Technology Lets Parents Track Kids Argumentative Essay

Communication is key. With new technology, comes new audiences using that technology. This includes children learning the ins and outs of new media. However, what seemed like outstanding and motivating advancements, came to the controversy surrounding whether or not parents should be allowed to use technology to surveil their kids. Parents should only be allowed to surveil their kids under certain circumstances.

First and foremost, when a child misbehaves, the immediate reaction of a parent should not be to spy on their every move. In Tovia Smith’s article, “Technology Lets Parents Track Kids’ Every Move,” we meet Mark Pawlick, who had consistently been having issues with getting his daughter, Jessica, out of trouble. From what Pawlick thinks

This further leads to Jessica feeling upset for not knowing this device was tracking her (Smith). What seemed like an intelligent move on Pawlick’s behalf, ended up being a great breaking of trust on both ends, resulting in unhappy parties. Parents should not feel as if their only solution to an outlandish behavior is to surveil their kids. If their kids are constantly misbehaving, they should communicate with them and figure out what they can do to gain back the trust of everyone involved. Furthermore, on the topic of breaking trust, Eliene Augenbraun states in their article, “Should parents snoop on their kids online,” that intruding on children’s conversations and other cellular device usage sets up a “parents versus kid situation,” where the children are the ones inferior in the relationship and the parents are the superior. A relationship between a parent and child is meant to be a close-knit one, where both parties are trusting of each other in order to build a greater and stronger connection. However, snooping through a

Everyone has a right to have their own private conversations and to not share everything with those who are deemed as “superior”. According to Dr. Damour in “Consequences of Parents Snooping on their Teens Online,” all teenagers want privacy, but it doesn’t necessarily mean they are hiding anything. Teenagers share more information with a parent “who they feel accept them and trust them” (Damour). The more that bond of trust gets built, the more information can be revealed. Also, simply asking questions and starting conversations between a parent and child will further push this bond creating. Moreover, snooping through the conversations of children will lead to snooping through other people’s conversations, which is extremely violating. Although parents do have a right to monitor their teenager’s conversations, it “does not extend to the right to spy on other people’s kids” (Damour). There are legal issues that could potentially happen due to the other child’s parents possibly not consenting to the surveillance of their child’s conversations. From that, consequences may happen and lines would be crossed between many different parties. Overall, snooping through the conversations of teenagers, regardless of legal connotations, it is an utmost invasion of