alt Hacker NewsWhat Constant Surveillance Is Doing to Children
Comments
Kids now teens. We never had a tv. Only let them watch dvd on laptop. Never allowed them on tiktok. Never gave them surveillance watches (kiddyzoom). I also did not have whatsapp, or even carried my phone half of the time.
They hated us for it. Other parents called us crazy. “They should learn how to handle social media!” And now their kids are unmanageable and ours thank us for shielding them.
There was a time when I liked having intricate data about things because it was interesting for me to learn about my own world. That rosy-eyed picture was polluted by surveillance capitalism, and it's gotten to the point where I'd often rather write things down on paper or in a markdown or yaml doc rather than use an tracker app, just because I know that my own hand-written data isn't one profile in a global data set used to squeeze value out of me.
Also, after reading the free part of the article, I propose the word "pramopticon".
the article doesn't actually state what it is doing to children?
My larger concern is that this constant surveillance is actually making children better prepared for the world they will have to live in as adults.
I find the the constant surveillance of our online, and increasingly of our offline, lives infuriating and push back when I can.
Twenty years from now perhaps it will all be accepted as perfectly normal, and I'll be an old man yelling at clouds.
My cousin still tracks her 23-year-old daughter's location - I thought that was bananas, but in this article there's a 29-year-old who's being tracked by her mother. WTF???
Privacy is dead and it started in the cradle.
The thing is the parents normalizing this kind of intrusion of privacy think they are in the right while creating a very dangerous world. Even things like going through your kids rooms (yes even when they live at home) is a huge privacy violation.
No wonder the "but think of the kids" argument is so effective, we all grew up being propagandized by or own parents and environment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilling_effect
It is going to be weird when the next generation of teenagers doesn’t rebel or break any rules at all
Have we reached this Black Mirror dystopia yet?
Companies in this space have just become predatory and it's time to slap them with fines and regulations.
I find that violent and bad behavior is shifted to environments without surveillance with both children and parents. The verbal and physical abuse is not on camera and is amplified off camera. They know this, they just don't care.
[dead]
[dead]
I think the problem here is what are you supposed to do with very low probability really bad events. I.e. your kid being kidnapped or similar. The probability of this extremely low, but it is unimaginatively bad. Therefore any small thing you do that will reduce the chance of this happening may seem reasonable. It is not clear to me how to think about this rationally.
Modern marketing just preys on parental guilt. If you don't buy a $300 sensor or track your kid's location every second, they subtly make you feel like an irresponsible parent.
It's actually sad for kids. In childhood being able to stay out a bit longer, solve sudden problems without calling mom, or just sit alone taught you how to cope with the world. But if someone monitors a child all the way to their college dorm door, it's unclear how they're supposed to develop personal autonomy at all