Is WhatsApp Safe for Your Child?

Is It Safe For Women Taking IVF Treatment For A Second Child?
Should your child be on WhatsApp?
WhatsApp is the most popular messaging app, with 2 billion monthly active users. It is not surprising that many children use it as a way to communicate with their family and friends. However, you may be wondering if WhatsApp is safe for your child. It is important to know that children are at great risk for their safety and health on WhatsApp if their parents do not supervise them. However, as a parent, there are many things you can do to make your child better on WhatsApp.
In this article, we will discuss the safety and health risks of WhatsApp for children, how to prevent the risks using WhatsApp privacy settings, and how to use the parental control app to increase safety. your child’s safety. Safety and health of WhatsApp for children
Children’s data shared with children’s contacts may cause safety issues for children on WhatsApp. On the other hand, excessive WhatsApp usage and screen time addiction can cause health problems in children. Below we will explain where you should be careful so that your child is safe on WhatsApp.
Personal conversation
All conversations on WhatsApp are end-to-end encrypted, which means that even WhatsApp cannot monitor them. Therefore, private chats on WhatsApp are places where information or content can harm your child. To use WhatsApp, you need a SIM card. Anyone who has the phone number your child uses to join WhatsApp can send messages to your child. Bad people may try to bully, cyberbully or bully your child or try to steal their information through hacking or phishing.
Different teams
By default, anyone who has your child’s phone number can add your child to a WhatsApp group. These groups may share messages, images, videos, or files that are inappropriate for your child. It goes without saying that some of these files may be malware that can damage your child’s phone or steal their private information. In a WhatsApp group, anyone in the group can see anyone’s phone number and request a private chat. Therefore, dangerous people can use these opportunities to approach your child. Location sharing
WhatsApp has two useful features sharing status and live status. However, your child may or may not be knowingly sharing their location with the wrong people. Status update
A status update is an image, video, or text you can post on WhatsApp, which lasts 24 hours. By default, any of your contacts can see your status update. Your child may share information or content about their status updates that may be misused by others.
screen time
Children, like adults, like to talk with their friends. However, chatting on WhatsApp can become a problem if children do it regularly. Spending too much time on WhatsApp can disrupt children’s daily activities. If it is not watched, it can become addictive on the screen.
Why do kids love WhatsApp?
It’s easy, it’s fun, and it’s free. WhatsApp Messenger lets kids send text, video, photo, and audio messages, as well as make video calls to friends without message limits or fees. Oh, and so far, there are no ads, which is a plus. It is a private chat app. WhatsApp is a popular way to create group chats (up to 256 people) that parents won’t hesitate to watch.
Often children meet people on apps like Snapchat or Instagram and switch to WhatsApp because they feel it is less social and controlled by their parents. Like any other app, it can be hidden behind a cheat app or vault to avoid detection. It has some nice features. WhatsApp has a messaging feature that allows a user to send a message to a group of people who can only reply to the sender. The status feature allows users to send photos, videos, and animated GIFs, similar to Instagram and Snapchat jokes.
WhatsApp hacks make it fun.
Kids love good workarounds and hacks they can use to improve their WhatsApp experience. WhatsApp hacks can be find online using a quick Google search. The hacks help users find out how to do fun things like scheduling, creating fake chats, retrieving deleted posts, disabling receipts, creating email lists, and a series of hacks that will help with their accounts.
There is a sense of privacy/security. WhatsApp implements end-to-end encryption, which means that all text, photos, or videos exchanged between users are encrypted (scrambled code) and thought to be protected between people. communicate. WhatsApp differs from other chat apps in this area. No server stores messages after they are sent. Even WhatsApp cannot read, view or listen to conversations, giving users a sense of privacy and security. However, as we are reminded every day, WhatsApp, like all applications, is not vulnerable to hacks, scams, and breaches.
What is the danger?
Foreigners.
Many people use WhatsApp, including those with bad intentions. Users may feel that group chats are closed to strangers because group members need a digital connection to join. However, members can copy the group chat link and share it with anyone who can click and join without any confirmation.
Bullying on the Internet. Group messaging is one of the main reasons why kids use WhatsApp. They can have groups as large as 250 children. So, if a rumor, bad words are shared, or a conflict arises, the situation can escalate quickly and quickly into the WhatsApp environment.
