Childproofing Your Computer: How to Make a Laptop Safe for Kids

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Did you know that a teenager spent $6500 on Facebook games in just 2 weeks! Companies are using more and more clever means to attract young people and children to their games. Often children are duped into spending money on upgrades without their parents even knowing about it. 

While this loss of money is regretful for parents, there are also far more dangerous individuals on the internet that are looking to take advantage of children’s inexperience. 

If you are a parent, you likely want your child to be a fluent computer user and benefit from online educational and recreational programs. However, how sure are you that your laptop safe for kids and protects your child from dangers. How can you do this?

Lock Your Computer

Let’s start with the most basic of steps. You may want your child to be a fluent computer user, but to only use your computer under supervision. Simply developing the habit of locking your laptop when you are not using it. 

This is simply done. You can set up the power setting on your laptop to lock Windows when you close the lid of the laptop. Or you can create the habit of pressing Windows + L to instantly lock the screen.

Use a Limited User Account on the Laptop

However, realistically most parents want their children to be semi-independent computer users. However, giving a child free rein to do whatever they want on a computer is not a good idea.

Like with most subjects, children’s brains are a sponge for information and learning. They can learn how to open sensitive areas of a computer’s working files or enter inappropriate areas of the internet within minutes or seconds. 

For this reason, you may want to consider setting up User Account Controls. You can create a user account for your child and control what he or she can access and also when they can access it. 

Internet Parental Controls

Safety when browsing the internet is a hot topic today. All major browser creators such as Microsoft and Google have created in-browser safeguards for parents. 

These can restrict the rating of a site that a child can enter and even often how much time they can spend there. 

The same functionality is available for Mac web browsers. You can find more information about this at https://setapp.com/how-to/block-websites-on-mac.

If the in-browser options offered here do not quite fit your needs, you can also install third-party apps to do the same job.

Closely Manage your Child’s Account

The parent of 2020 realizes that it is all too easy for a child to spend more time than necessary watching videos or playing games. For the parent that really wants to get on top of this situation, MS has created granular options for managing your child’s account. This includes the following options: 

Ask a Parent

This is a very useful feature that you can enable easily. Simply hit the “need adult approval to buy things” to prevent your child from going on a shopping spree without permission.

Or if you want to give your child more freedom, you can select “tell me when my child gets stuff”. Although not preventing purchasing, this option allows you to review their purchasing activity. 

Viewing Recent Activities

All browsing and gaming activity on the child’s account is logged and cannot be erased. A parent can easily look at the history files to find out their child’s habits. MS even offers a free email each week that allows parents to see at a glance their children’s behavior online. 

Set Screen Time

This function allows you to use a visual tool to allow times in the day for computer and internet usage. At other times children will not be allowed to access these functions.

Add Funds to the Childs Account 

This functionality allows the parent to add funds to the child’s account so that they can spend it on game upgrades and other products. It is used by some parents as a reward scheme for good behavior. Others use it to teach their child spending and budgeting skills. 

Encryption

If you share a laptop with your child or children, you will likely want to make it safe for them, but also safe for you. you may have important personal files that you want to protect. This is especially true if you are running a business from home and use your laptop for your work.

In this case, you will need tools to separate what files your children can access and edit and what they cannot. In many cases creating a private area that is password protected only arouses curiosity in children. Hence it is better if you can protect your files and make them completely invisible.

This can be accomplished by means of hard drive encryption. This means that you can install a third-party application or program that will encrypt your files. These files can be set to be either seen or unseen. 

How to Make your Laptop Safe for Your Children and Much More

Making your laptop safe for kids to use is a real priority for parents. This protects them from such threats as being tricked into spending money on game upgrades or communication with very sinister individuals. 

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Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

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