I was recently sent a rather unsettling press release from a company called Y-cam. Unsettling, because it illustrates how far we have come towards a surveillance society – a society based on fear. Here are a few extracts from the blurb so you can see what I mean. “Unlike traditional security systems, the HomeMonitor range from Y-cam lets you see and hear what’s happening in your child’s room from anywhere, on your smartphone or tablet … Being able to watch live or review your last seven days of recordings securely stored in your cloud account … can be helpful.”
But why would you want to install such a thing in your home – in effect, allowing you to see your children’s behaviour 24/7? The Y-cam people have the answer. “Helping parents feel comfortable and confident in their childcare arrangements allows them to focus on their jobs and feel less anxious about being away from their children. HomeMonitor lets you view your child’s activities throughout the day without phoning the childminder every five minutes.”
And here’s the rub: “Parents often worry about leaving their children at home with nannies, au pairs and childminders.”
Do they? I suppose they do, although I never have, and I suppose you can worry about anything if you put your mind to it. What about teachers – are they up to no good? Why not install a monitor to find out? That friend they have gone to play with – how well do you know their parents? Perhaps a camera installed in a school satchel or a teddy will make sure they are safe, or being given sufficient green vegetables for supper.
Y-cam tries to counter this objection with this disclaimer: “Parents should avoid using the camera to spy on childcarers and if you don’t trust someone to be in your house unsupervised, you should not employ them to look after your children. However, children can sometimes exhibit unusual behaviour and having a way of observing them when they are in their own home can help parents understand the cause of certain behaviours.”
In other words, if your children are exhibiting “unusual behaviours”, the the childcarer may be up to something. Should you tell the childcarer they are being monitored by security cameras? But if you do, that means they might know how to avoid them. Perhaps you should put one in every room. Then you will safe.
Or will you? Because paranoia feeds on itself. After all, no one is really safe. The security camera seems a practical solution to a genuine worry, but to me it represents a disturbed mindset – one that is increasingly typical of not only parents but also institutions – because it considers trust a luxury that you cannot afford.
Yet what are we, as a society, and as individuals, without trust? We are isolated, fearful atoms, watching for every other isolated, fearful atom to take advantage of us. We can put up as many checks and inspections as we like – for instance in schools and hospitals – and have managers that monitor other managers and so on ad infinitum. But that way lies madness. Sooner or later, we have to trust, or the very substance of human relationships breaks down.
The security camera comes from the same mindset that gave us “stranger danger”. The fact is that having a general attitude of fearfulness – and a camera cannot alleviate such a fear – is unlikely to make your children safer. It will simply enable neuroticism. Such neuroticism is contagious. It will send a message to your children that is depressingly common – that people, by and large, are dangerous. Trust no one. Be watchful at all times.
I don’t want to live in a society like that. And I don’t want my children to, either. So I will continue to trust, not only childminders but people in general, and hope for the best. Inevitably, once in a while, I will get let down. So be it. The alternative is simply too depressing to contemplate.
