‘Big Brother’? No, It’s Parents
让家长更好地监控孩子网络活动？

When her children were ready to have laptops of their own, Jill Ross bought software that would keep an eye on where they went online. One day it offered her a real surprise. She discovered that her 16-year-old daughter had set up her own video channel.

吉尔·罗斯(Jill Ross)的孩子到了可以拥有笔记本电脑的年龄，吉尔便买了一款可监视自己孩子都在网上做些什么的软件。一天，这玩意儿真让她大吃了一惊。她发现，十六岁大的女儿已经开了自己的视频频道。

Using the camera on her laptop, sometimes in her bedroom, she and a friend were recording mundane teenage banter and broadcasting it on YouTube for the whole world to see.

通过笔记本电脑自带的摄像头，有时是在自己的卧室里，女儿和一个朋友将一些俗套的青少年间戏谑录了下来，然后放到YouTube上播出，让全世界都看到。
 


For Ms. Ross, who lives outside Denver, it was a window into her daughter’s mind and an emblem of the strange new hurdles of modern-day parenting. She did not mention it to her daughter; she just subscribed to the channel’s updates. The daughter said nothing either; she just let Mom keep watching.

对于家住丹佛市(Denver)郊区的罗斯女士来说，这是通向女儿心灵的一扇窗户，也象征着当今父母教养孩子的新奇障碍。她从未向自己的女儿提起此事，只是默默订阅了频道的更新。她女儿也什么都不说，只是让母亲继续监视。

“It’s a matter of knowing your kids,” Ms. Ross said of her discovery.

“这只是为了了解自己的孩子，”罗斯女士这样解释自己的发现。

Parents can now use an array of tools to keep up with the digital lives of their children, raising new quandaries. Is surveillance the best way to protect children? Or should parents trust them to share if they are scared or bewildered by something online?

现在，父母可以使用很多工具来跟踪孩子们的数字生活，新的迷惑随之而来。监控是保护孩子的最好方式吗？或者如果网上的一些东西吓到了孩子或让孩子感到困惑，父母还应该信任孩子，让其继续在网上分享吗？

The answers are as varied as parents themselves. Still, the anxieties of parenting in the digital age have spawned a mini-industry, as start-ups and established companies market new tools to track where children go online, who they meet there and what they do. Because children are glued to smartphones, the technology can allow parents to track their physical whereabouts and even monitor their driving speed.

答案因父母而异。不过，数字时代如何做父母的忧虑已经孕育出了一个迷你产业，初创公司和成名企业都在推销新型软件，好让父母追踪孩子们的网上踪迹，追踪他们在网上都见了谁，又干了些什么。因为孩子对智能手机十分痴迷，相关技术还可使父母追踪到他们的地理位置，甚至监控他们的行驶速度。

If, a few years ago, the emphasis was on blocking children from going to inappropriate sites on the family computer, today’s technologies promise to embed Mom and Dad — and occasionally Grandma — inside every device that children are using, and gather intelligence on them wherever they go.

几年前，技术的重点是阻止孩子用家庭电脑上不合适的网站，现在呢，技术则保证父母（偶尔是奶奶）可以嵌入孩子使用的任何一种设备，无论他们去哪都可以搜集到他们的情报。

A smartphone application alerts Dad if his son is texting while driving. An online service helps parents keep tabs on every chat, post and photo that floats across their children’s Facebook pages. And another scans the Web in case a child decides to try a new social network that the grown-ups have not even heard of yet.

如果孩子在开车时发短信，一款智能手机应用程序可以向父母发出警报。一种在线服务可助父母监视孩子们脸谱页面上的每一次聊天、每一个帖子和每一张照片。而另一项技术可扫描整个网络，以防孩子决定尝试一个大人听都没听过的新社交网络。

The spread of cellphones and tablets in the hands of children has complicated matters, giving rise to applications that attract the young and worry parents. Earlier this month, for instance, came revelations that an app designed for flirting, called Skout, had led to three sexual assault cases involving children across the country.

手机和平板电脑在孩子当中的广泛应用使问题复杂化了，催生出那些吸引着年轻而又忧心忡忡父母的应用程序。比如，这个月早些时候就有消息说，一款名叫Skout的调情应用程序已在美国导致了三起涉及孩童的性侵扰案。

The average American family uses five Internet-enabled devices at home, including smartphones, a recent survey by Cox Communications and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children found, while barely one in five parents uses parental controls on those devices.

考克斯通信公司(Cox Communications)和全美失踪和受虐儿童中心(National Center for Missing and Exploited Children)新近进行的一项调查表明：美国家庭一般在家使用五个依赖互联网的设备，其中包括智能手机，与此同时，只有不到五分之一的家长在这些设备上使用父母监控程序。

In Richmond, Va., Mary Cofield, 62, is one of the careful ones. She struck a deal with her 15-year-old granddaughter last year. The girl was offered an Android phone with full Internet privileges, so long as Grandma could monitor her every move.

弗吉尼亚州里士满(Richmond)现年六十二岁的玛丽·科菲尔德(Mary Cofield)就是这群小心翼翼者中的一员。去年，她和自己十五岁大的孙女订了个协议。只要奶奶可以监视她在网上的一举一动，小女孩就可以获得一部可任意上网的安卓手机(Android phone)。

“My theory is, you’ve got to be in the game to help them know what’s wrong and what’s right,” she said. “Keeping them from it is not going to work. You can either be out there with them in the game — or they’ll be out there without you.”

