Do you know where your children are?
and... what about your wife (or husband :)?
Worried parents who want minute-by-minute tracking of their kids online and off can turn to advanced radio frequency identity chips, global positioning systems (GPS), specially designed cell phones and new Internet monitoring methods. And the prices for these gadgets,once seen only in spy novels, are coming down to mass-market levels. The $900 GPS kid locator backpack has been replaced by a $100 GPS cell phone that, when coupled with applications like MapQuest Find Me and Teen Arrive Alive, can help find a errant teenager or a lost child. Parenting, it seems, has entered the surveillance age.
Sentry, an Internet-protection program that does more than screen out X-rated sites. Sentry and similar programs like ContentProtect, log e-mail, let you watch instant messaging conversations in real time, provide instant screenshots and send e-mail or cell-phone alerts when instant messaging conversations start to get explicit or reveal too much private information. And they allow parents to shut down the programs by logging on to the program from another computer.
This is scary stuff, at least it seems so to me. I do worry about kids with internet access, but is this kind of 'surveillance' a good thing? Whatever happened to trust? Can you imagine, when you were a teen, how you would have felt if mom and dad knew every step you took? Tracking a kid's car, listening in to his chats, just seems we are going too far. What do you think?
Worried parents who want minute-by-minute tracking of their kids online and off can turn to advanced radio frequency identity chips, global positioning systems (GPS), specially designed cell phones and new Internet monitoring methods. And the prices for these gadgets,once seen only in spy novels, are coming down to mass-market levels. The $900 GPS kid locator backpack has been replaced by a $100 GPS cell phone that, when coupled with applications like MapQuest Find Me and Teen Arrive Alive, can help find a errant teenager or a lost child. Parenting, it seems, has entered the surveillance age.
Sentry, an Internet-protection program that does more than screen out X-rated sites. Sentry and similar programs like ContentProtect, log e-mail, let you watch instant messaging conversations in real time, provide instant screenshots and send e-mail or cell-phone alerts when instant messaging conversations start to get explicit or reveal too much private information. And they allow parents to shut down the programs by logging on to the program from another computer.
This is scary stuff, at least it seems so to me. I do worry about kids with internet access, but is this kind of 'surveillance' a good thing? Whatever happened to trust? Can you imagine, when you were a teen, how you would have felt if mom and dad knew every step you took? Tracking a kid's car, listening in to his chats, just seems we are going too far. What do you think?
posted by Johnny at
6:15 PM
5 Comments:
Sometimes I have to fight hard against my 'inner control freak,' but even I don't want to "track" my son and catch him in lies or to monitor his email or chats. It just seems like a very poor substitute for actually talking to a kid about what's going on in his life. It's amazing what teenagers will voluntarily tell you if you just make yourself available and listen more than you lecture.
By
Anonymous, at 2:19 PM
oops, that we me, John, Dana:)
By
Anonymous, at 2:19 PM
Among other things, it seems to assume that trust is not inherent in the parent-child relationship... and in any case, does nothing to build trust between both parties.
Perhaps to be used only as a last resort?
By
jun, at 11:38 AM
It's a money spinner :) Where there is a demand people will buy.
Iva, have you noticed how fast kids are at texting?
John, GPS tracking for kids is scary. I can't help thinking that one day even GPS tracking will be the run of the mill. No one will bat an eyelid.
Di
By
Anonymous, at 9:44 PM
Can you imagine, when you were a teen, how you would have felt if mom and dad knew every step you took?
You mean they didn’t? :) Mine almost always ‘found me out’.
By
SweetT, at 6:46 AM
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