The author, "The Undercover Parent", Harlan Coben has a positive outlook on the usage of spyware for the monitoring of teenagers. He is at first unsure of this more modern technique of accessing what the teenagers are doing, but later on grows fond of this method with the stories he hears from his friends. From the stories that he heard, there was one where a father's precious daughter's future was saved because he did use spyware to monitor the straight "A" daughter of his. She was not only using drugs, but also sleeping with her dealer. One can argue that this is a great way to protect your kids, but ultimately, the use of spyware can be detrimental to not only the parent-child relationship that you have, but also the bonds can be severely weakened. Spyware is not the best way to go about monitoring your children.
If parents do decide to use spyware on their child, they risk being an overly invasive parent even if they had no such intentions. According to Jeff Gelles, author of "Another Tool for Parents of Networking Kids", he questions the boundary between good parenting and overbearing intrusiveness when spyware comes into play. Gelles himself has gotten chance to use a beta version of the Proactive Parenting Network (PPN), a network designed to protect children without having the parents venture into "parental espionage". In the article, he states that, "monitoring services cost $10 a month, which the company plans to waive at the start. For that, parents can receive alerts triggered by profane, racist, or sexually explicit words, or language that suggests risks of cyberbullying, suicidal thoughts, eating disorders, violence, disclosure of personal information, and other common concerns." For starters, the company only plans to waive the $10 monthly charge "at the start", what exactly does that mean? Will you start getting a $10 bill added to your monthly bank statements after the "starting time"? Does it mean that the prices will stay $10 forever? Nothing is concrete, which is also why using a spyware program is not beneficial.
