I can assure you that children from middle school onward absolutely do not give complete and truthful accounts of their interactions with friends. True, this ca

I can assure you that children from middle school onward absolutely do not give complete and truthful accounts of their interactions with friends. True, this can be a point of family tension! It’s a natural and probably healthy push and pull, children wanting privacy and independence, parents wanting access and control. That’s the process of growing up into your own person. There would be something developmentally wrong with a child who didn’t try & succeed to some extent. And something inhuman about a parent who didn’t resent and resist it. Children get ahead of themselves and parents slow them down. But the kids are supposed to win in the end, ideally before their 18th birthdays. I worry that digital surveillance gives such an asymmetric advantage to parents’ natural helicoptering impulses that future generations never win. Worse, that they realize they are overmatched and give up. What kind of adults will they be, when their agency has been broken on the wheel in this way?