A lot of parents think it is alright to give their children smartphones, however, these devices can leave them susceptible to cyberbullying, as well as exposing them unsuitable or adult content.

The days where children would happily go outside to play games seem to be long gone, and now children as young as five years old are becoming hooked on using smartphones and tablet computers. Rather than using their imagination, they seem to want to play online games or communicate with friends via social networking.

Although there is no a set time frame for giving children a smartphone or a tablet computer, there should be a lot of thoughts and considerations put in the idea before letting them have unsupervised access to this kind of technology. There are many good aspects to let your child use a tablet computer for example, as it can be a great, interactive tool that can assist their learning and boost social skills. However, giving a kid a full access to a gadget without any restrictions and parental control makes them vulnerable to cyberbullying, sexting, Internet perverts, etc.

Children, especially those under 10 do not always understand what can expect them online. According to the UNICEF statistics, 17% of children spread their personal information online, and 60% of teenagers have met their virtual friend in real life. The problem is that they do not know that “Billy, aged 14” can be an ex-prisoner who was confined for paedophilia. Some more striking examples are that 46% of children share their phone number in the web, and 36% give their address details for meetings with virtual friends when the parents are out.

However, being a caring parent, you do not need to give yourself up to despair, there is a way out! A popular method with parents that want to keep tabs on their children whilst they are online is the use of spy applications. These are programs that run stealth in background mode whilst a smartphone or tablet computer is being used. They give parents an opportunity to view such valuable information as emails, SMS messages, videos and photos that have been sent or received by the device. Moreover, such application as mSpy gives access to Facebook, Skype, Viber and WhatsApp textings.

To sum it all up, it is necessary to say that it does not matter how much you trust your children, it is important to have a backup plan that will help you protect them.