When the mutual bond of trust between parent and child is tested, it can cause even the most stable child in this relationship to feel betrayed and fearful if they do not have confidence in their parent. With the presence of modern technology, there has never been a greater need before for parents to educate their children to be aware of the dangers of the Internet.
The Internet is a vast collection of knowledge, resourceful to anyone who accesses it. But easy accessibility to any resource can make anyone feel too adjusted to using it without exercising precaution. Parents today can put spyware on their children's computers in order to monitor their Internet usage and activities. But at what point should parents engage in the usage
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Is it considered a breach in secrecy and a fault in trust if parents monitor their children's activity? On the other hand, critics believe that a child has to exposed to the matter, as parents will not be always there to help their child so children have to be knowledgeable about what's out there. As evidenced by how monitoring children's activities can limit their development by being too protective and how it adds to the existing fear of already being watched all the time, parents should not monitor their children's online activities.
Furthermore, monitoring a child's activities can be too protective, for being too protective can have an effect on the child's development. There is "a line between being a caring and involved parent and a hovering 'helicopter' parent" (Source D). Parents should be watchful of their child and not a weight that holds them down. Their presence can limit a child's development - socially and physically. Juveniles will always need a parent, a ray of hope in the time of need, to anchor them down; but when
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If adolescents can be exposed to more Internet usage, the usage will bring to light the proper etiquette. Therefore, children can uncover what to do and what not to do when browsing online for themselves. Although critics do not say so directly, they apparently assume that "...children should have no expectation of privacy"
(Source C). However, critics are incorrect in this assumption as "...young people whose parents hovered too much reported significantly lower psychological well being, used more medication for anxiety and depression and abused pain pills" (Source D). The assumption that all children shouldn't have privacy is unsound since children have to grow up sometime, they can't have a parent at their sides constantly. Parents can't be there to watch their every move and see if they do something wrong. If parents can't teach their child how to function independently without them, there is a greater risk. Children can't be sheltered forever because they will be less physiologically well with a parent endlessly there watching them. Thus, it is too overprotective if parents monitor their children all the time.
Besides making the parent seem too protective,
Internet is advancing every day, parents have no idea what their kids are doing in cyberspace and are contemplating the idea of spyware. In the article, “The Undercover Parent” by Harlan Coben, he argues the idea of parents putting spyware on kids’ computer is a good idea to keep the child safe. Many American parents have no idea what happens in cyberspace; sex, bullying, and drugs. Parents are torn between protecting their child with spyware and allowing the child to have privacy. Coben uses his friends’ personal experiences to support his argument without leaving room for counterarguments. By using strong emotional appeals, weak qualifiers, and sugary word choice Coben creates a weak argument that lacks persuasion.
There are, after-all, ways to be an effective, inspiring, and supporting parent without spying on the child’s every online
The expansion of the Internet infrastructure across the world, has brought an increased audience. Which has provided expanded markets for businesses and exploited new opportunities. There are virtually countless social sites and media used by individuals to access and share experiences , content, insights, and perspectives. Parents today tend to believe they should spy on their kids online activity. I argue parents should respect the privacy of a child's social life and his/her internet activity.
Lily Huang author of Protect the Willfully Ignorant states “An increasingly urgent question of privacy or how best to keep your public plot walled in” (474). Most internet users savvy or not, are aware of the potential risks. Most people know the potential risk for permanency and of the pictures or information we put out on social networks or other sites and the content being seen. We have all heard the warnings since grammar school from everyone about the internet and how to use it. Teachers, parents, librarians and school inundate our children all throughout school about information on safe usage. To be aware of predators and such is common knowledge. Why the need for laws to protect childrens’ privacy, and usage against exploitation? Similar reasons to why we wear seatbelts while driving and it is enforced by law. We all want our freedoms not to be infringed but at what cost and to who? We are aware of the statistics and outcomes of auto accidents without seatbelts and the need “to protect the willfully ignorant” (Huang). Lily Huang discussed consumer’s lack of expertise for making the best privacy decisions and how important default privacy settings are on social networks (475).
A news article called The Undercover Parent by Harlan Coben published in March 16, 2008 as a persuasive editorial where Coben argues how parents using spyware to spy on their kid’s internet history and how sometimes it might go too far. The author starts developing his argument by giving an anecdote of how one of his friends put spyware on their kid’s computer, and later on during the article Coben claims how parents can check up on their kids to see if they’re being cyber bullied or doing something inappropriate but shouldn’t cross the line of looking at their social status. Coben persuades other parents to get spyware to monitor their child’s behavior on the internet in order to make sure their parent know what
Kids now want to be more independent and have more freedom which might scare some if not most parents. A lot of parents look at the internet as a dangerous tool and not a tool where their kids can have some freedom. Although parents need to realize that they can’t protect their kids from all ...