Confidentiality.
Although children believe that WhatsApp keeps conversations private, it does not protect them from people taking and sharing screenshots. Personal chats and photos can be uploaded. Another privacy threat is the way the app itself collects data from its users, which can be viewed in its Privacy Policy and personal data.
Scams and malware. WhatsApp does not prevent the type of scams expected of the public app. Facebook-owned apps have had problems with spyware, catfishing, phishing, solicitation of money and fraudulent activity opportunities, all of which seek to trick users into handing over personal information or assets. Fake news. Since WhatsApp allows the user to chat in groups of up to 250 people, it is easy for instant messages to go viral, even if the message is incorrect. Recently, fake news has surfaced on WhatsApp which has fueled fears about the 2018 coronavirus conspiracy in India.
How to make WhatsApp safe for kids?
The first and most important step to keep your child safe on WhatsApp is to educate them about the security risks of WhatsApp and teach them not to respond to suspicious messages. Ask them to report to you whenever they receive chat requests from strangers or receive inappropriate messages from anyone, including their contacts. Also, remind them to be careful what they share on WhatsApp.
Although anyone with your child’s phone number can message your child, WhatsApp has a feature to mark chat requests as spam and block the sender. Use this strategy, or teach your child to use it to create a safe place for your child. Besides reporting and blocking, use privacy settings to maintain your child’s privacy and manage the information your child shares on WhatsApp. WhatsApp privacy settings
If you decide to let your child use WhatsApp, be sure to check WhatsApp’s privacy settings. The default settings are suitable for adults; therefore, you need to change some of them to make WhatsApp better for your child.
Below, we will explain each part. Last seen online
In this section, you can specify who will see when your child was last online or if he is online now. We recommend that you set “Last Seen” in “My Contacts” and “I’m Online” to “Last Seen”. Profile picture
Where you can set who can see your child’s profile picture. We recommend that you set it to “My Contacts” so that strangers do not know that the account belongs to a child. Something about
“About” is the short text you write about yourself on WhatsApp. Since this text may contain confidential information about your child, we recommend that you set it to “People who call me”.
Condition By default, all your child’s contacts can see your child’s status updates. However, if there are some people in your child’s contact list that you don’t want to see their updates, you can set it to “My contacts except…” and select those who don’t want to. Or if you want only selected people to see them, set it to “Share only…” and select accepted people.
First message timer
By default, messages stay there unless your child deletes them. However, in this section, your child can set messages to disappear after a certain period of time. In fact, this is a foundation that you and your child should not touch. If your child’s messages disappear, you won’t be able to find them if you want.
Different teams
In this section, you can specify who can put your child in the group. We recommend that you set it to “Contact me” or “Contact me except…”.
Contact locked
If there are unwanted people in your child’s contact list that you want to block, click the + icon in this section and select them. Monitor and control children’s WhatsApp usage
WhatsApp privacy settings can go a long way in making WhatsApp safe for your child. However, you still need to monitor and control your child’s WhatsApp usage. Children are more likely to abuse WhatsApp or similar messaging apps. They may fall asleep while chatting with friends which will cause them many problems due to sleepiness. Continuous and frequent use of information devices is one of the symptoms of epilepsy.
To protect your child from the health risks of overusing WhatsApp, you can use the screen time monitoring feature of Saves.
How safes can make WhatsApp better for your child؟
Saves is a parental control app that can be installed on all mobile devices and PCs running Android, iOS or Windows to monitor and control how children use their phones, tablets, laptops, etc. Advanced Safes have multiple timers/screen controls. Plan. Below is a complete list of Screen Time Safes plans:
Screen time reports
Application restrictions
Screen time
Screen time
Screen time profile
Geofence
Quick block (pause device)
nocturnal sleep conditions
A final word on WhatsApp safety for children
Although WhatsApp is a popular messaging app that makes communication easy, it poses risks for children. However, you can first make WhatsApp safe for your child by explaining to them the dangers of using WhatsApp and asking them to report to you whenever they receive suspicious messages. Then you can use WhatsApp privacy settings to prevent your child from chatting by strangers or losing personal data. Finally, you can use the Saves Parental Control app to manage your child’s WhatsApp screen time.
Source: https://www.safes.so/blogs/is-whatsapp-safe-for-your-child