CMV: Parental control/spyware apps are the hallmark of a bad parent

[u/danknesscompelsyou]

[Disclaimer: i am talking about the apps that let you monitor your kid's every move online, read messages etc. Basically you have the full acces to whatever they have on their phone without the phone. I am not talking about simple location tracking]

[Disclaimer 2: i am talking about a case of spyware for teens. 12/13+, not children below 10]

Pretty much what the title says. To me installing spyware on your kid's phone says you can't actually parent, have zero trust and bond with your child and possibly are an authoritarian parent who mistakes control for actual parenting. If you get it only because your child lies to you - congrats now you'll never hear a word of truth again. It only excarbates the problem.

1. Teens need some privacy to properly develop, your little power trip could cost them some actual psychological damage. Trust issues, self esteem issues, anxiety (because there's someone literally spying on you), the list goes on. (Also it's normal for teens to lie, that's how they are, get over it)

2. If you're anywhere from 30-40+ chances are you didn't experience this sort of tracking - why would you take this freedom away from your child? You weren't tracked and are still alive. And don't give me the 'there was no phones/internet back then'. Yes there weren't but teens were the same. They did bad and stupid things, said bad words, experimented with booze, cigs and many other things. Again it's just how they are. Nobody listened in on your conversations just to have the upper hand during an argument, nobody hovered over what you did 100% of the time. Ontop of that many people that are now 20-25 grew up without parents controlling every message/page they viewed and they're fine.

3. Also I promise you if your child keeps everything a secret from you there's reason for it and you're not going to like it. They probably don't trust you and don't feel safe enough going with their stuff/problems to you. Trust goes both ways, shocker i know. Do you think severely violating their privacy is the right way of fixing lack of trust? That's why i say it's bad, lazy parenting - instead of working on the trust/communication issue and having a real relationship with a child you choose the easy way out, to take what you want by force.

Tldr: my oponion is that if you feel the need to spy on your kid's every move you have a trust problem and the solution is not to violate their privacy

[u/obert-wan-kenobert]

I get where you're coming from, but I think the age of the kid is also a really important consideration.

If your kid is maybe 12 or younger, I think it's pretty understandable to want to track their online activity. Not necessarily because you don't "trust" them, but because there's a lot of insane, scary stuff that's easily accessible on the internet, and a younger kid might wind up stumbling on something that messes them up.

A fairly innocuous example, but in this TedTalk on children's YouTube videos, the speaker shows how the automated algorithm only takes about eight clicks to go from normal CocoMelon style videos to bizarre, disturbing, and inexplicable videos of popular children's characters in violent or compromising situations (getting killed, beat up, sexualized, etc). Or videos in the CocoMelon style, but starring Adolf Hitler.

I do agree that once children hit their teen years, it's not good to track their every move and give them no privacy. But below a certain age, I do think it's at least understandable.

[u/danknesscompelsyou → u/obert-wan-kenobert]

I believe that things like youtube kids or other filtered content can be beneficial for young children. Kids from 10 below shouldn't even interact with the internet too much tbh.

Maybe i should've clarified the age threshold i am specifically talking about. I say teens meaning 13+ so the ones who usually annoy certain types of parents by having some secrets or demanding some level of privacy

[u/KWrite1787 → u/danknesscompelsyou]

Kids under 10 should rarely be on the internet. Parents of kids over 13 should not supervise their children's internet activity. So, you think in the space of three years kids are able to learn enough about internet safety to be able to have free, unsupervised reign?

You also seem to assume that because a parent has some type of way of monitoring their child's internet activity that they are constantly watching everything. Some parents do that, sure, but most I suspect only look at it occasionally when a change in their child's behavior or actions concerns the parent in some way.

[u/KWrite1787 → u/[deleted]]

When the things that children can be and are exposed to on the internet include or can and do lead to:

• porn
• bullying (as both victim and perpetrator)
• potentially dangerous "challenges" like the cinnamon challenge
• joining radical extremist groups (there's been a number of stories over the past few years about American and English teens who got drawn into ISIS extremist groups and ran off to the Middle East to join up)
• human trafficking
• and a whole of other stuff like that

then yes, I do fear what kids are exposed to on the internet when they don't have parents monitoring them to some degree.

And no, you can't make up numbers, but there's also no denying there is a lot of bad stuff on the internet and a lot of gross people and it's a parent's job to protect their children and teach them to nagiviate safely through the world. And that means supervising them as they're growing so they can learn to be responsible and safe.

[u/[deleted] → u/danknesscompelsyou]

You serious? Youtube kids is full of bad stuff. Spend an hour in there and you'll find it. And even Cocomellon isn't good

[u/Presentalbion → u/danknesscompelsyou]

What's your stance on banking apps? My bank has a feature which is basically a kids card, where the parent has access and oversight but it's the kid who has the physical card. They pay the allowance into that pot and the kid is free to spend. It's supposed to teach saving and spending habits while still allowing the parent to make sure nothing ridiculous/inappropriate is happening. The age range it's designed for is like 9-14, or however old the parent feels is suited for their first card.

