Safe but Never Alone: Growing up in the Surveillance Era

I didn't get a cell phone until I was a senior in college. The year was 2002, and cell phones certainly weren't considered essential. My friends and I couldn't text to arrange where to sit in chapel or meet for lunch. Weekend outings happened much more organically, through conversations in dorm hallways or encounters on our way to class. In high school, my parents generally knew where I was supposed to be and when I planned to come home. I had a curfew, but if I missed it, they had no way of contacting me to find out whether I was okay. They simply had to wait, wonder, and trust. 

Fast forward to 2026 and you're sitting in the drive-thru line at your local coffee shop when your phone pings with a message from your teenager: "Can you grab me an iced vanilla latte?" Your child has checked your location and decided that coffee sounds good, too. Or maybe you've just dropped your son or daughter off at college. Curious about what they're doing, you open Find My iPhone or Life360 and discover they're in an unfamiliar part of town. Suddenly, you're concerned. Should you text or call to ask where they're going? 

As the parent of two teenagers still at home, I'll admit I appreciate the comfort of knowing when they're on their way home from school or a social event. I like being able to check their grades and hold them accountable for missing assignments. I do wonder, however, whether these conveniences come with some unintended consequences. Am I helping my children develop responsibility, or am I assuming responsibility they should gradually be learning to carry themselves? 

The Discomfort of Not Knowing 

Surveillance technologies offer genuine safety and convenience, but their normalization raises important questions about trust, autonomy, emotional well-being, and power. But when does our desire to keep people safe begin to undermine their freedom to develop independence? The relationship between safety and surveillance is complicated. Location-sharing technology can help locate missing people, and we’ve all heard of times when cell phones have been used to document crimes in real time, and those recordings have been used as important evidence. Security cameras and monitoring systems can help communities respond to emergencies. These are meaningful benefits. Technology initially intended for emergencies can easily become a means of checking on someone whenever we want, however.  

For Christians, this raises some questions about our desire for control. As parents, we are entrusted with caring for and protecting our children, but that responsibility doesn't mean we can eliminate every uncertainty from their lives. Technology can create the illusion that knowing where our children are somehow guarantees their safety. Yet the Christian life has never promised freedom from uncertainty. We are called to exercise wisdom and discernment while trusting God with what remains beyond our control. Perhaps one challenge of parenting in the surveillance era is learning to distinguish between responsible protection and our own discomfort with not knowing. 

Adolescence and young adulthood are developmental periods when young people need opportunities to make decisions, establish boundaries, and develop independence. Responsibility doesn't suddenly appear on someone's eighteenth birthday. It develops through smaller experiences: remembering an assignment, navigating a disagreement with a friend, deciding how to spend an afternoon, or figuring out how to get somewhere. Previous generations of parents were forced to allow some independence simply because there was no alternative. When I left home as a teenager, my parents generally had to trust that I was where I said I would be. Today, we don't face that same limitation—if the technology is available, we can check.

This creates an interesting developmental question—when we have the ability to know where our teenagers are, how fast they're driving, or what grades they've received, how often should we choose not to know? The goal of parenting shouldn't simply be keeping our children safe until adulthood. It should also be preparing them to function independently when no one is watching. When I ask my teenage son about a particular chemistry assignment before he's mentioned it himself, could I unintentionally be communicating that I don't trust his judgment or competence? If young people know their parents can monitor their every movement, might they become more secretive rather than more open?

The Limits of Protection 

Christian teaching invites us to examine the relationship between love, trust, and control. We often justify monitoring the people we love by appealing to our concern for their safety, and sometimes that concern is entirely appropriate. But love doesn't require constant access to another person's movements, decisions, or private experiences. The apostle Paul's description of love in 1 Corinthians 13 emphasizes patience, kindness, and the absence of self-seeking behavior. These qualities challenge us to consider whether our desire to know everything about those we love is always motivated by their well-being, or sometimes by our own need for reassurance. 

This surveillance often extends beyond parenting. Among young adults, sharing one's location can become an expectation in friendships and romantic relationships. What begins as a convenient way to coordinate plans can gradually become a perceived measure of loyalty or trust. Choosing not to share a location might even be interpreted as having something to hide. Healthy relationships require boundaries, and there is a meaningful difference between voluntarily sharing information and feeling obligated to account for every movement. Trust is difficult to develop when there is never an opportunity to practice it. 

Creating the Conditions for Flourishing 

Our God-given capacity for creativity and innovation allows us to develop tools that protect people, strengthen communities, and improve our lives. Technology itself isn't inherently good or evil. Like other aspects of God's good creation, however, its use can be distorted by fear, selfishness, and the desire for power. The question isn't simply whether surveillance technology is beneficial, but whether the ways we use it contribute to human flourishing. From a social work perspective, this question becomes especially important when considering young people who have little control over how they're monitored. Youth involved in foster care, juvenile justice, schools, and other institutional systems may experience surveillance not as a voluntary safety measure but as an exercise of authority. Their privacy and independence may already be limited by circumstances beyond their control. 

The Christian belief that every person is created in God's image reminds us that young people are not merely individuals to be managed, monitored, or protected. They possess inherent dignity and are developing the capacity to exercise judgment and assume responsibility. Both Christian ethics and social work values call us to consider how power is exercised, whose interests are being served, and whether our practices respect the dignity of those affected. 

I don't anticipate giving up the ability to see where my teenagers are anytime soon. There is genuine comfort in knowing they've arrived safely at school, work, or a friend's house. But I'm increasingly convinced that having the ability to monitor my children doesn't mean I always need to exercise it. Sometimes loving our children well means knowing when to step back, allowing them to make decisions, experience consequences, and develop confidence in their own judgment.  

For Christians, perhaps this is part of the larger work of learning to trust God rather than our own ability to control every circumstance. We are called to protect the vulnerable, but also to cultivate wisdom, responsibility, and freedom. Perhaps one of the most important questions we can ask as we consider the benefits and costs of living in a surveillance era is whether knowing more is always helping us love better.