-Caveat Lector- Good Fences: Electronic Leashes for Teenagers http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/24/living/24QUEE.html?ex=991728191&ei=1&en=5626bdc208b8b1d2> By JOE QUEENAN May 24, 2001 PARENTS frantically trying to insulate their adolescent progeny from the all-engulfing darkness are resorting to tracking devices, hidden cameras, Internet monitoring software and even automotive transponders. The benign paranoia that began with the baby monitor and the nanny cam a decade ago has spawned a cottage industry specializing in products for the well- heeled, middle-aged neurotic. These are the middle-aged parents who now stand, mouths agape, as their once-cuddly tykes morph into duplicitous, untrustworthy teenagers. Their response is to put a tail on them. Thus, baby boomers, who once dreaded "control freaks" and the "thought police," have turned into their own worst nightmare: Big Brother. Deep inside, parents of this generation seem terrified that their children will repeat the mistakes of their own youth — and particularly the mistakes they most enjoyed at the time they were making them. So they have responded the way parents have traditionally responded: with repression fueled by fear. In a classic paradox, the generation that produced such courtly ensembles as Black Sabbath enthusiastically applauds Supreme Court rulings that prevent high school students from wearing Marilyn Manson T-shirts to class. Marilyn Manson is the rock band that has come to be identified with Satanism and drugs, making it anathema to a generation that grew up on homespun artistes like Jim Morrison (incest, patricide, drugs), Jefferson Airplane (violent revolution, drugs) and Jimi Hendrix (mostly drugs). But that was in a simpler, more innocent time when Satanism seemed vaguely wholesome. The telltale signs of parental terror are everywhere. This spring, the German company Siemens tested the prototype of a seven-ounce tracking device that enables children to maintain constant communication with their parents. Fusing digital mobile phone technology, a satellite- based global positioning system and good old-fashioned insanity, the device can pinpoint a child within several yards in a matter of seconds. Closer to home, an American company called Digital Angel is developing a small watchlike band that allows parents to log on to an Internet site and find the precise whereabouts of anyone from a small child to a parent with Alzheimer's disease. Not to be outdone, a company called eWorldtrack is working on a child- tracking device that will fit inside athletic shoes. And in Texas, 1,000 drivers have allowed an insurance company to place transponders in their cars, theoretically allowing the insurer and the parent to know how fast teenagers drive, where they drive and when they drive. Toss in all those cameras disguised as smoke alarms, software programs that monitor chat room conversations and other surveillance devices, and it's obvious that teenagers in this society are going to have a hard time sneaking off for their first beer. At first glance, such innovations seem a perfect embodiment of the baby boomer ethos: why use traditional parental techniques like love, discipline or conversation to solve a problem when you can fix it via modem? Yet the need to resort to such devices is not devoid of an emotional component. Boomers, knowing what they were capable of, simply do not trust their children. They're afraid the kids are going to get drunk. They're afraid the kids are going to get high. They're afraid the kids are going to run off and join the French Foreign Legion. Or worse, date the French Foreign Legion. Yet, there is something willfully naive about this faith in technology. Surely, middle-aged parents must know from their own formative experiences, and from watching "Rebel Without a Cause," that a certain measure of youthful rebellion is inevitable. Surely, they must realize that there are rites of passage. Every teenager must eventually wander into the wrong neighborhood and then, without parental assistance, figure out a way to wander back out. The survival tactics developed in such situations will come in handy later when he finds himself in the wrong bar, the wrong ballpark, the wrong subway or the wrong country. It's unfortunate that life has to be this way. But it is. A second drawback of monitoring devices is that they give both adults and children a false sense of security. Monitoring systems may inform parents where their children are, but they do not show whom they are with. One of the great benefits of actually spending time with your kids is that you can see whether Heath and Madison are consorting with miscreants, street urchins, hooligans, guttersnipes, ne'er-do-wells, mysterious carnies or that broad general class subsumed under the rubric "bad actors." For these devices to be effective, society would need to force sinister citizens to carry similar devices that would set off an alarm whenever they came into contact with authentically virtuous middle-class children. Alas, that would probably not sit well with the American Civil Liberties Union. In the end, the worst thing about child-monitoring devices is that they provide new reasons for children to loathe their parents. Obsessing about children's comings and goings perpetuates the yuppie tendency to treat everything as a possession: if you made it, you own it. Even if it's human. There is something unyielding and unhealthy about this desire to control every situation. If parents are so desperate to find out where their kids are going, whom they're seeing and how fast they're driving to get there, perhaps they should consider hiring private detectives. If parents have so little faith in their children, why not get it out in the open? <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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