You Can Track Your Kids. But Should You?

Debaters

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  It’s Modern Parental Involvement

  Betsy Landers, National Parent-Teacher Association
  One cannot compare reading a child’s journal to accessing his or her conversations online. The Internet is a different paradigm.
• 

  Surveillance Shouldn’t Replace Digital Literacy

  Emma Llanso, Center for Democracy and Technology
  Parents using monitoring tools should tell their children what they're doing and discuss with them the reasons behind the surveillance.
• 

  Safety Trumps Privacy

  Lamar and Ronnie Tyler, bloggers, Black and Married With Kids
  We must guide our children and protect them from all kinds of danger, including the dangers that exist online.
• 

  Kids Respond to Dialogue, Not Snooping

  Lynn Schofield Clark, professor of media, film and journalism studies
  If children interpret monitoring as a sign of parental mistrust, they’re more likely to circumvent the monitoring.
• 

  It’s O.K. to Pry, Especially When They’re Young

  Ellis Cose, author, "The End of Anger"
  But the only real answer to protecting children from harmful Internet content is to enlist their help in monitoring themselves.

Introduction

Erik S. Lesser for The New York Times

When social networking apps enable rapists to prey on children, and bullying becomes more commonplace on Facebook, it’s understandable that parents want to know who their children are talking to online. Cue the software developers.

According to a recent Times article, companies are marketing “new tools to track where children go online, who they meet there and what they do.”

When does monitoring your children through technology cross the line into invasion of privacy? And if that line is crossed, is it excusable?

Read the Discussion »