In a world where we are increasingly living in the digital space, it is imperative to teach young people how to safely and responsibly manage their digital lives – and that starts at home.
Children’s online safety has not kept pace with how digital households operate. Parents are advised to manage screen time, monitor apps and have open conversations. And while these things matter, they do not address the real shift.
South African digital consumer research shows that users, particularly younger audiences, are spending more time across multiple connected devices, reinforcing the fragmentation and always-on nature of digital engagement. Connectivity now flows through home routers, mobile networks and platforms that connect multiple devices.
Yet, security is still often applied in fragments, app by app, device by device – failing to reflect how the modern household operates more like a small, unmanaged network that is not designed to protect its most vulnerable users.
Digital Resilience, the specialised cybersecurity arm of Digital Solutions Group (DSG), is focused on addressing this household-level risk rather than isolated devices or applications; and through its collaboration with Bitdefender, it is enabling a model that protects the entire home environment.
Research by Bitdefender shows how digital parenting has become more complex as children spend more time online across multiple platforms.
“Parents are dealing with a level of exposure that simply did not exist a few years ago,” says Yaron Assabi, CEO of DSG. “It is not just about what children see. It is about how they are targeted, how they interact, and how quickly situations can escalate without any clear visibility at a household level.”
Ciprian Istrate, senior vice-president of Operations at Bitdefender Consumer Solutions Group, adds: “The challenge for families today is not a single device or platform. It is managing risk across an entire connected environment. Effective parental control now requires visibility across devices, the ability to manage behaviour in real time, and protection that extends beyond apps to the network itself. As households become more connected, security, digital privacy and identity protection needs to move with them.”
This includes parental control capabilities that allow families to manage access and monitor activity, as well as protection against identity theft, phishing and malicious interactions across devices.
Importantly, these controls are no longer confined to apps. In many cases, they can be integrated at the router level, allowing protection to apply across multiple devices in the household without requiring constant configuration or oversight.
“The reality is that most parents cannot manage five or six different devices individually,” Assabi explains. “If you want to reduce risk meaningfully, you have to address it at the network level. That is where we are focusing our efforts.”
The gap between how families use technology and how they secure it is widening. The question is no longer whether children are spending too much time online. It is whether the environments in which they are operating are designed to protect them at all.
Image credit: Magnific
