Parents are using apps to track their grown-up children at university in a “breach of common decency”, a leading US technology author has claimed.
Dave Eggers, whose dystopian bestseller The Circle was made into a film starring Tom Hanks, Emma Watson and Karen Gillan, warned that this type of “surveillance” had been normalised by society’s addiction to social media and it was fuelling tolerance of spying by government and tech providers.
Eggers, 48, who has disconnected his home internet, wants Silicon Valley tech giants to be held more accountable and is campaigning for the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights to be updated for the digital world.
Giving the HG Wells lecture, hosted by writers’ charity English PEN at the Bridge Theatre in Southwark, Eggers told how he became aware of the problem during a talk about privacy with young students at a university. “One young woman mentioned that her parents regularly tracked her location and online activities on her smartphone,” he said.
“I asked the rest of the students how many of them were being regularly monitored by their parents — about half raised their hands.
“Most students I met didn’t have an overwhelming problem with any of this. They had been tracked most of their lives and had grown to expect, and even desire, constant parental contact.”
Describing how social media had allowed society to “forget every basic rule of etiquette and consideration”, he added: “We want more information, often information to which we’re not entitled. We need to examine how we as citizens aid in the erosion of digital rights — and how we can change course.”
Eggers also warned that youngsters were “helpless to exit a hyperloop they have been on since they were given phones” and faced “towering health risks” from phone overuse.
