It's an important stage that kids go through."
Part of how you find out who you are and what you're all about is by pushing away from your parents. "It's not allowing kids the independence and autonomy they will ultimately have when they leave home," she said.
The rule is, they can message only people they know personally.īut she would stop short of installing monitoring software. She periodically goes through their instant-message buddy list and asks them to explain who everyone is. "Just knowing that it's on there makes the kids toe the line."Īllen, who has two sons ages 13 and 15, understands the temptation to snoop. "I think parents are using it as a deterrent," Sellati said. Another program, eBlaster, can send e-mail transcripts of instant messages or Web site visits from a home computer to a remote site, for example, a parent's computer at work. in Vero Beach, which sells Spector Pro 5.0 for $99.95. But that's not always practical and doesn't do any good if kids spend time home alone, said Kasey Sellati, spokeswoman for SpectorSoft Corp. Parents are advised to keep computers in a public area in the home. "But they seem okay as long as I'm only looking for misuse, and I'm not scouring their e-mails and IM to find out every little secret." "One of my biggest fears was that my kids would view this as an invasion of their privacy, and, if misused, I'd tend to agree with them," he said. About once a month, he sits down with his 14-year-old son to glance over messages and the Web site log. His daughter's friends toned down the language they use in instant messaging after he nicely mentioned it. And, if you're not responsible in how you use it, you'll lose your privileges." I'll let you go to any site you want, but I'll be monitoring where you go. "I said it's a privilege to have access to a computer, and in order to keep that access, you have to use it responsibly. Though it can be used without the user's knowledge, Tracy told his kids he was installing it, something parenting experts advise.
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So Tracy switched to the popular monitoring software Spector Pro 5.0, which records e-mails, chats, instant messages, file swapping and Web sites. For example, his 14-year-old son complained when his favorite game site was blocked because a poster on the site contained an obscenity. But the software required constant tinkering. He first installed blocking software on his home computers to stop his four children, ages 3 to 14, from stumbling onto pornography or illegally swapping music.
Like many parents of surf-savvy children, Rob Tracy of Maplewood, Minn., has concerns about the Internet. If you use this technology, I think you use it with great caution and with constant re-evaluation." "But I can't see it working to achieve what parents really want, which is kids who will come to the parents when they need them. It's too dangerous out there.' So this technology is tempting," said Rose Allen, a parenting educator with the University of Minnesota Extension Service. "Parents tend to think, "I can't let you go. Do they present an updated twist on the old dilemma of whether to read a kid's diary or search his rooms for drugs? Or has a scarier world or the more intimate reach of today's technologies changed the privacy versus safety debate? One thing is sure, say parenting experts: Use spyware with care. Parenting experts and the public are still sorting out the implications of these capabilities.
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