IT Professional Reveals The One IPad Safety Hack Other Parents Should Use To Keep Their Kids Safe
It's such a simple solution to teach an often-overlooked skill.
kool99 / Canva Pro Memorizing your address and phone number was crucial when you went off to elementary school, especially before cell phones. Now, however, who remembers numbers? Kids (and adults, too) just save the number in their phones and press dial when needed.
That’s all well and good until your phone battery dies or you get off at the wrong bus stop and can’t remember Mom or Dad's number to let them know where you are. IT Professional Will Slappey has a solution.
Slappey offered parents a simple iPad safety hack to ensure kids quickly learn an emergency contact phone number.
Slappey turned to LinkedIn to share his ingenious parenting hack — setting your phone number as the password to the electronics your child uses. He wrote, “You’ll be amazed at how fast the kids learn it!”
Most of us remember our parents taking pains to ensure vital information like a home phone number and address was ingrained in our brains before we set foot in school, but times have changed.
Common Sense Media conducted a study showing that in 2021, 31% of 8-year-olds had smartphones. That’s a 20% increase from the 11% that owned them in 2015.
As smartphone ownership increases, we are moving away from the idea of making our children memorize phone numbers since the necessity seems obsolete. But the fact remains that emergencies arise. It's always better to be safe than sorry, and kids have the ability, so why not teach them?
New tracking apps have also made it much easier to find your kids in case of an emergency.
Life360, created after the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and released on Google Play in 2008, is a tracking app that allows you to see not only location but driving speeds, access emergency assistance, and location history. Even when one phone is dead, you can still see its location. These advancements help tremendously in easing parental worries and stress.
However, while this app may be a great resource for tracking your children, like all location services, it comes with its downfalls. New construction areas are not always updated promptly and can result in areas looking empty when there are buildings there.
This has happened a few times in my family's experience with Life360. I remember once, when my older sister was in high school, the app would not fully update her location, and once showed her in an area where we knew there to be a big ditch. Let’s just say my mother was not very calm about that. Another time, I was visiting a friend at a new building a few hours from home, and when my mom went to check my location that night because Life360 had not yet been updated to show the buildings, my mom thought I was in an empty field in the middle of nowhere.
In a nutshell, it's a great tool, but it's not perfect.
Despite its convenience, technology is not infallible.
The greatest computer we all have at our disposal is our brains. Of course, tracking apps and stored numbers are essential in our modern world, but there's something to be said for being able to rely on yourself for the basics.
It's that one added piece of protection.
gsagi / Canva Pro
Having your children memorize your phone numbers before they start elementary school is an essential skill. One teacher on Quora said, “For their safety, certainly by age four at the latest (many children are capable of learning this by three and a half). They should know their parents’ names, their home address (including city, state, zip code, and country), and both parents’ phone numbers or at least the phone number of their house if there is one.”
Not only will this help the parents feel less stressed about their child not being able to contact them, but it will allow the child to feel more comfortable in potentially scary situations because they know they can call someone they trust.
No matter what your take as a parent is on phones, you should always ensure your child knows your number and Will Slappey’s password idea is a genius and easy way to help them remember it.
Madison Piering is a write on YourTango's Entertainment and News team, specializing in human interest and pop culture topics.