“我的理论是：你得在游戏中帮助他们知道什么是错，什么又是对，”她说道。“让他们远离游戏是行不通的。要么是你和他们同在游戏中，要么就是他们在游戏中，而你却出局了。”

Ms. Cofield, a retired government tax agent who runs an online travel business, chose a tool called uKnowKids.com, which combs the granddaughter’s Facebook page and text messages. UKnowKids sends her alerts about inappropriate language. It also offers Ms. Cofield a dashboard of the child’s digital activities, including what she says on Twitter, whom she texts and what photos she is tagged in on Facebook. It translates teenage slang into plain English she can understand: “WUD” is shorthand for “What are you doing?” Ms. Cofield checks it daily.

科菲尔德女士是一位退休的政府税收人员，现在经营着一家网上旅游公司。她选择了一个名为uKnowKids.com的工具，可以仔细梳理自己孙女的脸谱页面和短信。一旦发现不合适的言语，UKnowKids就会向她发送警报。这个工具还给科菲尔德提供了一个记录孙女网上活动的控制面板，包括她在推特上说了些什么，给谁发了短信，又在脸谱上添加了哪些照片。该软件将少年俚语译成她能理解的简明英语：比如，“WUD”是“你在干什么？”的缩写。科菲尔德每天都会查看这个控制面板。

Often, she says, she gleans when the girl is having trouble with a boy, or when there is conflict among friends. Most often, Ms. Cofield knows to keep her mouth shut. “Being privy to that information and not using it is also difficult,” she confessed. “If I did that, she would definitely go underground. I would be hopping on her every day.”

她说，她经常记录什么时候孙女与男孩子有了纠纷，什么时候孙女和朋友们闹了矛盾。更经常的是，科菲尔德明白要闭上自己的嘴巴。她承认，“了解这些信息而又不用它也是相当难以做到的。如果我这么做的话，她必然会转入地下活动，那我就得每天围着她跳来跳去了。”

Technology is at least as nimble as adolescents, and neither parents nor the technology they buy can always read a teenager’s mind. Sometimes children deactivate their Facebook accounts except at night, when they know their parents are not likely to be logging on. They roll over to new sites, often using pseudonyms. Very often they speak in code designed to stump parents.

技术的灵活多变性至少也跟青少年自身一样大，不管是家长还是家长所买的技术都不能总是看出一个少年的心思。有时，孩子们只在晚上启用自己的脸书账号，因为他们知道这个时候父母不太可能登陆。他们经常使用假名来浏览新网站，更常见的做法则是用意在蒙蔽家长的代码来交谈。

Technology companies now market tools for parents of children at every age group. The next version of Apple’s mobile operating system will offer a single-app mode so a parent can lock a toddler into one activity on an iPad.

现在，科技公司向各年龄段孩子的家长推销技术工具。下一代的苹果移动操作系统将提供单一应用模式，因此家长在一台苹果平板电脑上就可以锁定蹒跚学步孩童的活动。

Security companies like Symantec and Trend Micro offer computer software that detects when a child tries to visit a blocked Web site or creates a new social network account.

赛门铁克(Symantec)和趋势科技(Trend Micro)之类的电脑安全公司向家长提供软件，可以监测孩子访问被屏蔽网站或是创立新社交网络账号的举动。

Independent measurements of the market for family safety tools are hard to come by, and most companies do not release sales information. But that the market is large — and growing — is evident in two things: every security company and cellphone carrier is pitching such products, and start-ups in this field are popping up every month.

很难独立评估家庭安全软件的市场规模有多大，而且绝大部分公司都不发布相关的销售信息。但是这个市场是巨大的，而且在继续增长，明显的证据就是如下两点：每个电脑安全公司和手机运营商都在高调宣传此类产品，而每个月都有新兴公司涌现在这个领域。

Symantec says it added a million new subscribers to its Norton Online Family service last year.

赛门铁克说，它的诺顿在线家庭服务去年新增了一百万订户。

A text message application for the iPhone called textPlus allows Kyle Reed of Golden, Colo., to be copied on every text message his teenage son sends his girlfriend. “I feel torn a little bit. It’s kind of an invasion of privacy,” he said. “But he’s 13. I want to protect him.”

名为textPlus的苹果手机电脑短信应用程序使科罗拉多州金门大桥(Golden)的凯尔·里德(Kyle Reed)可以复制他儿子发给女朋友的每一条短信。“我有点撕裂的感觉。这是种侵犯隐私的行为，”他说，“但是他只有十三岁，我想保护他。”

Dan Sherman of Jackson, N.J., is what you might call the alpha monitor of his children’s digital lives, which is not surprising considering that he works in computer security.

你或许可称新泽西州杰克逊的丹·谢尔曼(Dan Sherman)是孩子数字生活的阿尔法检测器，但鉴于他的工作是电脑安全，这也就不足为奇了。

At home, he has installed a filter that blocks pornographic sites and software that tracks Web visits. He has set parental controls on the iPhones of his 8- and 13-year-old daughters so they cannot download applications. And the older daughter’s Facebook account is tracked by MinorMonitor, which alerts Mr. Sherman if there are references to bullying or alcohol.

他在家中安装了过滤软件，以便屏蔽色情网站和追踪网站访问的软件。他在自己八岁和十三岁女儿的苹果手机上设置了父母监控，这样她们就没法下载应用程序。而大女儿的脸谱账号也被MinorMonitor程序监控，如果其中出现了有关欺凌行为或酒精的信息，该程序就会向谢尔曼发出警报。

Does he worry that his daughters think he does not trust them? Mr. Sherman says they should learn that they will be monitored throughout their lives: “It’s not any different from any employer.”

他就不担心女儿会认为他不相信她们？谢尔曼说，她们应该知道，自己的一生都会被监控，“所有的雇主都是这么做的”。

来源：好英语网