Parenting or Spying: Who’s Watching The Kids?
If you electronically monitor every website your kids view, secretly read all their instant messages, filter their TV viewing, restrict their incoming and outgoing calls, and track their movements by GPS devices lurking in their backpacks and cell phones, are you parenting, or spying?
Spying, and proud of it, say parental proponents of stealth, who insist that protecting their children has no limits. “If I’m responsible for their actions, then I should be able to snoop,” says a mother in Tennessee. A Texas mom is point-blank: “I have made it perfectly clear there is no privacy in my house.”
And no difficulty violating it. Just a single piece of spy ware makes subterfuge simple, allowing parents to view everything their kid does online, including both sides of IM conversations. Parents who don’t like what they see can secretly shut down the kid’s computer by remote, then blame it on a mysterious network problem.
“I can see why some people worry that parents will become too controlling,” says a Texas father of five, “but I’ve found that technology actually lets you give kids more freedom.” By controlling what his kids do and see, he says, he hopes to “eliminate” the possibility that they’ll make bad decisions that could bring lasting harm.
Care or control? Insight or intrusion? The debate continues, especially in the increasingly popular grade-tracking programs that allow parents almost hourly access to their child’s progress in school, with the cooperation of teachers. Depending on the software, parents can check test and homework grades, disciplinary notices, attendance, missed assignments, and their child’s daily class ranking, on command.
A Georgia mother who used to incessantly check her child’s school progress by logging on each day at 6AM, has re-thought her dependence on electronically tracking every aspect of her daughter’s daily life. “It speaks to all your neuroses as a parent, all this need to control, that pressure to make sure everything is perfect,” she said. “How are these kids going to learn to be responsible adults?”
Tell us what you think: Should parents use technology to monitor their kids? Is it parenting, spying, responsible, or something else?
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Comments
hey
i love this wedpage now i know my kids are lying to me about their grades so thank you so much.
alisha stokes | 5 months ago
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hey
i love this wedpage now i know my kids are lying to me about their grades so thank you so much.
alisha stokes | 5 months ago
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dissagree
you should trust your kids or if you dont why even give them the privliage so you could watch them like hawks there is no point
maryssa avelar | 4 months, 2 weeks ago
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kids no
the kids found out but i was sneaky i found out they were spying on me
and i now know they smashed my computer and said it was the dog i got rid of the dog and got a new computer but i lost
lexi allein | 3 months, 3 weeks ago
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chids grades
what do they look like
antonio leach | 3 months, 2 weeks ago
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helicopter parents
spying on your kids is overparenting there’s an article in time magazine about it parents, face it. the world isn’t family friendly. the secret is, i spy on my parents, they don’t spy on me.
Written in 2009 by a 14 yr. old born in 2011….
WHY?! | 3 months, 1 week ago
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its wrong
you should not spy on your kids
lilt | 2 months, 3 weeks ago
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spying on sisters is really easy now
this website was very helpfull to
Sara DeSilva | 2 months, 2 weeks ago
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agree
I tell my children that I check on their web sites and some email and I do believe it keeps them safer. We are honest with them. We have five children.
My take on cell phones are that they may be nice but I think that the things kids say and do should be monitered. You can take the phone away and if the child does something wrong with it. it is not the police but the parents that should take that phone until they can be responabile or pay their on BILL. There are to many court cases and not enough parents standing in where they shoud.
cynthia wolfkiel | 2 months, 1 week ago
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"Think younge" from a teenager.
Yes becuase all children are now abousoultly crazy in this new generation and have no sense of moral responsibility. Lady your crazy no I strongly stand by the belief that you should’nt hide us away from the facts that are life . It’s only going to close our minds and hinder our empathy. They are what we live in right now if we have a greater understanding we can maybe change that. Children who bring knives and guns to school have a family problem. further more I wouldn’t trust u.s. media at all. In alot of ways they oppressed people by using fear so the population is unifide in fear and wont speak out against . There are ridiclose amount of fear that are everywhere and clearly it has effected you a little to much nothing in this life time can be stopped of prevented . dicipline has also changed to adapt this way of thinking my parents respect my privacy and do dicipline me accordingly if i mess up but they also don’t suffocate me to death . I love living with my family, there supposed to be family not prolle officers they are there firstly to love and support you. If you want to invade there privacy you’ll see they won’t tell you anything my bestie chelsea hides everything from here snooping parents they don’t even know how wonderful of a girl she is they just assume she’s a bad kid doing bad things because they did’nt get the inside joke about boys. I wish parents could realise we are people too not just your offsprings sure we hav’nt concered the world but being a teenager you get exposed to everything no matter how you try to protect us. You have to respect that we are true to are selfs and we will make our own decisions you have almost no control over it. You can ground us take away our cell phones but it will fix nothing. All that will do is push us farther away from you. We are mature faster then your generation it’s a proven fact, we are learning more, we are under more stress and we have more part time jobs then you generation used to. So mom dad give us some space you will love the results you get. Think younger and you’ll understand.
Elaine | 1 month, 2 weeks ago
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