The worldwide COVID-19 pandemic has forced families to spend their free time mostly at home, which usually means spending much time using different Internet-connected devices. Apparently, children’s growing online activity can cause lots of worries for their parents.

According to a Kaspersky survey, 25% of Nigerian parents claim that they have come across something in their child’s social media account that seemed suspicious.

Elaborating on what it exactly was, they mention groups or public pages they join (56%), posts that they publish or share (50%), people they interact with (31%), video on their page (31%) and private messages (19%).

What is more, 34% state their child has seen or listened to something that seemed suspicious to them, be that videos (68%), music (43%), or photos (25%). Obviously, this data shows the need to explore the interests of children, to make sure everything is okay or if it is necessary to take action.

However, not all the parents realise it – only 19% 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 the modern evolving world. They are often left out of the picture as they simply do not catch up 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 a good relationship with your child you have to know what you are talking about with them,” states 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, Kaspersky strongly recommends that parents learn more on the topic of children’s cybersecurity; Communicate with the child while defining boundaries and install reliable security to monitor the child’s activity.

Source

The internet is not a place for kids IMHO.

Whatever a kid can learn on a computer can be loaded and run autonomously on the computer without any internet connections.

I've had the experience of trying to keep certain kids off the internet, but a determined (and talented ) kid will find a way to browse the web once a computer is connected to the internet.

Unfortunately for the world, there is this creeping web-based culture that is eating away at basic human sociology these days. The social media aggravates the whole thing.

Kids these days behave very badly because they don't know how else to behave, having been taught by cultures on the other side of the world they have nothing in common with.

Imagine an African child these days seeing his parent in the morning and saying "hi" instead of "good morning mama" or "good morning papa".
They think it is "cool".

In the days before the internet, a Nigerian parent created and implemented social conduct, ethics, norms, and culture in the home. Today, since most Nigerian parents are not that web savvy, it is the children now that dictate and parents follow.
I see instances whereby parents are more interested in their kids being popular on Instagram, than that they are good in their academic works. Some of the parents (women in particular) now copy their kids in "slaying" rather than providing badly needed life moral lessons.

The whole thing is almost apocalyptic.

No kid should access the internet before getting into a university, or before the age of 18.
We regulate when a kid can drink alcohol (18 years) and smoke (21 years). The same should apply to the use of internet.
My 2 kobo.