Hacker News Reader

How can you establish the trust without trusting in the first place? Parents are like small government to their kids, but who likes being spied? By looking through your kids phone you are violating their privacy and jeopardizing the trust. They will always find the workaround and their workarounds will only get better the more you are intruding their privacy. Be it online or offline.

View on HN

I'm a parent of 3 great kids, I don't agree.

My kids know that their parents are going to ask for their phones at any time, for a random inspection. We tell the kids we are their parents, not their friends. Our job is to raise them to understand accountability.

Besides giving them incentive to stay clean, it gives our kids an 'out' with their friends. If they get some peer pressure to do something they shouldn't (like post some inappropriate material online), they just have to explain "My parents are really tough and they look at all my stuff!" We don't mind having reputations as tough parents.

We've had no problems so far (oldest is about to graduate college.) As a bonus, our kids tend to choose good friends also.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com