It is impossible to resist the temptation to snoop on your child when he has left Facebook open on your computer. Once the moment of confusion subsides, and you realise the world has not gone mad, what harm could possibly come from peeking, ever so briefly, down the the rabbit hole of Teenage Wonderland? I’ve done it, and I’ve not felt guilty about it. A little bewildered maybe, but not guilty.
That is a far cry from the actions of GigaOm writer Mathew Ingram, who made the rather startling confession recently that he actively spied on two of his three teenage daughters online, including secretly using keystroke-logging software to monitor what they typed while messaging their friends.
Had NSA-grade surveillance technology been available to him, he would have used it, Ingram writes. He did eventually let his daughters know that he was watching them online, but never explained the full extent of it at the time. In confessing his actions, Ingram has some misgivings and guilt. Governments and Google have admitted that they don’t respect privacy. Should parents?
The argument that privacy doesn’t exist online is perhaps truer now than ever, and ultimately that is what children need to learn. Ingram’s daughter admits that her father’s actions led her to be more careful about what she posted online. “It became something of a Panopticon surveillance phenomenon: by not knowing when my dad was watching, I policed my own behaviour and came to better understand what was good or bad, and why, ” Meaghan Ingram writes.
It’s certainly not a consideration generations before this one had to deal with. There’s no equating what we wrote in diaries to posting information online, even with privacy settings locked down.
We (parents and children) are learning as we go, but there are some basic rules which haven’t changed. Children will be children, and parents will be parents – which translates to “give us the opportunity and we will push boundaries” and “give us an opportunity and we will push back.”
Actively snooping on children goes much further. Being aware of what your children are doing online is something we shouldn’t shirk, but stalking them not only betrays their trust, it’s a way of avoiding awkward discussions about difficult topics. Sneaking around online is no substitute for having those conversations.
Anyone who’s had the displeasure of talking about graphic porn Google searches with their son can attest that it’s no less uncomfortable being the parent than it is being the child on the receiving end of the lecture. More to the point, parents shouldn’t wait to find evidence of potentially problematic activities or behaviours before raising the issues with their children.
Ingram points out he found that his eldest daughter had experimented with smoking pot at a party at aged 13. Without telling her how they knew, he and his wife had a chat about it with her. It doesn't justify their actions, they should be having that discussion anyway, and of course discoveries can be more serious like thoughts of self-harm.
Likewise, a commenter on Metafilter discovered her son was having suicidal thoughts only through snooping. Her reflection was revealing:
He is online seeking a safe place to talk, which he seems to have found. It doesn't include me. That's an issue we need to work on. Not by shutting off all safe places for him, but by making me one of them.
The first time I read my son’s Facebook was pretty uneventful, and I’ll admit to being relieved that the greatest drama in his life at that time was the performance of his football team. No harm done, I thought.
It was the next time I found a chat open on my laptop that I was a little more concerned. “Dont tell any1 what happened!!! Ok!?” His grammar aside, it took some restraint not to corner him in his bedroom and hysterically demand to know what the hell was going on.
I resolved to tell him that he’d left Facebook open on my computer and that if I found it open I was likely to read things. And I had. That’s been the understanding we’ve had since then, but I make a point of letting him know what I’ve read (when he leaves it open) and offering my not-asked-for-opinion on things. If I’ve seen things it’s important to me that he knows (including how I know) and understands my cause for concern. This is parenting. Secret surveillance is not.
Our children are growing up in a world that has established they can be spied on by governments, Google and social media. Their homes are the last battle line away from the eyes of Big Brother. So do we really want to deprive them of any notion of privacy? And within that tiny privilege, the freedom to express themselves in the way that children always have?
After years of snooping on his daughters online, Ingram came to a similar conclusion.
