Big Mother is watching you

By Francine Clee

WHOEVER said childhood was the best time of your life must have been hit so hard by the playground bully that his memory never recovered.

Of course, it is a time of wonder - but it’s a time of jungle warfare, too. A time of vendettas, ambushes, alliances and betrayals; a time of being judged on appearances, of being terrified to walk home from school, of being afraid of ghosts. In short, it is part of life.

It’s only natural parents should want to protect their kids from life’s knocks, and in a land crammed with more CCTV cameras than any other in the developed world, it’s not surprising that technological ways are being developed to put their minds at test.

Things can, however, be taken to extremes.

Today’s kids are part of the most over-protected generation Britain has ever seen.

In their cradles they are fitted with monitors so mum and dad can hear them breathing - easing understandable worries about cot death, certainly, but also possibly setting everybody up for full-scale separation anxiety later.

Nurseries are setting up web-cams that you can log on to at any time to make sure little Johnny isn’t getting his head kicked-in by the bigger kids.

And when little Johnny starts school, he gets driven there and back, instead of walking like his parents and grandparents once did.

The result: little Johnny won’t get abducted by paedophiles (funny, but I can’t remember much of that happening to me or my classmates).

However, he’ll probably get fat from lack of exercise, and he’ll never get to practise the green cross code. God help him if he ever has to cross a road by himself - and that’s something I believe comes to all of us in the end.

Parents can already use satellite tracking devices to check up on their kids through their mobiles.

And kids’ mobile phones can now be fitted with a system so that parents can tell who’s been ringing their children and step in if any unknown callers start to ring. Pity the teenagers thinking about their first loves.

Encouragingly, it seems kids are finding ways around this, like putting tin-foil around their mobiles to stop the GPS bleeping. But they could soon face a new threat from parental interference.

On the telly this week, there was a discussion about child security and the development of a new, high-tech system to monitor youngsters, so that parents would know what they were up to, 24-hours-a-day.

I only caught the end of the item, but it seemed that the system might involve photography or video, so that you could physically see your son or daughter whenever, wherever, at the touch of a button.

Whether or not it is actually possible to do this yet, the time cannot be far off when it will be.

And when we do inevitably get to this stage, it will be the death of childhood.

Because one of the most important aspects of that stage of your life is the stuff that happens when your parents are not around.

The bits when you make your first decisions, even if they are only whose swings you choose to play on. The bits that gradually make you grow up - if your parents will leave you alone for long enough.

Parents should also be careful what they wish for.

One night they may tune in to their son’s or daughter’s life and find they are busy trashing a house, or having a drinks party in the park.

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