this post was submitted on 07 Dec 2023
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Privacy
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Y'see, back in the day parents were not technically literate because the world was mid-societal shift. "Protect the children" (because parents are unable to) had some justification.
Today, basic computer literacy is a survival skill in the UK. The level of literacy needed to track your own kid is not that high (or expensive to rent).
If you are letting kids use tech you don't understand, and are not willing to invest the time/money to track yourself, that's a you problem. It shouldn't become a me problem.
As for "yeah but what about smart kids", I've got some bad news for you. They will always find a way around ANYTHING you set up.
I really feel very uncomfortable with the notion of tracking the kids anyway. Arming them with knowledge as best as possible, and as usual showing interest in their behaviour to try and look as best as possible for signs of problems but ultimately kids are still people with their own lives even if people in development. Yes you need to protect them, to a certain extent, but ultimately some of this is no business but their own. You can try to educate and forewarn and hope some of it sticks but the tendency from my memory of being a kid is that that tends to be met with an eye-roll, this is probably where the temptation comes from to track children or drastically restrict the choices they're able to make so they can't ignore you but this is hardly a great way for that person in development to ultimately... develop.
This is dicey though, not least because as yet another random person on the internet offering their unsolicited opinion, I don't even have kids, and if you follow my logic to extremis, you basically have, "let the kids just figure it out on their own they'll be fine" which definitely won't apply to everything and can have disastrous consequences in some contexts. But nevertheless I think this concept of tracking, either covertly, or overtly with the intention of making a kind of panopticon effect for the kids, is likely ineffective but even if effective, is indicative of something going wrong with the intent of the surveillance.
It's a tricky one because of the nature of the net. Let's say we have three kids: Timmy, Jimmy and Harry.
Timmy starts looking up "tits", because Timmy loves titties. He's curious, and you probably want to have a talk about acting and how porn isn't reality.
Jimmy, well, Jimmy saw a videogame character tied up and it made him feel good, so he starts looking for that online. He's about to explore the BDSM scene. He's going to need the "safe sane consensual" talk, otherwise his explorations might get him, or someone else, hurt. He'll need more of a talk than Timmy!
Harry loves hentai; he found some when looking for pictures of his favourite cartoon character. Harry is going to need a long talk about fantasy Vs reality, otherwise he's going to disappoint a lot of women! Wait a moment, most of the things he's looking at involve animals and women... Might be time to get some therapy!
In all three of these cases a different style and level of parental intervention was required. You watch your kids because they're kids, and kids are experts at getting themselves (and others) hurt. Parents need to watch their kids because it's their job to intervene, and to decide the method of intervention.
However, we've not gone over the case of Lizzy, a girl cursed with religious fundamentalist parents. When they find out she's more interested in girls than boys, she'll be subjected to inhumane treatment to "fix" her. So there is a grey area here - not all parents should be parents.