Spying on the Text Generation
Source: Boston Globe (Original Article)
Spying on the Text Generation
When it comes to watching over their tech-obsessed teenagers, parents are learning the dangers of too much information.
(Photographs by Josh Campbell)
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By
Neil Swidey
June 8, 2008
One mom does her best surveillance work in the laundry room.Her teenage son has the habit of leaving his cellphone in the pocket of his jeans, so in between sorting colors and whites, she’ll grab his phone and furtively scroll through his text messages from the past week to see what he’s said, whom he’s connected with, and where he’s been. Sometimes, she’ll use her own phone to call another mom she’s friendly with and share her findings in hushed tones.Effective detective work? Absolutely. Effective parenting? That’s less clear.If her sleuthing prevents her son from engaging in unacceptably risky behavior, then it will likely have been worthwhile. But her own actions are not without serious risk. How can she act on her insider information without revealing the way she gleaned it? How violated would her son feel if he walked in on her in the laundry room, mid-scroll? And, more subtly but just as important, how can she not think less of her son after seeing in intimate detail this blow-by-blow accounting of the messy teenage experience that previous generations of parents viewed only from a safe, soft-focus distance?Then again, the other extreme on the parenting spectrum - providing zero oversight and cheerily hoping for the best - is probably just as risky.In manifold ways, technology makes life easier for parents - from improving the efficiency of after-school pickups to offering the ability to check in with our kids at virtually any moment. But technology also makes life a whole lot more complicated. It’s part of our kids’ consciousness from even before they can talk. As they get older, the gap between their fluency with it and ours widens, and St George Vertigo MasterCard they’re exposed to much more adult …continue reading