Spying on our Young?

After reading Sunday’s Dear Abby Column in our local paper yesterday, it became chillingly clear that our young people are growing up in a surveillance society. Who would have thought it would start with their parents watching their every move, listening to their every word, reading their every IM.

In the note to Jeanne Phillips (in beloved Abby’s absence), a mother writes:

“Although he [the son] knows we keep abreast of what he’s doing line, he’s obviously unaware of how much detail we have access to,” the mother wrote of her spying on her son’s IM’s.

This was an issue I argued with Symantec developers at RSA earlier this month. Symantec’s new family security suite gives parents control over who their children IM and such, but have tried to avoid making it possible to actually read the content of their discussions. (Other parental control software vendors are not so careful as you can see from the mom’s note to Dear Abby above.)

Even with their thinking about privacy of the young people being monitored, the Symantec demonstrations still raised the following alarms:

1. How many parents are going to turn out to be control freaks who use these tools to over-control, possibly abuse their children (or significant others)? After the full day tutorial, a senior Symantec marketing person told me that Symantec product managers had thought long and hard on this and were equally concerned that a large percentage, perhaps half, would indeed use these tools to over-control their kids.
2. How many absentee parents will use controls like these in place of parenting in which values are taught so kids don’t make huge life-changing mistakes in the first place (or when they do, they at least learn from them)? With the right values, kids can grow up to be 16 year olds on the verge of making a right decision about whether or not to try pot his friend was offering him, which was what the Dear Abby writer was freaking out about.

Would the old Dear Abby have seen anything wrong with this level of spying on a youngster’s every word? Don’t forget the kid is 16, almost an adult by Federal standards.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m an avid protector of youngsters from perceived threats. My family will tell you I’ve stood over their shoulders, scanned the names in the IM and said, “Who’s XYBoy? How do you know him in the real world?”

They’d cover their screens to protect their privacy, and I never tried to read the dialog. They grumbled, but they’d always tell who that person was in the physical world and how they knew them before saying to “Now, go away!”

If parents watch everywhere their kid goes, at what speed, who he’s talking to, what he’s saying, it will only paralyze the kids when it’s time for them to make a real decision. Or it will spur them into finding more creative ways to sneak around behind their parents backs. Or it will temper them to accept the notion of a fully-monitored society, which in itself is chilling.

Instead of spying on their every move/word, get them to tell you what you need to know while allowing them the decency of some private life that leads to independence, the natural process of growing into maturity – at least it used to be.

• Security
• online safety