Is monitoring your child’s cyber activities and texting considered spying or just good parenting?
Some teenagers see it as an invasion of their privacy, others feel safer knowing that mom or dad is not far away and many parents actually have better and stronger relationships with their children because they have been able to prevent them from getting into trouble before it happened.
Children today must deal with a vastly different world than what existed just 15 years years ago.
Ask yourself these questions and answer honestly. Does your 11 yr old have the skill and judgment to protect themselves from a cyber predator who texts them? Does a 10 year old know if they are sending a text that could get them suspended from school because the receiver interprets it as cyber bullying or textual harassment? Do teens understand the reality that anything they do may now end up in cyberspace for all the world to see?
”Almost half the boys in coed high schools have seen a picture depicting a female classmate nude.” – The New York Times, March 21, 2010.
The reality of the current environment that children grow up in presents a strong argument for parental monitoring of the cyber activities of children. Mobile devices and ‘superphones’ have taken a large portion of social interaction away from the physical world and out of the awareness of parents and guardians.
You would not want a child interacting with a predator or negative influence in the physical world, so why would you want it to happen in cyberspace? In fact, if the vast majority of parents physically saw some creep approach their child, bully them or attempt anything that was inappropriate for their age they would quickly intervene, or at a minimum discuss any kind of occurrence with their child to ensure that there is no potential threat, and that they learn something from it.
Remember, one of the many responsibilities that comes with parenting is to teach your children the social skills, tools, and judgment that keeps them out of trouble, helps them to be successful and allows them to live long happy lives. In order to do this, parents have to adapt to the realities of the information age and cyberspace.
Be there for your child and be their friend, they need to trust your judgment until they have developed their own. Once they learn the judgment and skills to keep themselves safe then you can turn them loose on the world, but until that point is reached there is a compelling argument to be made for a degree of parental monitoring to keep kids out of trouble, and keep them from unintentionally running afoul of the many cyberbullying and sexting laws that are now being passed in many areas. For these reasons, many parents consider some degree of parental monitoring of texting and other cyber activities to be good parenting.
It’s not about privacy, it’s about protection and good parenting. There are many advantages to children having cell phones and other mobile devices. Families should certainly take advantage of these benefits and use simple common sense parenting, education, and, until children have the judgment and skills to protect themselves, parental monitoring software.
