No matter how much we all love kids, they can be really stubborn at times, especially when it comes to technology and gadgets. According to the founder of the tech review website, Return Policy Guide, Vipin Chahal, we must put an extra premium on our mobile devices, specifically our smartphones, as they are the most vulnerable.
We all are, in one way or the other, very possessive about our phones, and why not? Chahal claims that our phones are one of the most—if not the most—personal things to us. Think about it, our mobile devices keep us updated and—to a certain extent—close to our loved ones. Let us be honest, we all are scared of all the toddlers around us, thinking either they will break our phone or damage it somehow.
With that in mind, he shares some of his tried and tested tips and tricks to keep your phone safe from these little ones:
Invest in a Well-Made Phone Case
Use a durable phone case that properly covers the back, the sides, the top, and the bottom part of your phone. This should provide added protection from any sort of unwanted occurrence. In other words, as much as possible, use a waterproof and good quality case to protect your phone and screen from shocks, scratches, and dust.
Sarah McConomy, the Chief Operating Officer of Sell Cell, reinforces the idea that investing in a tough, waterproof, and durable case is a must in protecting a device from a toddler’s tantrums and dropping the unit. She says that buying a case is important, but investing in a screen protector is an absolute must.
Screen protectors stop the screen from not just being smashed but also being scratched. Deep scratches can massively de-value a phone by hundreds of dollars. Screen protectors come in plastic and tempered glass. McConomy recommends investing in a good quality screen protector that can either be applied at home or professionally by a repair technician to ensure that the edges of the protector are safely intact.
Make the Most of Your Smartphone’s Security Capabilities
Lock your screen with your touch ID or a four-digit passcode or a pattern, whatever suits you, to keep your data and information safe from your toddlers. It is, at the end of the day, the easiest, most practical thing to do to protect your phone from your kids.
Cath Jordan of Travel Around Ireland adds that if your phone has fingerprint identification capability or optical identification capabilities, use them. It prevents your toddler from being able to get into your phone in the first place if you happen to leave it lying around.
Basing it on her experience, Jordan claims that her nearly 7-year-old still cannot get into her phone due to these security measures. These are better safety measures than a passcode as you might be surprised that some toddlers can learn these codes through watching you repeatedly entering them on your phone.
Gabe Turner, the chief editor of Security, puts things in perspective. He says that in order to toddler-proof your phone, the easiest way to prevent them from accessing it in the first place is to create a passcode. However, not all passcodes are created equal. Make a passcode that is as long as possible and made of non-consecutive numbers like 12345, or, better yet, turn on Face or Touch ID to completely prevent them from accessing it, even if they have the passcode.
Set Parental Controls on Your Phone
Set a parental control and restrict your kids from using applications that you do not want them to access. You can disable the download of specific apps as well.
The founder of Safer Senior Care Meg Marrs maintains that handing your smartphone to a toddler to entertain them with games is a risky business. But, ‘Enabling Guided Access’ which is a native feature on iOS devices lets you restrict your child’s access even to just one single app. This feature allows you to fully control what they can and cannot do.
Put Extra Protection on Your More Personal Apps and/or Media
Regardless of whether you have a toddler who is simply beginning to utilize your telephone or a teenager with her own gadget, monitoring all the child and youngster well-disposed applications and sites out there can be overpowering.
In the same vein, it is absolutely important to keep your adult media under lock and key. This comes from Pet Me Twice founder and editor, Mollie Newton. Whether it is dark humor memes or a saucy pic from your significant other, there is bound to be some content on your phone that you just do not want your kids to see. She claims that using a vault-app keeps your adult content out of the kiddos’ reach and safe inside a password-protected app.
Bonus Tip: Disinfect Your Phone Regularly
This tip holds especially true during this time. Mom Informed founder Lorie Anderson suggests cleaning your phone with antibacterial wipes several times a day. She shares how her toddler loves to grab her phone off the table and put it in her mouth, but phones are so dirty. Anderson suggests trying to keep the phone in the pocket so a kid cannot get access to it, but try to make sure it is clean in case he or she does happen to get a hold of it.
Dennis has been a professional security consultant space based out of Chapel Hill for over 15 years. His experience runs the gamut between government and private organizations (specifically in the finance and insurance sector) with a specialty in consulting for executive and high-value protection surrounding Kidnap and Ransom mitigation.
