Literature HOMEWORK

1

The Consequences of Too Much Parental Surveillance

Jillian R. Butler

National University

ILR 260: Academic Information Literacy

Dr. Azita Mokhtari

November 9, 2023

The Consequences of Too Much Parental Surveillance

When you hear the term “surveillance technology”, the first thing most people associate is video surveillance systems, such as baby monitors and security cameras. Though it is the most common type of surveillance, it is not the only method. Many different industries offer software programs that enable parents to monitor the online and cell phone activities of their children. There are also programs and applications that you can install on devices that include GPS-tracking features so that parents can know where their children are located if they have the device on them. Amongst all the different types of ways you can monitor your children lay a different series of questions: is it ethical for parents to monitor their children so closely? Should parents let their children know that they are being monitored? What are the effects of said surveillance on the mental health of the children? And finally, should parents be able to limit the access children have to the internet? With today’s advanced technology, it is very easy to overlook a child’s wants and needs when an anxious parent has access to parental guidance systems.

Surveillance

Types of Surveillance

There are many different types of surveillance that are offered to parents specifically. Many companies will target advertisements to parents, using persuasive terms like “caring for” or “safety of” the children to describe their devices and programs. Gary T. Marx of MIT, USA and Valerie Steevs of the University of Ottawa, Canada are two researchers who examined companies that advertised surveillance technologies to parents and government agencies in charge of children. The technologies advertised included pre-natal testing, baby monitors and nanny cams, RFID-enabled clothing, GPS Tracking devices, cell phones, home drug and semen tests, and surveillance toys.

The Reasons for Surveillance

The government was encouraged to use such technologies in order to monitor and manage any genetic or behavioral deviations, while parents were encouraged to use it to “keep their children safe.” Marx and Steevs found that the companies would use reverse-psychology to manipulate parents into thinking that if they used the technology, then they were predominantly responsible and loving parents. They would also convince parents that they could not trust their children to behave and that they must resort to spying in order to overcome the potential lying or hiding of bad behavior. Margaret K. Nelson is a Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Middlebury College, Vermont. She is the author and editor of several books, including  Parenting Out of Control: Anxious Parents in Uncertain Times. She studied more than 100 consumer reviews of baby monitors that were published on Epinions.com and examined how parents respond to anxieties about their children. The reviewers only represent married, well-educated women. These parents are found to normalize parental anxiety and portray their babies as both fragile and mischievous, thus needing care and control. These anxieties are all a response to the gaining of freedom and new skills of interpretation.

The Effects of Surveillance on Families

The Parents

Two researchers, Sarah Widmer and Anders Albrechtslund, from the Center for Surveillance studies Department of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University conducted a series of 17 interviews with parents all over Denmark who either use or do not use location-tracking devices to track their children. Parents who use the technology have shown to have more anxiety about the whereabouts of their children and never being able to obtain relief, even with the use of the location-tracking technology. They prefer the technologies over a phone call or text, with the idea that they don’t want to “annoy” or “interrupt” their children when they can simply just check their location. Other parents who do not use the location-tracking technologies have made remarks about how the technology is simply incompatible with their family’s values, with no reports of irregular anxiety towards their children’s whereabouts. It appears that the parents who choose to use the surveillance technology experience more unsatisfied anxiety than a parent who does not use it. The studies have varied results, but ultimately generated that surveillance technologies are deemed overall harmful to the mental health and trust of both the parents and the children.

The Children

Tonya Rooney of the University of New England, Australia is a researcher in Early Childhood and Environmental Education. She investigates the impact of surveillance technologies on children’s experience of trust. She finds that over-surveillance can impact both the children being monitored and the parents doing the monitoring in a way that causes lots of anxiety and suspicion. She concludes that the use of surveillance technologies has shown to plunder any opportunities for children to ever trust or be trusted, or to have the opportunity to learn honesty and responsibility. Dr. Carol Margaret Barron of Dublin City University, Ireland, is a researcher who holds academic qualifications in anthropology, folklore, child development, and nursing (neonatal, child, and adult). She analyzes articles and scientific research from professionals to gather information in order to deliver an anthropological perspective on the use of parental monitoring. Her conclusion was basically that children in middle childhood (ages 8-12) can negotiate and/or resist the monitoring, because they are more knowledgeable in how technology works. The defense for this is that those same children were born in the era in which the internet became more prevalent, therefore they have known the internet their entire lives. She also adds that it has not been long enough to show the effects of parents monitoring their children.

Conclusion

Limitations of Existing Research

Directions for Future Research

References

Widmer, S., & Albrechtslund, A. (2021). The ambiguities of surveillance as care and control: Struggles in the domestication of location-tracking applications by Danish parents.  Nordicom Review, 42, 79-93. https://doi.org/10.2478/nor-2021-0042

Marx, G., & Steeves, V. (2010). From the Beginning: Children as Subjects and Agents of Surveillance. Surveillance & Society, 7(3/4), 192–230. https://doi.org/10.24908/ss.v7i3/4.4152

Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. (2013, March 14). Surveillance Technologies and Children. https://www.priv.gc.ca/en/opc-actions-and-decisions/research/explore-privacy-research/2012/opc_201210/

Rooney, Tonya. 2010. Trusting children: How do surveillance technologies alter a child’s experience of trust, risk and responsibility? Surveillance & Society 7(3/4): 344-355. http://www.surveillance-and-society.org

Barron, C. M. 2014. ‘I had no credit to ring you back’: Children’s strategies of negotiation and resistance to parental surveillance via mobile phones. Surveillance & Society 12(3): 401- 413.http://www.surveillance-and-society.org

Nelson, M. K. (2008). Watching Children: Describing the Use of Baby Monitors on Epinions.com. Journal of Family Issues, 29(4), 516-538. https://doi.org/10.1177/0192513X07310319

Week Three Discussion 2: Peer-Reviewing the Rough Draft of the Research Project

Contains unread posts

Must post first.

