Digital world – Turning off

As a parent it is hard to know what the best course of action is when it comes to letting your children be online. One of the questions I get asked most often is how to limit your children when it comes to being online.This obviously is different for all parents. We all put in rules that work for our teens.Teens don’t communicate like we did in the past. We used to spend hours on the phone, ringing our friends. These days teens are communicating with text and Facebook or Instagram message. I’m not sure they even know how to ring someone and have a conversation on the phone. Times are certainly changing.

This new way of communicating online has made them more accessible at all hours.

When my teen was not getting up in the morning, I discovered it was because when sleep wouldn’t come she would spend that time browsing online and chatting to friends on Facebook message.

We did all the usual things – such as threatening grounding, only the temptation proved too hard to overcome and she got caught online at 1am.

So what does one do without affecting the whole family? We are a family that needs to have Wifi on all night as our businesses run 24/7.

Thankfully this situation has got easier because now you can purchase a modem that can shut down Wifi on each person’s device, phone and computer. Technology has come a long way. So we can enjoy periods offline!

The latest modems work a dream. One of the great things we have done is to shut down Wifi over dinnertime (on all devices) and stop it at 8.30pm, Sunday to Thursday, on all the teen’s devices.

These small changes can not only help you with your teenager but also help you as a family. Start putting down those devices and connect with each other more.