I remember the day when I was a kid when the little storage bar on my Hotmail went from 2Mb capacity to 10Mb. It opened up a whole world of possibility. After all, a floppy disk could only store 1.44Mb, so 10Mb felt like a revolution.
Life online was simpler back then. Time-limited access on my clunky desktop and a slow dial-up internet to prevented me to getting up to much online. Online harms were not part of my parents’ lexicon. Parental controls were to do with switching off the dial-up internet, so the house had it’s telephone access back.
Today, the world online is far more complex. Apps such as Instagram, YouTube and TikTok have democratised access to information at an ever faster rate. They have acted as an essential gateway to new friendships and knowledge during the Covid-19 pandemic.
But new online threats have emerged, such as scams, predators and cyberbullying. 14-year-old Jools Sweeney died in April 2022 after what his parents believe was an online challenge gone wrong. The issue was debated in the British Parliament after a petition calling for a new law which would give parents access to their children’s accounts after their deaths, attracted more than 126,000 signatures.
Many young people use social media almost constantly, risking their privacy, safety, and mental health. It’s a problem we simply didn’t face in earlier generations.
A global study to measure Gen Z’s attitudes towards web3 found that 52% wanted their schools to teach them more about the virtual and digital environments in which many find themselves when not in class. 58% of young people said they were concerned about their privacy and security online. 41% of young people said they came across someone online who was pretending to be someone else. And young people themselves feel they are not equipped to handle the risks in the digital space, with one in five (21%) Gen Z girls admitting in the same survey they are “highly uninformed” of online risks.
Among TikTok’s 170 million monthly users in the US, over 50 million are less than 15 years old.
UK Technology minister Feryal Clark recently said the Government was committed to implementing the Online Safety Act. She said it was “focused on building the evidence base to inform any future action”. But technology moves much quicker than policymakers can.
Social media platforms can help tackle online harms spilling into the real world, like they did with Jools. But each child, each school and each personal circumstance are different.
Parents are the best arbiter of what their works for their child. Parent Geenee aims to empower parents to create family time while enhancing the child’s experience safely. Let’s say you’ve set a 20min a day usage for Instagram at home but the time runs out. Your child could be sitting with you in the living room and use our Wish feature to request you for further use of the blocked app. Then let’s say the child heads to their bedroom to use the extra app time. You could use the Parent Geenee Beacon could disable access just in that room, if you chose to do so. All this without needing to install anything on your child’s phone. Or access private read or read content on their phone.
Parents find their children’s social media usage not just a problem at home, but at school too. As children across the world head back to school at the start of a new year, with new responsibilities and possibly a cel phone for the first time, parents want to feel assured they will be safe. Our solution can help parents far beyond just storing the devices in a Yonder pouch. Parents told us they were concerned they may not be able to reach their children quickly in an emergency, if the phones were stored away like this.
It’s complicated being a parent today, but it’s even more complicated being a child. Parent Geenee can help navigate a world of online harms in a way that places parental controls firmly in the hands of the parents.
By Team Parent Geenee 
