If you ever see someone prioritise their internet bill over groceries and a phone upgrade over clothes and other necessities, it will not come as a surprise. With how dystopian our society has become, children, too, are not safe from this plague.
Empty streets, vacant eyes, and dissociated children are a sight normalised to a disturbing extent. Let’s face it, today, we need no zombie apocalypse to be absent-minded; the internet does it well enough for us. Now, I am not saying that the internet alone is to blame.
Like these negatives, we cannot remain oblivious to how it helps academically and plays an important role in entertainment. But before we know it, this entertainment can take a turn for the worse when unaware children accidentally stumble across inappropriate content online. What must one do when faced with such a situation?
For starters, parents must stay on the lookout for warning signs to decide whether their child has become one of many young people exposed to explicit material online (Children’s Commissioner for England, 2025). But what can these signs be? They start as negligible quirks that you might dismiss as them growing up and finding themselves.
However, what happens is that them hiding their screen when you enter the room or being secretive about what they are doing on their phones can be covering some serious issues around their internet usage.
Not only that, but if you randomly also see your child being anxious when online or deflecting unnecessarily when asked questions, these red flags must be paid heed to. Since your lack of consideration towards these can ultimately devolve into serious mental health issues. Be it suicidal ideation, self-harm, depression, or stress, young minds are adversely impacted by this.
With you, now, having noticed that something is off, the next step is to encourage open dialogue. The discussion can be as simple as you talking about how their time is going on a specific website or app.
You can further ask them open-ended questions about their views on a particular trend to gauge where they stand and the type of content in their vicinity. When they begin to answer, you must listen attentively and make them feel like their feedback matters.
Once done, you can then offer your views, mind you, without being imposing, and then conclude the discussion by reiterating how they can always come to you for anything good or bad that they come across online.
Now, an extremely high percentage of parents have children who started using the internet by the age of 4 years (Bravehearts, n.d.). While not an inherently bad thing, the lack of supervision can reap concerning results. In situations like these, the Xnspy parental monitoring app can be used.
Xnspy is a software designed to help parents see their child’s complete online and offline activity. For online activity, features like internet history, keylogger, screen recorder, and social media chats for over 13 apps are provided in real-time.
While Xnspy’s internet history monitoring feature clearly captures all the visited URLs with relevant details, bookmarks, and activity analysis, the search history from keylogs shows the exact queries a child is looking up alongside the timestamps.
Then, to offer deeper insight into what actions they are taking after visiting a page, it shows the kind of content consumed. The screen recorder takes screenshots of the activity every 5-10 seconds.
Xnspys also includes screen time, instant keyword alerts, app blocking, etc. Using all the data made accessible on its web dashboard, you can gain insight into your child’s internet usage without having to access the phone.
But a parental monitoring app can only get you so far. Therefore, you must pair it with healthy online habits. For that, you should take a subtle approach. Rather than downright banning devices at home, you can help your child build habits like scheduling screen-free times.
The designated time can be a portion of the day where the whole family gets together and talks without any distractions, such as dinner time. But for this to be accepted with minimum backlash, you must model ideal behaviour in front of them and also ask for their input when making rules. With the child seeing their parents following all the set rules too, they will show more willingness to give it a try.
Another beneficial measure can be teaching kids to think critically about what they see online. Every now and then, you should sit with them and explain how everything on the internet is not created to be helpful or stand true. Sometimes, people can be devious and publish false claims.
Exemplify what you are talking about with facts, like how the bite-sized content on social media is designed to keep users hooked and grab attention. When armed with an understanding of the algorithm and trends, your child will be more likely to question what they see, fact-check information, and take breaks when it gets too much.
Nonetheless, it will be unfair if you expect your child to consume less content on the internet without offering alternatives. In addition to all the rules and awareness, you can further introduce physical activities like running, riding, swimming, etc., for your child.
Overall, with them engaging with other children face-to-face and having creative hobbies outside, they will be more alert and maintain a sharper mind. Though it does not necessarily have to be physical sport, since you can also encourage them to partake in board games, drawing, cooking, baking, and more. As long as the activities in question are substituting screen time, they are good to go.
All these steps, however, cannot suffice since you must provide your child with emotional support too. If you overreact and punish them when they encounter something upsetting online, they will focus more on hiding their mistakes the next time rather than coming to you.
Instead, you should talk to them calmly and reassure them when such a situation occurs. They should know that as long as they are learning from a mistake, they are doing the right thing. To establish that, you can start by thanking your child for trusting you when they bring something concerning, and then having an open discussion with them.
In conclusion, while the internet is a tricky place for young children, cutting it off entirely will just lead to a rebellion that will be hard to contain. Instead, by smartly reducing a child’s exposure to online content and supervising them, parents can address all their concerns while letting their children create a self-identity. After all, when a child’s sense of self is fragile, they are easily swayed by what they see.
Bibliography
Bravehearts (n.d.) Online risks, child exploitation & grooming. Available at: https://bravehearts.org.au/research-lobbying/stats-facts/online-risks-child-exploitation-grooming/ (Accessed: 18 December 2025).
Children’s Commissioner for England (2023) A lot of it is actually just abuse: Young people and pornography. Available at: https://www.childrenscommissioner.gov.uk/resource/a-lot-of-it-is-actually-just-abuse-young-people-and-pornography/ (Accessed: 17 December 2025).
Common Sense Media (2023) The Common Sense census: Media use by tweens and teens. Available at: https://www.commonsensemedia.org/research/the-common-sense-census-media-use-by-tweens-and-teens-2023 (Accessed: 17 December 2025).
Ofcom (2024) Children and parents: Media use and attitudes report 2024. Available at: https://www.ofcom.org.uk/media-use-and-attitudes/media-habits-children (Accessed: 17 December 2025).
Pew Research Center (2020) Parenting children in the age of screens. Available at: https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2020/07/28/parenting-children-in-the-age-of-screens/ (Accessed: 17 December 2025).
XNSPY (2025) XNSPY: The most powerful parental monitoring app. Available at: https://xnspy.com/ (Accessed: 17 December 2025).
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