Parental Control on WiFi Routers: A Must-Have for Modern Parents

As a parent, you want your children to explore the digital world in a safe and healthy way. But with the proliferation of smart devices and social media platforms, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to keep track of what your kids are doing online. This is where parental control on WiFi routers comes in handy.

What is Parental Control?

Parental control is a feature that allows you to restrict and monitor your child’s internet usage. It works by filtering the content that your child can access online, blocking certain websites, and limiting their screen time. With parental control, you can create user profiles for your children, set age-appropriate restrictions, and monitor their internet activity.

How Does Parental Control Work?

Parental control can be set up on your home WiFi router, which acts as a gateway to the internet for all the devices in your household. By configuring the router’s settings, you can create different access levels for different users. For example, you can set up a guest network for visitors that has limited internet access, while creating a separate network for your children with more restrictions.

Once you’ve set up parental control on your router, you can manage it through an app or web interface. This allows you to create user profiles, set time limits, and block specific websites or categories of content.

Why is Parental Control Important?

Parental control is important for several reasons. Firstly, it helps protect your children from accessing inappropriate or harmful content online. With parental control, you can block websites that contain explicit content, violent material, or hate speech. This helps create a safer online environment for your children to explore.

Secondly, parental control can help manage your child’s screen time. By setting time limits on their internet usage, you can encourage them to engage in other activities such as outdoor play, reading, or spending time with family and friends. This can help promote a healthier lifestyle and prevent screen addiction.

Lastly, parental control helps you monitor your child’s internet activity. By checking the router logs, you can see which websites your child has visited and how much time they’ve spent online. This can help you identify any potential risks or issues, and have open and honest conversations with your child about responsible internet usage.

But what does it really look like?

Parental control on WiFi routers is a must-have for modern parents but the problem is that it isn’t available on all WiFi routers and each brand of WiFi router has a slightly different system meaning the experience of setting up and using parental control can be hit and miss.

Last year I had a meeting with the Chief Online Safety Officer at Netsafe New Zealand about parental control software. One of the biggest take-ups away from the meeting was that the majority of parents don’t use parental control even if it is available to them. Most router manufacturers don’t have it as an option or if they do it is sometimes buried deep in the menus or it is a paid-for subscription service that requires a credit card.

Another major point that arose during the meeting was just how fragmented the options are because every brand seems to have its own implementation of parental control with different features. This means that some brands have superior parental control than others and many are lacking handy features.

Some of the best parental control options available to the market require installing dedicated hardware into your existing network or require you to use 3rd party software on your WiFi router. Both of these are out of the technical capabilities of 99% of people so it’s no wonder so few people use parental control regardless of how beneficial it can be. It’s a good thing there is a company working on addressing their annoying quirks to make things easier and compatible with a wide range of hardware 😉

So while you wait for the latest and greatest WiFi operating system to be launched you may have to make do with what is available in the market right now. Parental control helps protect your children from inappropriate content, manages their screen time, and allows you to monitor their internet activity. If you have the know-how I’d recommended setting up parental control on your router, so you can create a safer and healthier online environment for your family.