| > Every class has a classmate, or sibling or friend of a classmate who would have the skills, and you only need one such kid for a few hundred people. You're discussing organised conspiracy, opsec across teenagers here, and a subject knowledge cover all sorts of different networks and devices across a single source unlikely for teenagers. Not to mention many hours of tech support. It's therotically possible, but in reality it's unlikely. > I would say teens shouldn't be supervised to this extent and pushback against such tight supervision is natural and IMO justified. You're right, my statement came across too absolutist. I'm not advocating for a prison level supervision program, but an awareness of what your child is doing online and who they're interacting with. There are also other elements that come down to parenting - building healthy and trusting relationships with your kids, giving them pathways to be able to talk to you about mistakes or things they're uncomfortable with, pushing for honesty as a core attribute, etc. A mixture of these things and a reasonable level of age appropriate supervision will remove this problem in all but the most extreme edge cases. However most parents don't do even the bare minimum - giving their kids phones, not bothering to learn how to set up restrictions, spending their time staring at their own devices, etc. The issue that is being attempted to solve here is a parenting one fundamentally, not a technology or government policy one. |
Alternatively, I'm discussing a tech savvy teen creating something that takes maybe an hour to setup and it spreading via word of mouth, which seems pretty likely.
I agree it makes sense to monitor internet activity to an extent, I just don't know to what extent. being able to look up the stuff I was able to look up in the 90s was incredibly useful to my development, even if it would not have been allowed. I might monitor, reluctantly and mainly for certain keywords, but mostly I would want to foster trust and responsibility.