Workshop Instructions (also linked here: ( Peer Reviewing the Rough Draft of the Final Research Project ):

In Week Three, you will be writing your first draft of your final paper assignment, the Research Project. Peer review is an essential part of the writing process and all successful writers engage in this activity at some point in that process. Engaging in peer review is an integral part of any scholarly or professional attempt at producing effective writing. The classroom learning environment provides the perfect opportunity to take advantage of the benefits to be gained by submitting your written work, in the form a completed rough draft, to peer review. Read more here about the  Benefits of Peer Review.  

The purpose of this workshop is (at least) threefold:

· Practicing peer-reviewing skills, such as reading carefully to discern the writer's purpose and main point or thesis, locating crucial expository or argumentative claims and relevant data that support the main point and overall purpose of the paper, and formulating and communicating constructive feedback.

· Getting feedback from your peers who are working on the same assignment will help you think about your work more critically; it will help you to see problems or errors that you missed and thus help you to improve your paper as you review and address the peer feedback you receive.

· After you've reviewed other authors' attempts at writing a research paper, it will enable you to better identify strengths and weaknesses in your own writing.

As you move toward the final version of your Research Project, in addition to ensuring that your paper follows the basic instructions for the assignment, you should also be using the Grading Rubric from the Research Project instructions to check your work against the explicit criteria spelled out there.

Post your Rough Draft in the Week Three: Workshop: Peer-Reviewing the Rough Draft of the Research Project by end of Thursday in Week Three.

Post your peer reviews of at least two other students' rough drafts by end of Sunday. Word count for each peer review should be within the range of 350-500 words.

Remember that you will be doing a peer review of TWO peer-authors' rough drafts.  Please post each peer review as a reply to the peer-author's main post containing their rough draft.

When all the rough drafts are posted (they should all be there by Friday morning of Week Three), scroll through the discussion forum to find the two rough drafts that you want to peer review, and reply to each of those postings right away that you will be doing a peer review of that paper. Consider this sort of "having dibs on" that draft. If two peer reviewers have already signed up for a paper, make a different choice. The goal is for everyone in the class to have at least two peer reviews on their rough draft.

Once you have reviewed the peer-author's draft, return to the peer-author's main post, and reply to that post with your completed peer review. Make sure to include the peer-author's name in your peer review of their draft. Please  copy and paste rather than attaching your peer reviews, as this will make it easier for others to view your comments and critiques.

Your peer reviews should address the following five areas of evaluation, along with any general comments you want to add. Don't feel as though you have to respond to every single question included here; these are suggested elements of the draft for you to review and critique.

In general, your purpose is to benefit the peer-author by offering your impressions of and reflections on their efforts in this writing project, using the Final Research Project Grading Rubric as a foundational guide for what is expected in this assignment. And, as noted above, by conducting this peer review you will get a better understanding of the criteria you yourself should be addressing in your own paper and the levels at which you are doing so.

Don't feel like you are grading the peer-author's work; think of this almost as a group exercise in which everyone is working together to enhance their writing and researching skills.

Don't waste time with vague or clichéd comments such as "Good job," or "I liked your paper, but it needs a bit more work." These are not helpful, and even less so would be negative comments with no constructive content. The attitude here should be one of teamwork and mutual support!

Word count for the peer review should be within the range of 350-500 words.

Peer Review Evaluation Questions

1) Research question:

· Was it easy to identify the research question in the first paragraph?

· State what you take to be the peer-author's research question.

· Does this question address a significant issue?

· Is it a worthwhile question to research and write about?

2) Focus:

· Does every part of the draft relate clearly enough to the peer-author's research question?

· Or are there some parts that seem to veer off into side areas?

· If there are instances of veering off the main topic or claims that seem irrelevant, tangential, or pointless, indicate where that happens in the draft.

3) Sourcing:

· Does the peer-author do a satisfactory job of identifying and explaining their sources in terms of their sources' credentials and areas of expertise, as well as the methods, ideas and arguments that explore and support those ideas?

· Are more or different sources needed?

4) Quoting:

· Does the author use direct quotes? If not, would adding them help the paper?

· Are there parts of the draft that seem "quote heavy"?

· Can the charge be made that the peer-author is letting quoted passages do the heavy lifting rather than serving to illustrate or bolster the peer-author's exposition or exploration of the research question?

· Does the peer-author effectively translate specialist information from sources into non-specialist language?

5) Clarity:

· Are there any parts of the draft that are confusing or hard to follow?

· Point to the specific words/phrases/sentences (or organizational choices?) that seem to be causing this confusion.

· Are the peer-author's claims vague, fuzzy, or over-general? Does the peer-author effectively distill complex information down to its core, relevant ideas?

General Comments:

· Consult the Grading Rubric for the Research Project and include any final comments here that you think might help the peer-author to strengthen and improve the final draft of the paper.

· Two especially important criteria in this paper are (a) having a clear, specific, and sustained focus throughout the paper and (b) synthesizing source information with the writer's own contribution to knowledge in relation to the research question addressed in the paper.

· Don't feel as if you need to address every single criterion listed in the Grading Rubric; use it only as a general reference for the purposes of the peer review.

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