Parents Spying on Teens Goes High Tech – how parents are tracking teens online. I already find myself wondering about how I’ll handle certain situations when my kids are deep in their teen years. Though I never encountered it personally, teen surveillance when I was kid meant a mom fishing under her teenage son’s bed for a Playboy magazine or gently picking the lock of a teenage daughter’s diary. Technology has changed and so have the worries. Technology has also given parents high-tech ways to monitor their teens behavior. But, how much surveillance is too much? Parents spying on teens has gone high tech.
Parents Spying on Teens Goes High Tech
Online safety hazards for teens are everywhere and there’s a lot to be concerend with. Cyberbullying, online gaming addiction, porn, chat rooms, social media stalkers… When you think you’ve finally got it down, something new pops up that can bring along more potential for online hazards for kids and teens.
There’s a company with a product called Big Kid SecureDrive. The Big Kid SecureDrive is a flash drive containing an entire operating system that has an online content filter. It also has parental controls and requires nothing to install (you just plug it in, reboot your computer and it kicks in). Big Kid SecureDrive is essentially a way to remotely monitor EVERY aspect of your teenagers online experience. In old-fashioned terms, it’s like getting your teen daughter’s diary e-mailed to you after every diary entry.
Many parents are also aware of high-tech ways to monitor you child or teen’s life outside of the house. Cell phone plans that let you monitor texts, GPS-like aps that let you know where your teen is via phone or computer and more. If parents want, they can basically track a teenager like a scientist can track an Alaskan Brown Bear in the wildnerness via cell phone tracking apps. Things have changed a lot in the past 20 years.
I’m sure we’ve all encountered the effects of a teen that maybe made a poor choice in life that we wish we knew about in advance to prevent it from happening via parents spying on teens. We’ve probably also witnessed the other end of the spectrum with parents barely letting their teenage son or daughter out of the house to experience life.
The choice of what or how much to monitor a teen’s behavior is a decision every parent must face eventually. The use of high-tech gadgets to spy on teens online or elsewhere are out there and you can survey as much of a teen’s life you could ever want. You you can simply do nothing and leave everything to trust or you can try to find that delicate balance of parenting and intuition to guide the way with your teenager.
How far is too far? What’s your take on parents spying on teens?