Online predators, pornography, drug trafficking, piracy, and hate sites are just some of the dangers that a child can face on the internet. The article “The Undercover Parent” by Harlan Coben states that parents should use spyware to monitor their children. Coben argues that parents should be able to know what is in their children’s lives. he believes that spyware can prevent children from being targeted by internet predators on social networking sites and even prevent children from being cyber bullied. I agree with Coben’s claim that parents should consider using spyware as a protection for their teens online. There are many possible dangers facing children on the internet and it is essential that parents install spyware.
In the article “Undercover Parent” by Harlan Coben, written March 16th 2008 in the New York Times, Coben states parents should consider putting spyware in their children’s computers and monitoring what their teens are doing on the internet. What is spyware may you ask? Spyware is a software that can be installed on a computer to watch every keystroke someone may make. This allows parents to watch every snapchat, tweet, Instagram post and every conversation your teen ever has over the internet.
These parents might monitor their child’s activity online or constantly check their child’s texts. By doing this, they can really scare off their teenagers from talking to them, and make them anxious. They would constantly wonder if their parents were looking over their shoulder, watching everything they did. This would put a lot of emotional pressure on these teenagers, who are already dealing with lots of emotions through hormones and puberty changes. The children would begin to look for new ways to keep their life private from their parents, which can lead to things such as creating fake accounts to hide their activity online. This might lead to the children keeping more and more secrets from their parents, which, if revealed to said parents, can cause more problems in the relationship between parent and
¨The Undercover Parent¨ by Harlan Coben, published in an online newspaper ¨New York Times¨ (16 March 2008), claims that the Internet is dangerous for kids. Harlan Coben explains how spyware could be a resource that keeps track of our kids’ internet use, but how it could also invade sons’ and daughters’ privacy. He also claims that parents should have conversations about their concerns with teens, and let them know spyware is a possibility. In my opinion, I quite agree and do not agree with the most of it.
However, sensitive information that may be shared might later embarrass the children as they grow older and realize what is available on the internet. Such events may result in resentment and misunderstandings on both the children and the parents’ sides. According to Steinberg (2017) in “Sharenting: Children’s Privacy in the Age of Social Media,” there have been long-term issues and conflicts regarding parental sharing and whether children have the right to control what is shared about them. Another long-term problem raised by parental sharing is the idea of data collecting. Per “Children’s Privacy in the Big Data Era: Research Opportunities,” “These trends raise serious concerns about digital dossiers that could follow young people into adulthood, affecting their access to education, employment, healthcare, and financial services. Although US privacy law provides some safeguards for children younger than 13 years old online, adolescents are afforded no such protections” (Montgomery, Chester, & Milosevic, 2017, p.
“Parents play an important role in the psychosocial development and well-being of their children” (van den Eijnden). Undeniably, the quote makes a bold declaration that all parents in today’s technologically advanced society should understand and follow. With 90% of teenagers between the ages of 12 and 15 using the internet (Sorbring), it is important for an adult to monitor their daily usage and behavior. “Only 39 percent of parents report using parental controls for blocking, filtering, or monitoring their teenager’s online activities” (Dell’anotnia). Parents should monitor their teenagers’ daily internet use and behavior by engaging in meaningful conversations and dialogue that allow for fostering a healthy relationship.
Many children have access to the internet and are able to search up anything on Google. As with any type of media, there are positive effects and negative effects. Some of the negative effects of the internet for children are that ,since, children and adolescents are more or less technologically savvy than their parents, they are able to search about just about anything and and talk to just about anyone on the internet, this can lead to some very dangerous situations. According to the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, “89% of adolescents report using a computer, 61% report “surfing the net,” and 14% report seeing something that they do not want their parents to know about.” (Villani, 2001) 14% of adolescents reported seeing something that they did not want their parents to know about, this shows how unsupervised the internet is and shows how the internet can lead adolescents to become secretive and , maybe, even violent. Again, this leads to deviant behavior that the child learned from the internet. In addition, according to the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, “... a profile of the recent school killers, noted that almost all were computer-savvy and frequented sites where they could obtain violent, anarchist-oriented material.” (Villani, 2001) This shows that websites that have violent material on the
Internet has become a new equipment to improve violence and disobedience. Teenagers can have easy access to the pornography sites or adult’s chartrooms. As a matter of fact recent researches has shown that Despite the potential negative effects on children using the Internet, more than 30% of surveyed parents had not discussed the downside of Internet use with their children (Internet Advisory Board, 2001), and 62% of parents of teenagers did not realize that their children had visited inappropriate Web sites (Yankelovich Partner...
Internet is a network that virtually connects computers around the world. It has an address network which makes communication possible between the computers. It is an open phone line and an open television channel to millions of people around the world who can communicate anonymously (Palmer, 2006). People use it to exchange files and e-mails, to surf the World Wide Web, to download songs or other types of files, to take part of discussion boards, and to send instant messages. It can be beneficial when it comes to freedom of press, and less disintermediation between people (Palmer, 2006). It can also be of assistance when it comes to doing some kind of research, finding some specific information about any topic, or even getting an undergraduate or a postgraduate degree when it comes to busy people who want to expand their horizons. However, internet has many risks in contrast to its benefits and it should not be used by children without adult supervision and parental control.