Nowadays, children have grown more addicted to mobile phones than ever! Especially since the global pandemic drew them indoors, their addiction to electronic gadgets, in general, has increased manifold. Much like every parent, it may also be a cause of worry for you that your child remains incessantly glued to these gadgets.
You can take your child out to play an immersive escape room game with you to help them break away from electronic gadgets. Escape rooms provide a distraction-free zone for players and ensure they remain focused on the game. Other than playing escape games, there are a few tips and tricks that you can use on your android phones to reduce the ever-increasing addiction of your child.
This article has compiled nine practical android tips and tricks for parenting control that will help you reduce your child’s addiction. So, let us take a look at these valuable tips and tricks for your android:
1. Design separate user profiles for your kid
Android offers a useful parenting control feature that you can set up on your android device. You can now set up multiple user profiles on a single machine. So, you can create a separate profile for your child alone to access.
To set up a separate profile on your android device for your kid to navigate through, you need to go to the settings option. You need to look for the “user and accessibility” tab and open it to add a new user profile. In this section, you can create multiple user profiles or a restricted profile. You can set up a restricted profile and offer a few apps for your child to access.
2. Setting up a data limit on your device
Setting up a preordained data limit that your child can use on a particular day effectively limits your child’s access to mobile phones. You can easily set up a data limit for your child by going to the setting option on your phone and navigating your way to “Network and Internet.”
There you need to find and select the “Data Usage” option. You need to click on “Mobile data usage” and go to the settings option to set up your data limit. Each time your phone reaches this data limit, your kids will no longer have any access to use apps that need data.
3. Block the access to in-app purchases
Often you may find that your child has gone on a rampant downloading spree and has downloaded several things on the Google App Play Store. You can now tweak the Play Store settings to prevent in-app purchases seamlessly!
For this, you need to open up the settings page on Play Store and select “Require authentication for purchases.” Now, a pop-up window will appear on your screen, asking whether you want to type your Google password for every in-app purchase. You can also choose to download for only 30 minutes after the user enters the password.
4. Restrict installations from unknown sources
Often your child may install applications from unknown sources on the web. These installations from unknown sources can affect the privacy of your mobile phone. So, you can now stop or restrict your phone from installing anything from unknown sources.
To enable this, you need to go to the setting option on your phone and then to the security tab. Now, you need to untick all the unknown sources options you can see there. In this way, you can keep your phone and your data protected at all times.
5. Utilize the screen pinning option
The screen pinning option can also be a helpful hack to restrict your child’s accessibility on your mobile phone. The feature prevents a user from hovering away from the screen they have opened. The screen pinning feature can be beneficial when you are giving your child to watch some videos on YouTube and do not want them to drift away.
To use this feature, go to settings and search “screen pin.” Once the option pops us, all you need to do is toggle on it to turn it on. Now, you can open any window you want to pin, change your screen to overview, and click on the pin icon to pin down a particular screen.
6. Using lock applications
Nowadays, you can find many locking applications on the Google Play Store that allow you to lock any app on your mobile phone. Locking a particular app on your mobile phone will prevent your child from accessing it.
You can often discover many lock applications that feature colorful and attractive backdrops and immersive audio effects that divert your kid. Some applications also allow you to teach your child color and shapes through them!
7. Keeping a check on the daily activity of your phone
Android offers users useful options to monitor and check the daily activity of their devices. You can now find out which of your apps your child has used and how much time they have spent on each of them.
Thus, you can easily track how much time your child spends on phones and what they do while they are at it.
8. Restricted access to Play Store content
Since Google Play Store offers your child an open gateway to numerous addictive apps and games, restricting the Play Store content is crucial. You can now use the parental controls on Google Play to limit your child’s access to Play Store content.
To enable this, you need to go to the Settings option on Google Play Store and select “Parental Controls” to turn it on. Once turned on, you will need to set up a PIN. After that, you can restrict particular kinds of content to your child on Google Play Store.
9. Keeping your phone locked
You can also remove the excessive access of your child from your phone by keeping your phone locked with a strong password. This way, you can strictly ensure that your child only uses your mobile phone after your permission and under your jurisdiction.
Excessive addiction to gadgets like mobile phones has become a potent issue amongst parents worldwide. You can start implementing these few tricks on your Android device to make your child addiction-free and see the results!
