How to Introduce Your Child to Technology the Right Way

Many parents have a fear of introducing their children to laptops and tablets because they’re afraid they’re going to misuse them. And these fears are not unfounded. If you don't put barriers around the usage of these machines, you can expect your child to start spending more time than you’d like on them, and this can quickly turn into an addiction.

You also have to know which types of devices are appropriate for a child and make sure that they start developing safe practices when using these devices. Let's take a look at how you can introduce technology to a child the right way.

Start Small

If your child is under five, then we wouldn’t recommend that you get them a full setup yet. The most you should give them is a small tablet for children only. The tablet needs to be robust and have the strict minimum needed to run a few educational apps. You have to be very careful how you introduce the tablet too. It should stay in your possession most of the time. Make it seem as if it is your tablet and not theirs.

Only allow them to use the tablet after they have completed a task and use it as a reward. Also, restrict the use of the tablet to certain times of the day. This way they will see the tablet as a treat and will be less likely to form a habit. And if they throw a tantrum, take away the tablet for a week. You'll see how well-behaved they'll be next time around.

Upgrade Them to a PC

You should start thinking about buying your child their first PC or laptop around the age of five. You can go either for a laptop or a desktop here. A laptop will be better if they need to use their laptop at school and a desktop will be better if they do most of their work from home. A desktop will make watching what they're doing easier too. Here, go for a computer with processors around the 1.5ghz mark with four cores at the very least, 8GB of RAM, and anywhere from 100MB to 500MB of storage.

Get a Few Accessories

Accessories will allow your child to unleash their computer's potential and help them fall in love with it. We suggest that you get a nice headset and a wireless mouse/keyboard combination if they have a desktop. You should also look into webcams if they show interest in creating content. If you're looking for great accessories for children, you can check out these kids PC accessories.

Use Parental Control Apps

You need to have control over what your children are doing online and off. So, you will need to invest in some sort of parental control app. These are not perfect, mind you, but they will do the trick if your child is still young.

Some of the apps we suggest you check out include Net Nanny, Kaspersky Safe Kids, and Norton Family. Not only will these apps help control the amount of access they have to different sites, but they even have features like geolocation that will allow you to know where your child and their devices are at all times.

Follow these few tips if you want your children to get familiar with technology without becoming addicted. Start with baby steps, no pun intended, and start building their setup as they gain experience and show responsibility.