which even means posting their whereabouts on facebook.
Hi! Thanks so much for reading! Isn’t it hard to keep kids safe online? Thankfully, there are some good ways to prevent kids from getting into too much trouble! Keep up the good parenting work, and keep reading!