Your Child's Private Thoughts Aren't Private Anymore

A 13 year old girl opened a Google Doc to write a private journal entry. She was questioning her sexuality, working through confusion about her identity. She thought it was safe to write on what she thought was a private document.

Within hours, her parents received a notification. The school's monitoring software, designed to flag "concerning" content, had scanned her private writing and reported it to administrators. They contacted her family. She was outed.

This story is not unusual. According to the Center for Democracy & Technology's 2023 "Off Task" report, 19 percent of students report they or someone they know has been "outed" to an adult due to school surveillance software, a figure that has risen by 6 points in just one year.

The surveillance web is also widening. The report found that 88 percent of teachers say their schools actively monitor student activity, and 40 percent report this monitoring extends to students' personal devices. Perhaps most damaging to a child's sense of safety is the criminalization of their curiosity: 38 percent of teachers report that a student was contacted by law enforcement solely due to an automated flag.

In this environment, 62 percent of students express concern about the privacy of their data. They are not exploring; they are defending themselves.

The Spotlight on Childhood

I experienced being under observation during COVID in Korea. My virtual teaching sessions were recorded so administrators could verify I was teaching for 'x' amount of hours a day. As a result my entire approach changed. I became more "curriculum compliant." I stopped going on tangents. I stopped having fun. My teaching became performance.

I teach as a constructivist. I like inquiry, hands-on learning, tangents, and exploration. But when I knew a camera was capturing everything, I defaulted to something safer. I decided to perform "teacher" rather than actually teaching the way I wanted.

Children under surveillance experience this constantly. Developmental psychologist Alison Gopnik describes childhood cognition as "lantern consciousness". Picture a lantern with scattered light that explores multiple areas simultaneously. Adults operate more in "spotlight consciousness," focused and performative. Children are biologically designed for exploration. Surveillance forces them into spotlight mode before they've had the chance to explore.

When a child knows they are being monitored, and their searches and documents scanned, they learn to perform "good student" rather than actually think. The exploratory mode that builds cognitive flexibility gets replaced by safer mode more similar to compliance. They stop thinking freely. They retreat into the spotlight and perform the version of themselves they know is accepted. Meanwhile, the lantern goes dark.

What Parents Can Do

The opposite of surveillance is not neglect. It's transparency and vulnerability.

Surveillance assumes children can't be trusted to navigate risk. But your job as a parent isn't to eliminate risk. It's to teach your children to assess it. That requires them to practice judgment, which requires space to make mistakes.

A common phrase I hear parents say after they say, “No” is, "because I said so." A better approach it to offer your actual thinking in age-appropriate ways.

Let’s say your child asks, "Why can't I have TikTok when all my friends do?" Don't dismiss the question because it diminishes a legitimate thought. Instead say, "I'm concerned about the algorithm showing you content you might not be ready for, and that it's designed to keep you scrolling longer than you intend. Let's look at the research together about how these apps work, and then talk about what would need to be true for me to feel comfortable with it." 

It's a hard conversation to have when they just want to see what their friends are doing, but telling them, 'I’m worried about how this app is designed to keep you scrolling,' opens a door that 'No' just slams shut. In doing this, you're not dodging a fight over an app but actually handing them the tools to see behind the screen.

Another strategy is sharing your own struggles to model vulnerability. Show that adults don't have all the answers.

When you're sitting at dinner, bring up an actual situation you are struggling with. "Want to know what’s going on at work?" Then share genuinely. "I had a conflict today. I said something in a meeting and I think it hurt my colleague's feelings. Now I’m trying to decide whether to say something or let it go. What do you think I should do?"

This shows that reasoning is an ongoing process. Kids see that adults haven’t "figured it all out".

When you mess up with your child, avoid defensive justification. Model genuine apology and repair. Let them see that judgment develops through practice and struggle.

Boundaries are for safety. Trust is so children know they can come to you when they make mistakes or feel harmed. If you create an environment where every mistake is monitored and observed, they won't come to you, they'll just get better at hiding.

Agency is Freedom

I'm not arguing against safety. I'm arguing that an architecture of total surveillance is being built and it will undermine the developmental necessity of privacy. Children need the freedom to be wrong, to be messy, and to be confused without that exploration becoming a permanent data point.

Children need exploratory space to develop identity. They need cognitive struggle to build analytical capacity. They need the freedom to be wrong without that error becoming a record that could have an effect on the trajectory of their lives.

We are still in control of these outcomes. The capability to direct your own thinking and make your own judgments is the most important skill children can develop now. In a technological era of total algorithmic surveillance from schools to social media, agency must be maintained.

A society’s job is to protect its children. Are our methods of protection preventing the very capacities they'll need to protect themselves? 

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References

Center for Democracy & Technology. (2023). Off task: EdTech threats to student privacy and equity in the age of AI. https://cdt.org/insights/report-off-task-edtech-threats-to-student-privacy-and-equity-in-the-age-of-ai/

Gopnik, A. (2016). The gardener and the carpenter: What the new science of child development tells us about the relationship between parents and children. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Ehmke, R. (2026, January 16). How using social media affects teenagers. Child Mind Institute. https://childmind.org/article/how-using-social-media-affects-teenagers/