Yup. I’m 100% on board with the “it’s illegal for kids to be in public” and walking, being in a park, or being in a city center all carry a small ( ) but real chance of police harassment. Malls barely exist. Public transit sucks.

I spent one summer really in to home automation. I realized that the door locks could log, with a time stamp, when people went in and out, the cameras never saw anything but my roommates and neighbors, i could get logs of whose phones did what interactions wit the " smart" homes, when motion sensors were tripped, when lights were turned on and off, even when sensor equipped windows were opened and closed.

At the time it creeped me out bc it was a perfect toolkit for domestic abuse and rigid, to the second control of your partner’s or family’s movements. I didn’t consider it in the context of “normal” parents monitoring their children but it’s a 1:1 fit and, frankly, just as abusive to monitor your children on that level. Something I didn’t see mentioned; once kids had cell phones they were expected to carry those phones at all time, and answer immediately when their parents called no matter what they were doing.

Also, the cops can see some or all of the recordings and info from Ring cameras, no warrant needed.

I turned almost all of it off except being able to unlock the door with your phone (one of the only actually useful things the system could accomplish), the camera i had aimed at my back yard to watch the opossum, and the open/closed sensor on my bedroom windows (it’d send me a push notification if it was going to rain and the window was open).

Idk much about the academics side of it. I graduated right before “No Child Left Behind” was brought on line and the destruction of the education system kicked in to high gear. As an older Millenial the mantra was “go to college go to college go to college” without any real guidance beyond that. Why? For what? Then everyone graduated in to the wreckage of 2007 (and in 2005 Biden made it illegal to discharge your debt under the pretense of someone, somewhere, might “cheat” the system somehow).

Where are kids supposed to party? They’re under constant surveillance from countless cameras, cops, and concerned parents. Same with sex and dating, there’s a ton of ways for parents to intrude on you at all times, even if it’s just calling your cell to demand to know where you are. And all the cool places shut down in 07, the survivors crashed and burned in 19, so where do you go? The mall? Do malls even exist? And $$$$$$$$$$$$$

And “school resource officers” installed in schools to enforce submission, criminalize dissent and any attempt to push back at school as a system of control, reinforce us state race terrorism, and simplify the slave procurement system.

Also, “school shootings” given so much media attention people think they’re common and widespread and kids are legit terrified they’re going to be gunned down every day bc it’s plastered across the news 24/7. “Active shooter drills”. This is a personal peeve, I became sentient right when the 24/7 cable news cycle industry started with the First Gulf War. I’ve watched them go from war to PCP to salmonella on your kitchen counters to workplace shootings to “urban youth gangs” to trrrism (Al-Qaeda is in your shitty town!) To heroin, trying everything to discover what could create maximum terror in their viewership to ensure maximum engagement. Well the fuckers found it; there’s nothing more terrifying than your helpless children being murdered at school where they’re outside your control and observation. And the news has just hammered and hammered and hammered on that for years to keep people afraid and eyes on advertising, never you mind how low the odds of it actually happening are (i have a separate screed about “mass shooting” being cynically refined in the public imagination from meaning situations where a person deliberately intended to kill strangers to any shooting where more than one person was hit).

It’s all very fucked. “Kids staring at their phones!” aren’t the problem (though social media as a form of ruthless sousveillance, all kinds of gambling bullshit, attention stealing is). Phones are the last plave kids have where they can interact with the world without being hounded by parents, disciplined by school staff, harassed by cops, watched by hostile Nextdoor Gestapo, chased out by shop owners, or expected to pay to exist.

Like when was the last time you saw an eight year old or a ten year old wandering around unaccompanied catching bugs and swinging a stick? I literally cannot remember, but I used to wander all over town back in the day, walk miles to and from school, try to catch turtles in the creek all afternoon. This was not idyllic, i was maximizing my time away from an abusive home situation at some points. But not being home, and not being bothered about it, was an option to get away from that situation.

This is a rant i’ve ranted many times. Kids are no longer allowed much if any autonomy and are subject to constant, sometimes violent (physically and otherwise) surveillance and discipline wherever the go in life, supported by the digital panopticon that would have made the famed and much maligned STASI go “okay this is too intrusive y’all need to calm down”