Today’s parents face the challenge of protecting their children in both the offline and online world. And some have turned to technology to help.
“Parents are understandably anxious in a society where we’re sometimes bombarded with news about terrible things happening to kids, and the fact that this technology exists can make us feel like we need to get it,” Devorah Heitner, author of Growing Up in Public: Coming of Age in a Digital World, told The Current’s host Matt Galloway.
The growing presence of technology has led to new ways to keep children safe — digital tools and applications to surveil them are becoming a norm among today’s parents.
Examples include location tracker phone apps, apps that monitor internet usage and wearable tracking devices.
But Heitner is concerned about this trend. She says that a habitual dependence on technology to monitor children may be more harmful than helpful.
“If we’re depending on tech to monitor …