Summer is a great time for teens and tweens to relax and take a break from those school and study routines. But it also leaves them with a lot of time on their hands – time that can be spent surfing the Internet or watching inappropriate TV.  If you don’t want to spend all your time monitoring your kids viewing habits or checking up on their Internet searches, then you need some parental controls that can give you a little peace of mind.

Now I know what a lot of parents think about parental controls: good in theory but not so good in practice. They are either too complicated for most parents to set up, or it’s just too easy for kids to find a workaround. The end result is that most available parental controls are simply ignored and the battle over screen time and inappropriate content continues much as before.

That was pretty much the case in my house until we switched to FiOS Quantum Internet and FiOS Quantum TV. Now, the FiOS Quantum Gateway router gives me the ability to manage Internet access by time and by device. That means my 13 year-old daughter can’t access the Internet on her tablet after 8 pm at night, while my 16 year-old son can keep going until 9 pm. It also means I can switch off Internet access at any time of the day on any device when I feel that the kids have had too much screen time or are not following the rules.

With FiOS TV parental Controls, I can block specific channels or use the age preferences to block content for a particular age group. I can even block access to certain TV widgets, such as Facebook and Twitter.

Best of all, both Internet access and TV parental controls can be managed remotely from my smartphone or tablet using the My FiOS and FiOS Mobile apps. If my babysitter tells me my daughter won’t stop Skyping with her friends, I can cut her off right from my office 10 miles away! Similarly, if I need to relax those TV restrictions so my kids can catch a PG-13 movie, I can do that remotely as well.

I’m a big believer that digital technology needs to be carefully controlled, otherwise it can end up controlling you. FiOS puts me firmly in charge – and makes those endless summer months a time when we can all relax!

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