The internet is becoming a more and more common part of everyday family life. We tend to have at least one digital device for every person in the home at a minimum, and often we exceed that by quite a lot. Tech and the internet have a lot to offer our lives, but they also come with certain drawbacks and risks. If your family is starting to find itself outnumbered by the number of screens in the home, here are a few ways to ensure that you manage a healthy relationship with your tech.
Make sure all your devices are protected
Nowadays, most of us spend at least some time with our money online, whether we use the internet to pay bills, check our bank account, or we shop online regularly. What’s more, we have private data, including photos, that we would rather didn’t fall into the wrong hands. On top of that, you don’t want malware infecting your systems, making them all the more likely to stop working. Every family needs antimalware internet protection from software like BitDefender. When buying an antivirus or other protective software, make sure that it offers protection for all the devices in the home, not just your own.
Those dreaded loading times
If you live in a family where there are lots of screens, laptops, PCs, mobile devices, and games consoles, then your internet is sure to take a beating. Playing online video games and streaming high-quality videos can throttle the speeds other users have. This isn’t acceptable if, for instance, you’re doing homework, or your career involves working at home. High-speed packages like those from Optimum may be essential. Otherwise, you have the painful task of saying when the rest of the family can and cannot use the internet because you need to use it instead. The family home hasn’t seen those kinds of fights since the dial-up days when you had to disconnect so your mom could use the phone.
Everyone should know basic net safety
If someone is using the internet, they should know, at least in part, how to use it safely. It doesn’t matter how old they are. For very young children, frequent supervision and parental lock software can help you ensure their safe use of apps and games connected to the internet. If they are browsing, playing, and learning freely, however, they need to be taught how to stay safe online. For instance, they need to know not to share their personal details online and how to recognize links that are untrustworthy and could lead them to malware. There are new risks on the net every day, of course, so these lessons need to be a recurring theme in family conversation.
Late night worries
Another concern that it become much more common is that internet and digital technology use gets in the way of sleeping. Sleep deprivation is a real problem related to our use of tech. It keeps our minds active for as long as we use it, meaning that we don’t feel tired when we should in the evening. Exposure to the blue light common of digital displays can also make it take up to 30 minutes longer for us to get to sleep when we are in bed. It might be an unpopular proposal, to begin with, but you should consider setting a curfew for all screens. You might not necessarily have to confiscate devices across the home, but you can disconnect the router if you need to enforce those rules.
Social concerns
One of the latest and potentially greatest concerns of using the net is social media. It’s a whole way to connect with friends, to keep up with the news, educate yourself, and be thoroughly heard. But social media addiction is becoming a real concern. What’s more, there are fears about how social media fights and the argumentative nature of many of the platforms is negatively affecting our mental health. Treating social media as the forbidden fruit is obviously going to make it all the more alluring, especially to teenagers. But you can talk about using it responsibly, taking breaks from it when you feel it affecting your mood, and the importance of vetting information learned through those networks instead of automatically believing it all.
Find time to disconnect
It’s very easy to spend the majority of your life online. In fact, many people do it. This isn’t a healthy way to live, however. Not only are the risks of a sedentary lifestyle to your physical health well-known, but it could be contributing to growing cases of social anxiety and depression, as well as the breakdown of family communication. A Grande Life takes a look at how you and the family can spend a little more time away from the internet and with each other .Organize more opportunities in advance to spend time with the family without the internet or any other screens present.
Make sure it’s beneficial
Some families may be considered implementing more ironclad rules, limiting the amount of screen time your kids get every day. If you have serious concerns about how they use the internet or if they have trouble meeting their other responsibilities in life, that might be a measure worth taking. However, you should also consider how your family is using the internet. Besides all the dangers mentioned here, it is one of the most versatile and useful tools in education, entertainment, communication, and organizing your life practically. Take a look at Froddo and the different ways that you can better use your technology to benefit the family. There are a wide range of tools and apps out there that you might not have thought of implementing.
We may not yet be at the point of fearing about the robot uprising, but there are risks to living mindlessly with all the tech we’re surrounded by. Learn and teach your family to be responsible with their digital devices and the net, and use them to enhance your lives, not to hold them back.
