What Constant Surveillance Is Doing to Children

Re:What Constant Surveillance Is Doing to Children by throwaway2037 on Tuesday November 10, 2026 @07:58PM (#50448487)

This stuff feels like the industrialisation of women's neurosis. I read the first 1/4 of the article, then stopped to check the gender of the author: A woman ("Sarah"). I am not surprised. Many of the people interviewed are also women. The primary consumer of these tools and services are women.

I asked a few good fathers that I know about this trend: Universally, they agreed that it mostly appealed to their wives. And yes, they thought a lot of it was "too much". One gets daily reports (handwritten!) from the daycare about their kid with specific details about what they ate, toilet visits, nap time, play time, etc.

I'll never forget a tense phone call I had with my mother. She was upset that I wasn't responding faster to her WhatsApp text messages. I was flabbergasted. I asked her: What did you do 10 years ago when you didn't have a mobile phone? There was a long pause, then a sigh from her. Plus, I lived many timezones away from her, and I worked a very demanding job, where it is not uncommon to be away from my mobile phone for hours at a time.

Everybody needs to chill the fuck out about raising children. When did it become socially acceptable to get a text message about the cookie your kid just ate at daycare? It is ridiculous.

    > In 2024, the U.S. surgeon general issued a public-health advisory about the mental health of parents, echoing a similar advisory about youth mental health three years earlier. In a national survey in which 18 percent of teens reported anxiety, so did 18 percent of parents. For all the recent concern about a crisis in teen mental health, parents are clearly struggling too.

The cause is very likely multi-factor. Yes, one factor is excessive monitoring and loss of childhood independence. However, a much more important factor is social media. It is a curse on childhood. I remember listening to a radio show where a reporter was interviewing American middle school kids about how they used social media. At the end, she reflected upon her own middle school experiences and said (paraphrase): "It is sad that modern social media lets you know with precision how much you are liked. When I grew up, you had an idea of your popularity, but it wasn't measured so precisely. It feels cruel."

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:What Constant Surveillance Is Doing to Children by thomastjeffery on Tuesday November 10, 2026 @08:27PM (#50448725)

I think it's important to say that this problem isn't innately about women: it's about the interpersonal social dynamics between women in our society. Whether or not those social dynamics could have developed in a society between men instead is irrelevant: they are where they are.

My philosophy (as someone who is not a parent) is that the real problem is engagement.

Social media cannot replace parental engagement. What people tell each other is that it can, only that it does so in a negative way. That's not true. Social media cannot replace parental engagement. The only void it can fill is time.

Parents who invade the privacy of their children incidentally engage with them. That engagement alone is the cause of their success, even though they attribute that success to the boundaries and standards they set.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:What Constant Surveillance Is Doing to Children by jcarrano on Wednesday November 11, 2026 @05:35AM (#50451818)

My mother also complains that I do not reply faster. My response is that I want to be in the here and now. With cellphones people are constantly elsewhere and I don't think the human brain is made for that, nor to monitor dozens of little pieces of information.

Many parents are self-monitoring their own sleep with smart watches, their jogging routine, nutrient intake, etc, etc. Knowing everything their kids do at the daycare is just a natural next step.

[ Parent | on HN ]