Monitoring vs. Trust OR Monitoring = Trust
I was reading a very excellent NY Times article by Alina Tugend this weekend. It’s a pretty standard –but also very good— look at keeping kids safe online.
Unfortunately, we were left out. 
But that wasn’t my biggest irk…
One of the interviewees, Amanda Lenhart, a senior research specialist who oversaw the coming report entitled the Pew Internet and American Life Project, said that monitoring “certainly changes the climate of trust in the household, although a lot of parents do it when there are a lot of problems and they’re trying to keep their children safe.”
Being triggered by this, Tugend added, “monitoring — or let us call it what it is, spying — seems far more repellent. But my oldest is just coming up to the teen years; when I hear parents of teenagers talking about MySpace and blogs and instant messaging, I want to bypass the monitoring software altogether and just toss the computer out the window.”
The article continues to say thus:
“The problem with snooping on your child, as Lawrence Balter, professor of applied psychology at New York University said, is: “How do they develop common sense if someone is breathing down their neck? Then they spend all their time trying to evade you.”
While none of these statements vehemently oppose monitoring and toss the idea out, they do raise a question: do monitoring and trust work at opposite ends of the spectrum – or do they go hand in hand?
The answer is simple to state, but complex to practice: it’s all up to the parents.
Just as is the case with taking control of the Internet in your home and protecting your kids, trust is 100% up to the parents. If you don’t let your kids know and feel they are being trusted, they won’t trust you… that will spiral downwards in to real crappy territory.
So how do you let your kids feel comfortable, well, I am not a parenting expert, but what my parents did worked: they trusted me.
Granted there was no internet (and we only had an old MAC Plus), but the same rules applied for staying out late with friends and going to hang outs and parties in high school. My parents trusted me, I felt trusted – so I didn’t do anything to destroy that trust.
Pandora Corp. has ALWAYS advised that parents talk to their kids and explain why they are monitoring the computer. By being open with your kids, they should understand that you are doing it to prevent any harm from coming to them.
NOW, in the real world, there are instances where spying may be appropriate. We recognize that as well… Whether it be a complete lack of trust to begin with, or a misguided/problem teen, there will be cases where monitoring secretly will work to the family’s advantage. The bottom line is that the safety of the entire family should come first.
That is why we say it is 100% up to the parents to place trust and monitoring in the same side… and not at opposite ends of the spectrum.
What do you think?
