Adventures in SF Parenting: The Cell Phone Dilemma
Parents are continuously struggling to keep up with the technology that their children are using. We’re rather like the federal government in that our policies are often decades behind the technological curve (hence the NSA communications debacle). As such, we tend to treat things like cell phones the same way we would, say, a personal diary. If we’re the type of parent who fundamentally doesn’t trust how our children will interact with the world, then we are perfectly willing to violate trust by reading a diary, right? So, therefore, we should also be able to monitor text messages and other interactions that our children might have using their cell phones. Here’s the thing though… We’ve spent decades letting our teenagers talk on the phone without listening in on the other line or hovering over their shoulder, haven’t we? The only difference between a phone call and a text message is that the latter makes it EASIER for us to keep tabs on our children. However, I’ve always been uncomfortable with what these actions (reading texts, instant messages, facebook conversations, reading diaries, etc) teach our children. Particularly given broader questions of privacy in modern society.
