It seems to me that more parents are merely watching their children grow older than actually raising them...
We live in a day and age with so many gadgets and applications for monitoring where and what your child is doing, so rather than raising children that the parents can trust they simply monitor everything they do. This is bad, not only for the child but for society as a whole.
Parents have become "big brother" to their kids. Monitoring everywhere they go, every web site they visit, everything they do is monitored these days. They even have drones that can watch them as they walk to bus stops...which is crazy. I understand some parents aren't worried about what their children may do as much as worried for their safety out in the real world. But it's a false sense of security. It's like knowing police can show up in 30 minutes as opposed to actually having the ability to defend yourself. You have a cop on call, but if something actually happens you're defenseless. A kid that knows the candy van isn't real is far better off than a kid who doesn't...and even better off a kid who knows how to fend off a possible attacker or kidnapper.
In the past, parents never had all the child surveillance technology we do today, and it's become so common place. They sell these devices with the idea of "child safety" and "child protection". Yet, the same parents probably complain when the government does the same to them with the purpose of "citizen protection". I find it difficult to believe the world is so bad that we have to use such technology to watch children because it's that unsafe out there. From what I've seen, it's a lack of proper parenting that's the real issue.
On a bigger picture, this is going to be awful for society in the long run. We essentially are making the "big brother" scenario common for them. They will be used to this idea of always being watched and may even expect it later in life without realizing or seeing the negative implications of having no privacy. This is paving the way for a big brother government, or at least one more so invasive than it already is.
It's simple. If you raise children properly, you won't need to monitor them. I think this qoute applies to the issue of child monitoring, just as much as government monitoring its citizens...
"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin
