You may be an overprotective parent, but no matter how hard you try, your teenager will still sidetrack and fool you easily. How? Because your kid was born in the digital era.
The digital era is great for your child, but you, as a parent, can hardly protect your child anymore. Who is to blame? Well, of course, the digital revolution. As we move further into innovations and technology, we lose track of all the latest happenings in our surroundings, simply because we’re getting older.
But your kid isn’t as outdated as you are. They learn new things every day. This is how they probably learned about bestvpn. With network restrictions at schools, most teens simply use VPNs to bypass geo-blocks. It’s a fact, top-notch VPNs are capable of getting around parental controls quite easily. This is why teenagers have widely embraced it and use it for all their relevant advantages.
Often, these advantages might end up putting them in danger as they might commit illegal activities. This is why you as a parent should know how your teenager is using a VPN to hide their online activities from you.
Let’s look into some concerning factors over why teenagers are using a VPN:
What are teens using a VPN for?
Staying anonymous on the internet:
Teenagers want to stay anonymous over the internet while streaming anything they like. It may not be that big of a concern for them, but it’s the thrill of being completely anonymous that is getting to them.
Therefore, they use a VPN to stay anonymous and to keep their activities protected efficiently. This way, they can watch anything or visit any website without their Internet Service Provider (ISP) and the government snooping into what they’re doing.
This may sound all fun, but teenagers often involve themselves in illegal activities this way, like buying drugs.
Unblocking geo-restricted content:
Another feature of a VPN that teenagers love is unblocking geo-restricted content from across the world. They can quickly unblock geo-restricted content libraries of Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, DAZN, Voot, Disney Plus, and more. If they own a premium VPN like ExpressVPN or a budget-friendly VPN like Surfshark, then this becomes easier as these VPNs offer thousands of servers in the world.
However, geo-restricted content also leads to teenagers accessing websites that should not be accessed, like pornographic sites and more.
Accessing blocked content in school:
School Wi-Fi blocks most social media and educational websites in schools, so teenagers are not distracted in class. To prevent this, teenagers use a VPN on their phones and laptops to use social media or search for answers on educational websites in classes.
How are teens hiding their online activities from their parents other than VPNs?
Teens often hide most of their online activities from parents. These are some ways they do it other than using a VPN:
1. Proxies:
Proxy sites are the most hassle-free ways to access geo-blocked content on their devices without leaving a trace. For this, the teen-only needs to enter the URL of the site that needs to be visited into the proxy site search bar.
The proxy site will then efficiently route the teen’s request to an external server and direct you to the website you entered. However, VPNs are way better than proxies so you can’t be too sure.
2. Relatable image searches:
If your teen knows its way over the internet, then it would certainly know how to access websites without a trace through Google images. Multiple sites blocked on Google aren’t blocked from its image tab.
If the teen searches for a query and then visits the image tab, it can easily access the blocked website it always aspired to open.
3. DNS:
A DNS holds information of all the domains over the internet. All you need to do is a quick search to get the IP address of that site. While private wifis at home can let parents limit website accessibility, it’s easy for teens to use a public DNS server for this.
4. Private browsing:
Private browsing is the most common way not to let parents track you with search history. All popular browsers offer personal browsing options like Incognito in Chrome. This way, teens often use this option to visit entirely inappropriate sites.
5. Public wifi:
Public wifi is one of the easiest ways for teens to disregard their parents. Public wifis are used by a wide variety of people and do not have a lot of security. These wifis are the best if teens want to access websites without their parents knowing what they visited.
Conclusion:
Teenagers know their way over the internet, thanks to their tech-savvy nature and curiosity to know things. According to pew research, the majority of parents in the US believe that technology has made it harder for parents to know what their children are doing online than it was 20 years ago.
Therefore, parents need to stay vigilant about what their children are doing through a VPN network and which websites they are accessing. While your children may consider you outdated, you may take this upon yourself and learn all the new internet tactics to know what your children are up to before it turns into something terrible.
