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
Definately spying
That is totally spying. I, being a “kid” myself, think it is spying. I think every person, yes, even kids, deserves privacy. If they don’t want to tell you, they OBVIOUSLY DON’T want you to know! Also, I’m not sure if I’m correct on this but, isn’t against the law to snoop in other people’s stuff? Really, if they don’t want to tell you, they don’t want you to snoop.
riley | 9 months, 1 week ago
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Everyone deserves privacy
I think that every body deserves privacy or at least some privacy. One way or another the kids that are being monitored 24/7 will find out and ask their parents about it and a fight will happen. Instead of secretly monitoring your kids, why don’t you just ask them about it. Increase the trust, and communication is really important as well. Maybe once in awhile checking up on their grades is okay but monitoring every little thing they do is just disgusting.
Kristy | 8 months, 2 weeks ago
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Spying or responsibility?
Worrying about your kid’s school life minute by minute is way over the top. But if I buy my kids cell phones and they decide to send porno over them, or I let them use computers in my house and they go places and write things they shouldn’t and I wind up with legal fees and even worse, then finding out what they are doing and putting a stop to it if necessary is just being a good parent. The whole reason we don’t just have children and dump them on society at an early age is because as a whole, they are amazingly lacking in common sense and the ability to see the consequences of their actions. Our job as parents is to save them from themselves, not just the world outside.
Maggie Mahal | 8 months ago
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good website
thats a fantastic idea
Hayley Duquette | 7 months, 2 weeks ago
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Questions
I think that if you spy on a kid, you’re violating their trust, if nothing else. And also, blocking them off from the real world won’t make them become responsible adults; it will make them naive and they’ll do what they would have done as kids had the blocking been gone. There’s no solution except to tell your kids that you think they shouldn’t do this or that, because it’s for their own good. If they don’t listen, then you can block some things. But not to the point where you’re spying on them! And for the record, I know this works, because it’s what my parents do with me. I’m a kid, and I approve of talking with my parents! How much simpler can this be if I understand it? How many other kids would feel this way had they grown up with severe spying or nothing at all?
Kristi | 7 months, 1 week ago
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tracking my child online
need help with what my child is done online
Roy King | 6 months, 2 weeks ago
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mr
how can I delete parent contrls? I keep on getting that stupid parent controls
on my aol page( window)
JULIO LALLI | 6 months ago
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Profesional Teacher
I feel children like a piece of clay. We try to shape them to be better than us as parents. But we are not perfect, so we forget many effects from society, enviroment,friends, and mainly life could change there shape many ways. So we must feed them the right ethics, values & morals. Then give them space to be just advisor to there needs. And help them throw directing them in life in easy wayes. So they will not reject our ideas. And we have to remember to accept them the way they are if there is no harm to them selves or to others.
Buqurace,Nabeel | 5 months, 4 weeks ago
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adult
need setting for adult.
violet burrell | 5 months, 3 weeks ago
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adult
need setting for adult.
violet burrell | 5 months, 3 weeks ago
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