Internet Bliss at Home? It’s possible with PEAKZone!
The PEAKZone app… Change Internet Chaos to Peace of Mind!
It’s 3:00 A.M. on a Monday night, and your child is hiding their phone under the covers to look at Tik Tok. Earlier in the day, you gave them consequences for not quitting their Xbox after two hours when you asked them to take a break. When you asked them to come down for dinner and set the table, you found them playing Call of Duty, a game you have not given permission to play. You hear yourself using the “I mean now” voice. Your child sulked through dinner, pushing food around and refusing to eat the meal you spent time and care preparing for them. You feel disrespected and unappreciated. They feel ashamed and unfairly punished.
It seems like you’re having a hard time around the house these days, and it’s always about Internet usage. You are not alone. It’s an all too familiar scenario especially in a world inundated with smart devices and countless number of apps.
Today, sixty-nine percent of kids are on social media by age twelve. Home Wi-Fi networks are convenient and necessary, but they need to be managed so kids grow to use the Internet with balance and self-discernment. Kids between the ages of thirteen and eighteen spend an average of seven and a half hours online excluding homework. Parents need a way to easily preserve a content family with a home Wi-Fi network. Self-discipline when it comes to Internet usage is a life skill they will need to know. But how do parents teach that? What tools are available to help?
Consumers Advocate spent 200 hours and used 40 vetted sources to research the best use of parental controls like those included with PEAKZone Plus. They widely published their findings including on their own website ConsumersAdvocate.org
First, they suggest parents talk to their kids about the parental controls that will be in use in your home before installing them. By being transparent about the house rules, you are building a bridge of trust between you. Second, make adjustments as the child gets older. Giving them increased access helps them learn to handle the appropriate amount of responsibility for their age and the self-discipline to know when they’ve had enough screen time. Most importantly, keep in mind that kids need to have some privacy of their own, and monitoring their every move will destroy the trust you intend to build with them.
PEAK Internet offers two levels of parental controls while on your home Wi-Fi network with PEAKZone and PEAKZone Plus. The primary difference between the two is the level of customization you prefer in the form of parental controls. PEAKZone Plus is made for people with kids.
With the free version, or PEAKZone, you can view usage by device and create profiles for each child that include different time limits. With Plus, you can block specific content categories and certain apps, like YouTube or World of Warcraft. You also have the power to set time limits on daily usage, restrict usage to certain hours of the day,limit the amount of usage of an app, and prioritize the traffic from certain devices over others. For example, you can prioritize the traffic to your work computer over their PlayStation at all times or just while you are in meetings.
As parents, we cannot eliminate the Internet from the lives of our children even if we feel at times that is what we should do. Today, our kids have many competing priorities and issues. Helping your kids strike a balance between socialization, work habits, and Internet activity is helpful now and in the long run. According to Princeton professor of sociology Dr. Dalton Conley, the goal is to teach them the proper way of using their devices and what they will have access to online. “Teach them the same etiquette online that you would expect of them in face-to-face social life,” explains Dr. Conley in Time Magazine.
The most important practice emerged from the findings by Consumers Advocate: never install a parental control app secretly or by breaking into a child’s device. As you seek to restore tranquility at home and put an end to Internet fights once and for all, PEAKZone can help. But nothing can help restore the loss of trust and respect that your children had for you after you have misused the Internet yourself.