It's important that parents can trust in the technology they use and feel as safe as possible when handing over their Smartphone and Tablet devices to their children.
Child playing on a tablet
Windows phone has recently carried out research involving 2,000 UK parents and the statistics show that over a quarter of parents are affected by their kids’ unauthorized app purchases. The research shows that eight year olds have run the biggest cost overall by downloading apps at an average of £59 per Tablet or Smartphone. The average parent spends an extra £34 on top of their bill due to their children being unsupervised on the devices. This results in a massive £30 million total for parents across the nation.
The bill shock caused stress and worry across the country and over one in ten of the parents felt that they couldn’t pay the extra amount on the bill. Over a third of parents are now hiding their Smartphone’s and Tablets from their children in fear of the unauthorized app purchasing. However, 17% of parents still share their passwords with their children and 23% of them have no security on their devices at all.
Brett Siddons, Head of Consumer Marketing for Windows Phone UK, said: ‘Our research reveals parents are worried about the impact of app and in-app purchases on their bills and we understand the stress this can cause. With technology becoming more and more intuitive, it’s important that parents can trust in the technology they use and feel as safe as possible when handing over their Smartphone and Tablet devices to their children.’
Windows phone has come up with a reasonable solution that could prevent ‘bill shock’ in the future. On the latest handsets parents will have access to a kids’ corner section on the phone which can be closely monitored and be separate from the rest of the phone. Similarly, Windows have also created a family safety tool for Tablet devices to help monitor their children as they access the internet.
Kids corner is like having a phone-within-a-phone, the child can still watch videos, play games, listen to music and take pictures but only if the features have been selected by the parent. They have also blocked in-game and in-app purchases in kid’s corner so the parent won’t see any unexpected charges on their account. The family safety tool for Tablet devices monitors the child’s search history and sends a weekly report to the parent on what their child is on, what apps they use and what information they share.
Research also reveals that kids are spending on average three hours a week playing on Smartphone’s and Tablets. Unexpectedly, 1 in 10 parents are giving their children freedom to access whatever they like and whenever they like. Over half of these parents also have a subscription service that links to a credit of debit card, allowing easy access for their children to add charges to their bank account. As well as unsupervised use of Smartphone’s and Tablets there is also a risk of social media pranks. 27% of kids have updated their parent’s Facebook status and 20% of kids updated their Twitter status.
Tech savvy children are now more knowledgeable regarding today’s technology and two thirds of the parents in the research study admitted that their child knows more about technology than they do. The research shows that kids are more likely to use games, apps, look at pictures to entertain themselves on a parent’s phone or tablet.
Now that windows phone has come up with a solution to the unauthorised app purchasing, children have the freedom to use their parent’s devices and the parents can be certain that there will be no extra charges on their bill at the end of the month.
Tagged in Parenting Parenting Advice Technology Parenting News