Reading this article brought me to a few conclusions about my child raising philosophy and/or ethical quandaries therein:
- Kids need some level of privacy.
- There is no guaranteed long-term/permanent privacy on the internet. All things have the potential to leak.
- Just like I don’t want to let my kids run around willy nilly in meatspace without having a general idea of where they are, I want to have a general idea of where my children are when they’re online.
- Keeping track of childrens’ online doings may be ultimately impossible, even using unethical/draconian processes.
- The idea of snooping on my kids’ online activities without their knowledge is not appealing to me.
- What is or is not “online” is changing daily. Smartphones and tablets may only have a few more years before the technology landscape shifts to favor something we’ve never seen before. (The iPad was released in 2010. Think about that. Three years to tablet domination. THREE YEARS. )