Even Spider-Man knew it, since Peter Parker’s uncle Ben told him: With great power comes great responsibility. But when you’re a tech tyrant like me and a father, the temptation to abuse your powers is hard to resist.
Take, for example, the Piper surveillance cam I set up in my dining room. One night I turned on the motion-sensing alarm. As soon as anyone crossed its field of vision, the Piper would capture 25 seconds of video, sound a siren, and shine a spotlight in the perp’s face.
I had neglected, however, to tell any other members of my household about it. So, as my 15-year-old daughter entered the kitchen to grab a cup of coffee the next morning, the lamp snapped on and the siren began shrieking at 105 decibels. She nearly jumped out of her skin. Then she started shrieking.
“OMG, what is wrong with you?” she wailed as I struggled to find the Off button on the iPad app. She said some other things too, which I won’t repeat here (but are captured on video if anyone’s interested).
My 17-year-old, who managed to sleep through the entire event, was much more low-key. Later, when he asked me what I was working on, I showed him the Piper. He simply shook his head. “You are such a control freak,” he said.
Spooks R UsIn a modern family, we have surveillance tools in our arsenal that our parents could only dream about. I’d even wager that the intelligence agencies of some third-world nations would envy the stuff in our house.
Like the NSA, we deploy this gear mostly in the interest of “national security” (insert your own definition here). For example, all of our external doors and windows are connected via a Vivint home security system. Nobody in our house carries keys anymore; instead, we open the WiFi-connected door locks with our own numerical codes. I get alerts to my phone when doors and windows are opened. Checking Vivint’s website, I can see exactly who came or left, and when.
The Piper is just one of a handful of surveillance cams we have set up across the house. Its purpose is not to scare the pants off teenagers; it’s for chasing off intruders. But this surveillance gear also doubles as a wickedly effective way to keep an eye on the kids.
In the old days, my parents used to hide in the dark so they could surprise my older sisters when they came straggling home at some ungodly hour of the night. Today there’s an app for that. We have the ability to know where our children are and what they’re doing 24/7, if we choose to.
Over the years we have installed various apps on their phones, likeLife 360 and Glympse, that let us look up their location with a few taps. Since my son began driving two years ago, we’ve had an Audiovox Car Connection dongle plugged into the onboard computer of our aging minivan. I get a text whenever he leaves or arrives home, and if I so choose I can trace his recent movements on a map. It works so well we’re thinking about trying a similar dingus in our other car when my daughter starts driving.
And when my wife and I are out of town, we can call up cams on our phones to see if a teen rave is raging in our household. (Or, if the kids have unplugged the cameras, whether it’s time for a unannounced visit from their grandmother.)
Like the old U.S.-Soviet arms negotiators, our philosophy is “Trust but verify.” It seems to be working; so far we’ve managed to avoid any nuclear confrontations.
As easy as KGBBut all of this raises difficult questions about where responsible parenting ends and irresponsible spying begins. Our teens have made it clear they aren’t exactly crazy about having Big Father and Big Mother intrude on their lives, especially as they develop into proto-adults.
In our defense, we’ve been very up front about what this technology can do and how we use it. (See “How to Monitor Your Kids Without Turning into the NSA.”) We explained that the reason we spend an insane amount of money on mobile phones every month is not so they can watch YouTube in bed at 3 a.m. or maintain 27 simultaneous texting conversations; it’s so we can reach them when we need them, and vice versa. (So, in other words, please keep your phones charged, dammit.)
When my son began driving, this technology offered all of us peace of mind; we were able to know that he got where he was going, and he knew if he ran out of both gas and phone battery (because he’d forgotten to charge it) that we’d be able to locate him.
And there are clear limits. We would never dream of putting cams in their private spaces, for example. Believe me, the last thing you want to see is a close-up view of a teenager’s bedroom. One cam is trained on the homework station in the dining room, another on the family room, and both give us a view of anyone entering or leaving the premises.
I, spy?Still, the decision whether to track your loved ones is not an easy one. Are the online threats to kids often exaggerated? Yes, usually by companies selling this technology. But nobody wants his son or daughter to be the poster child in an Internet horror story.
Did we all manage to survive to adulthood without these tools? Yes, we did. But this is a different world than the one we grew up in, one where strangers can reach across time zones to get to your kids, and childish mistakes may be enshrined forever on the Web.
Can this technology be abused? Absolutely — and not just to play a harmless little prank. (Though I think my daughter has finally forgiven me for that one.)
But I believe the positives ultimately outweigh the negatives. Technology has enabled us to give our kids a longer leash at an earlier age, to allow them more autonomy, not less. It has helped us guide them, at a distance, toward making smarter choices. Hopefully it will also allow us to stay in touch with them when they get older and leave the nest. Assuming, of course, that they’re still speaking to us.
Questions, complaints, kudos? Email Dan Tynan atModFamily1@yahoo.com.
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