This is less about spying or snooping and more about knowing children aren't mature enough to have private conversations with strangers.
I think people forget how mature children actually are.
From everything I saw/noticed, it was 100.0% on the up and up, but as a parent of kids that age now, the thought horrifies me.
Supervising your kid online is like putting them in a car seat even though you're unlikely to get in a crash. It's appropriate when they're young and becomes inappropriate as they get older.
I think children develop vastly differently from each other, maybe some others wouldn't have been doing "RP" until they were 17?
What if you were early?
I remember when I was 14-15 I wanted to play games and "hide and seek", whilst some of my friends had started enjoying sitting down and just talking, how boring.
We still played hide-and-seek at that age, but we would rebrand/reframe it in terms of a wargame with a name like "manhunt." This was decades ago though.
I haven't seen kids playing outside in about as long.