Harlan Coben The Undercover Parent Summary

Although deciding if you trust your child or not may seem trivial, it is in fact crucial in terms of today’s concerns over teenagers’ use of the internet. If you were a parent with teenage children, would you use spyware to monitor your child’s internet use? This is what many parents have chosen to do in order to watch what their children are doing on the internet. Many parents use it to protect their children from things like cyberbullying and pedophiles, while others use it to spy on them to find good gossip or to be overly involved in their children’s lives. The differences between the responsibly protective parent and the irresponsibly nosy parent are discussed in “The Undercover Parent” an article by Harlan Coben, and in this essay as well. …show more content…
For example, he says that it can be used to “monitor your child’s behavior on the internet so that the parent may correct any unruly conduct. Spyware can also literally record every keystroke made while the program is running.” Coben also explained that responsible parents use spyware strictly to “protect their children from the dangers of the internet.” He states that “when used the right way spyware is a good idea because a watchful eye can help a person make better choices.” For instance Coben himself told the story of what happened to his friend. This friend of his had daughter in college, she was a straight-A student, the angel every parent expects their child to be, but when he put spyware on her computer he found that he was sadly mistaken about her. It turns out his daughter was into drugs and was sleeping with her dealer. Maybe if the father would have been more responsible he could have used spyware to spot and