For most people, one of the first purchases in preparation for a new baby is a baby monitor. When our first child was born, the most common baby monitors were sound-only. The transmitter went in the baby’s room, and the parent could carry around the portable receiver. That way, when the baby was napping, the parent could relax, knowing that the monitor would alert her when the child awoke crying. Now, video monitors are also available, so parents can check in visually, as well as with audio.
As our kids grow, the opportunities for remote monitoring continue. Net Nanny and other parental control software allow us to deny our children access to certain kids of websites, keep track of their computer use, and even see transcripts of Facebook, MySpace, and instant messaging chats. One such program will shut down the computer and send an email to the parent if a child tries to access a forbidden site. We can decide which channels are available on our television sets, check when our kids make cell phone calls and to whom, and track their grades online. I read an article recently about a new system called Teen Driver, which will debut in the 2016 Chevy Malibu. With Teen Driver, parents can set maximum speeds for the car, mute the radio if front-seat passengers aren’t wearing seat belts, and look at data about where their teen has driven, the maximum speed he went, and how many times he braked suddenly.
There is certainly some benefit to the use of technology to stay connected to our children and to be aware of their activities. Furthermore, I am not immune to the temptation to do a little spying when the opportunity presents itself. We had a baby monitor for all three children. I have snooped on Facebook messages and text conversations and checked internet browsing history. Our home internet has controls that block certain kinds of websites, as do our cell phones. Some of this is smart and makes sense, I think. But in our over reliance on surveillance technology, we may be overlooking two risks.
First, as most parents are well aware, our kids are way more savvy than we are when it comes to technology. Almost any control we can put in place, they can figure out a way around. The parents of one of my children’s friends monitor all her text messages, so she communicates via Snapchat. When they took away her cell phone entirely, she talked to friends on the computer via Skype. And when the computer was removed, she played Trivia Crack on her Kindle and used the messages to stay in touch. No matter how clever you think you are, I guarantee your kids are a step ahead. Teen Driver’s creators boast that even tech-savvy kids can’t figure out ways around it because it is accessed through a parent-controlled PIN. I am skeptical of their confidence. The usefulness of electronic monitoring is therefore limited at best, and we parents had better understand this if we are trusting our digital snooping to control our children.
Which brings me to the second, more important, point. Lucas, who is 15 and sometimes likes to have meaningful conversations, asked me the other day what the job of a parent is. I told him that parents are supposed to train their children so that some day, the children can make wise, responsible, and God-honoring decisions on their own. In the process, parents make a lot of rules, which are designed, in part, to control the behavior of their children, to help accustom them to doing the right thing. Ultimately, however, the goal is for the child to internalize the principles behind the rules, so that he will continue to do the right thing on his own, without external governance. As a Christian parent, I want my child’s relationship with God to show him the right thing to do, and his desire to please God to give him the will to do what is right. If my 17-year-old is driving the speed limit because she knows I’ll dock her allowance if the Teen Driver device lets me know she exceeded it, she is several steps from responsible adulthood. First, she should drive the speed limit because it is the law, and the Bible says to obey those in authority. Second, she should drive the speed limit because it is safer for herself and others, and the Bible says she should love her neighbor and be a good steward of that which God has given her (the car, her life). If all that fails and she has to be governed by fear for consequences, at least let it be the real-life consequence of a speeding ticket, not the artificial consequence of parental sanction.
Similarly, I want my child’s texting to be clean, kind, and uplifting, not because he’s afraid I’ll see something I don't like and take the phone away, but because he wants to relate to others in a clean, kind, and uplifting way. If we depend on surveillance to control behavior without addressing the heart of our children, we are ignoring the truth that “out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks” (Luke 6:45). The root controls the fruit.
We can see the consequences of over-surveillance in society in the proliferation of laws and lawsuits. Obviously, we need some laws, even in a society where everyone is trying to do the right thing. Its helpful to know that we should stop on red and go on green, so we can avoid running into one another on the roads. But do we really need a law to tell us that we can’t put a confederate flag on our license plate if it causes pain to others? And, on the other hand, can people not try to understand that the same flag might mean something other than racial hatred to some, and extend the benefit of the doubt? I am not talking about compromising moral principles to avoid offending others, which is an entirely different subject. What I am talking about is that people should be able able to behave in a respectful way without being forced to by litigation. If my tree is dropping walnuts on my neighbor’s lawn and ruining the grass, we should be able, in mutual understanding, to solve the problem without small claims court. I hope the reason that my office partner doesn’t steal my laptop is because she believes in my property rights, not because she’s afraid she’ll be caught.
When my children were small, they preferred to swim in our neighborhood pool rather than in the big pool at the Y, because the Y pool had more rules. I explained to them that the Y had to have all those rules because more people used it, and they might not all do the right thing on their own. America is a big country, and a diverse one, and we are certainly always tempted away from doing what’s right. I am not advocating antinomianism — or even libertarianism. I do think, however, that the more we can teach our children the reasons behind the rules, the better they will be able to function as citizens of a free society. The more we can get the right nourishment to the root, the better the fruit. The more we can govern ourselves, the less we will have to be governed.
