Parental Control Apps
“Parental Control apps for mobile phones”
The development of parental control apps is getting wider and wider. Obviously companies face privacy issues, and can’t automatically send a childs texts through to their parents, but companies are starting to overcome this matter.
Parents Are Listening Company in the states, has started to develop an app that sends parents alerts when “messages containing keywords such as ‘suicide’ or ‘drugs’ are sent to their childs phone” and ‘WebSafety Inc’ have come up with a library of words deemed ‘innaproapriate’, including slang and abbreviations.
When I first read that, I was slightly aghast. Mainly because that seems quite far fetched. What if I texted someone saying “what up bro, how’s your crap homework going along?!”. That would then get sent to my parents – and to be honest, they wouldn’t care. Maybe they would laugh, though.
Okay, so my parents wouldn’t use it. It’s for the parents who think their little angel will end up using the wrong grammar whilst texting, or fear that someone will tell them to take drugs via text. But seriously… who does that?!
I remember reading an article in the paper a long while ago (when Gordon Brown was still PM), about how they will start monitoring all emails, texts and all that stuff. Now, if you’re the sort of person to text to people to take drugs, or go commit suicide or something, you would actually use those exact words, would you? You would use code words, or maybe a special way to personally tease and really hurt that person.
Although, in some cases it would be useful to know if your child texted the word suicide, or drugs. It might not actually mean they are thinking of doing those things, but perhaps sometimes it is.
I think the better solution, though, is to actually talk to your child, rather than spying on their text messages. If it was me being spied on I would feel violated and saddened that my parents would feel they need to spy on me to understand me, when they could just ask me how I am feeling.
Okay, so it isn’t easy for parents to ask how their kids are doing, and would get a reasonable answer rather than “fuck off”, or “I’m fine”, or something along those lines. But personally, it is better than being monitored.
-Jean x
I wouldn’t want to be monitored, your parents should trust you a bit more than to go snooping at your texts. D:
’tis terrible.
I don’t think kids would say drugs anyways… they’d probably say pot. or something… XD
I would hate if my mum read all my texts! Not because I say anything inappropriate I just don’t want her knowing about everything in my life, but maybe she’d trust me? Hmm…