Ellen Goodman Big Brother Meets Big Mother Summary

Paul Tomburro from CraveOnline has conducted research and surveys revealing the following: “78% - Parents who admitted they had logged into their child's social media account to check their messages” Consequently, technological advancement has pushed parents to resort to spying on their children because they want to keep up with them. Although spying can bring to light who their child really is and how they act when their parents aren’t around, it can easily cross the line of privacy and respect between parent and child. As the communication between the parent and child weaken, the more parents feel as if they are losing control of their kid and become paranoid and result to spying. However the solution is oddly simple, the parent just needs

Unfortunately, parents have who resort and rely on spyware start becoming distant from their children. As Ellen Goodman states in her article Big Brother Meets Big Mother, “As someone who has done my fair share of speed dialing, I am a believer in the text messaging and cell phone that keeps parents and kids in contact. But there's a moment when the two-way tools of communication turn into the one-way tools of surveillance.” Goodman reasons parents who text or call their kid to check up on them to ensure their safety have a better relationship since they communicate. However, Goodman is also declaring parents who use spy-ware often lose communication with their kid and with the vital factor of communication being lost an unhealthy relationship is bound to happen. As it can be seen, the parents who do use spy-ware have to be in constant check so they don’t cross the fine line of monitoring and sneakily spying. Equally important to realize is, parents are just trying to keep their kids safe, however they can still do such a task by just speaking about what they are so afraid of so their kid understands and avoids Internet danger. As Donna St. George says in her article Parents Investigated, “ 'We’re not saying parents should abandon all caution. We’re saying parents should pay attention to risks that are

In the terms of trying to keep teens safe from Internet dangers, spyware won’t solve the problem. As a matter of fact, spyware will only make the teen paranoid of their parent and they won’t understand why the Internet can be dangerous. For instance, the evidence claims "There's always a parent on speed dial." Teens are never really on their own. We may be protecting them right out of the ability to make their own decisions. Including their own mistakes.” (Ellen Goodman #10) Goodman reasons using excessive amounts of surveillance, will result in teens who will not truly learn independence nor how to take safety precautions on their own. However, some might argue spyware can prevent mistakes and believe their teens will naturally choose what’s the worst for them. Goodman even states, “...says, if you are not monitoring, you are a bad parent.” (big brother big mother, paragraph 10) However, their argument proves to have a false dilemma in the argument because they say, if you are not monitoring your teen then you are a bad parent which is false because there are more options to being a good parent and bad parent. The accusation towards parents is, if they aren’t monitoring then they are bad parents proves to be false because it is usually the monitoring parents