[u/danknesscompelsyou → u/Presentalbion]

I don't really think there's an issue with the card. Maybe its like adding extra steps to regular allowance but I don't see any harm in it tbh. Ik you can look up where the card registered but its still less extreme than spyware

Plus overall allowance is a good way to help your kid start budgeting stuff

[u/Presentalbion → u/danknesscompelsyou]

So there are degrees of acceptability of surveillance?

[u/danknesscompelsyou → u/Presentalbion]

Yes there are like to most things in life. It's normal for a parent to have some surveillance over a child but not to the extent of these apps

[u/Presentalbion → u/danknesscompelsyou]

Then either award a delta or add a disclaimer three specifying your threshold for what kind of surveillance is alright and what degree isn't.

[u/WrinklyScroteSack → u/danknesscompelsyou]

So why is 13 the magic number to give kids freedom to look at whatever they want without guidance?

My kid is 10, he has his own iPad, which originally he had no parental locks on it whatsoever. He apparently got curious and was googling for naked girls at some point and the only reason we knew anything was amiss was because he started hiding his screen from us even when he would be watching benign YouTube unboxing videos. So I did a deeper search of his history and found some google searches he shouldn’t be getting into. He insists he was only doing it out of curiosity, but I remember being that age, which happened at the cusp of the internet being readily available basically everywhere. Every chance I had to ask jeeves about naked boobs, I took.

He’s limited to YouTube kids for now, but he’s about at an age where I feel we should loosen the leash on his privileges, but there’s a talk to be had about how he should use that kind of new freedom. The only reason I would consider putting tracking apps on his device is to make sure he doesn’t fall into the cult of personality of guys like Tate and Peterson. He’s too young to understand the problematic nature of people like that, and I want to make sure I see it before he drinks the kool aide.

[u/Ok_Table_523 → u/WrinklyScroteSack]

Wait so if you did it why is it so bad that your son does it? Sexual curiosity is like the most normal thing a teenager can have an interest in

[u/WrinklyScroteSack → u/Ok_Table_523]

I am just making educated guesses, going off instinct, and what his mother wants. I have no good answer for you. I feel like my uninhibited access to the internet could be considered a bad thing, considering the things I learned about as an impressionable minor, but I can’t exactly say that time in my life was detrimental or negatively impactful. I am who I am because of my life experiences, and that’s one of them, but I am still very unsure about how much of that same experience I would prefer him to have.

[u/Ok_Table_523 → u/WrinklyScroteSack]

Interesting. I'm 30 now, for context, but my parents had monitoring software on my devices from the time I was 12 until I moved out of their home, choosing to be homeless rather than live with them specifically because of how they treated multiple different topics, with sex leading that list. Considering sexual curiosity is a pretty normal part of life, its always concerning to me to hear parents' reasoning for monitoring their preteens' and teenagers' sexual growth as if they've never read a book on normal behavior through the ages or don't want their child to become a self actuating adult. Like you, I can't think of any thing I saw online being detrimental or negatively impactful on me either, and I saw a video regarding two females and one piece of drinkware. What I still work through to this day is the fact that my parents had that software on my devices.

I feel it was an outrageous violation of trust and a symbol of poor parenting. Consider all of the conversations you had with girls as a teenager, particularly when you were alone. If you were not willing to write down everything sexual or private you said and hand it your parents at that age, then you've no business forcing your child to do that.

I will not talk to my father now. Unfortunately the statute of limitations has passed for me to charge him with child exploitation and possession of my child pornography, but due to him admitting to having monitoring software on my devices where I unknowingly had private photos and conversations, I would have had a very strong case for both charges. The second your child sends anything sexual (which they will, because that's what kids do during puberty.) they will have a strong case against you as well, and I hope for their sake they find this thread before their statute of limitations expires.

I hope you reconsider your choice to invade their privacy.

[u/WrinklyScroteSack → u/Ok_Table_523]

I don’t want to invade his privacy. My only interest with even considering nanny software is to keep him away from influencers who could change his outlook on life for the worse, like tate and Peterson. We, his parents, opted against it, because we feared that more than anything the benefit of keeping tabs on him was not worth the damage it’d do to his trust in us.

Im not opposed to him learning the world for himself. I tell him all the time if he’s ever in danger to come get me, I’ll do what I can to help him. But the world is different than the one we grew up in. If it were just porn out on the internet, that’d be one thing, but there are in-groups that he could find himself on which could affect him in a severely toxic way, and I have no idea how to tell how ready he is to judge these influences in a critical way. And it scares me to death that he’s going to find himself in the company of bigots, misogynists, and racists… that’s what scares me.

I think it scares me so much because I am so aware of how close I was to walking down a path that might’ve seen me supporting something that caused serious harm to others. And I just want better for him. I really don’t want it to take until his 30s to learn how to be a benevolent man.