How do these tracking sites work? The companies charge $10 a month for subscriptions which begin with parents filling out a profile. The sites ask for the parents to fill in their child’s e-mail address and the family’s physical address. They then look through social networking sites to see if the child has any accounts. The sites will then monitor what the child writes and what others write about the child. The sites will then report back to the parent with a list of the child’s online activity, marking activities as safe, potentially dangerous, or red-flagged as dangerous. What exactly are they marking as hazardous? The sites look for key words suck as “kill” or “suicide” in postings. They also look for age differences between friends. However, these sites have a lot of loopholes and often mark things as hazardous that aren’t dangerous at all, such as being friends with an uncle or perhaps using language that the sites take out of context such as, “I could kill for a latte this morning.”
Are these sites crossing the line into children’s privacy? What if the parent was monitoring an adult child? What if someone used this site that was not a parent at all? I can see the potential for a lot of dangerous stalking occurring. I can understand the concern that parents have over the Internet and the worry that it draws not knowing how technology works well enough to monitor their children themselves. So in a sense, this could ease a lot of parent’s anxiety and even allow parents to trust their children more. But on the other hand, there are so many loopholes in the technology, that the parents may not be getting all of the information that they think they are paying for. What happens if the child uses another e-mail address to set up a social networking account? Chances are, these sites would never catch that activity and parents could be paying $10 a month to see their children’s “good” account. I for one do not think that these sites are worth what they are charging. I think that if parents are really concerned over their children’s Internet activities, they should learn how to use parental controls or do their own research on how to track their children’s online activity.
The other major concern of these sites is the invasion of privacy of the children. If the child is under 18 and it really is the child’s parents who are trying to use these sites, then I would say they are marginally okay. After all, the sites only inform parents of information that the child puts out online for anyone to see. If anything, this could be a lesson for the child of how what you put online can be accessed by anyone. But on the other hand, when things beyond Facebook statuses make it to reports, questions of privacy are brought up. While Facebook statuses are expected to be viewed publicly, things like e-mail exchanges are not. Concerned parents are not, I think that e-mail exchanges are private. If parents are really that concerned about their children’s Internet activity, then I think that they should be having a conversation with their child about what is and is not appropriate online activity.
2 comments:
I would consider it such an invasion of privacy if my parents subscribed to this service. We have discussed the extent to which one can consider internet activity "private," but to have a company collecting my information and reporting back to my parents about every move I made would be highly disturbing. I believe that this sort of service enables helicopter parenting.
If it only reported red flags to parents and only children under a certain age could be monitored, it would be more palatable. After all, as you mentioned, a change of email address could completely bypass the system, and I would think that any teenager aware of their parents' actions would immediately do anything possible to avoid living under a microscope.
I agree with Roseanne that these sites encourage 'helicopter parenting'. As a recently-graduated-child alumni, I can vouch that the parent looking for me to misbehave got drastically less information about my life than did the parent that trusted me.
I feel that these sites are a Band-aid on a bigger problem. Parents need to TALK to their kids about everything and anything. Simply monitoring their activities only promotes more clandestine actions. If the child is motivated to use an incognito email address, then they will be prompted to actually do bad things. Intentionally making yourself invisible opens the door to many temptations.
Thus, I think these sites may do more harm than good. Just as the internet gives the citizens of China more power, so does it give a child more power. I think parents should realize this and deal with their children with respect. Knowing that they do so in an arena in which the child may very well have the upper hand.
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