Technology has made parenting so much more complex. Now, you can be more involved than ever, or you can leave your kid to hang out on TikTok unsupervised for all of their waking days. The choice is the parents to make, but there are cases of observing your kid too closely. I was in high school when the Life360 app became popular, and so many parents of my friends used it too stringently. The app diligently tracks a person’s location and collects tons of data about how they’re traveling form place to place. One of my friend’s mom would track how fast she was driving and reprimand her if she went even 10 miles over the speed limit. Parents of teens were literally watching every move they made, and it made high school feel like a panopticon even more than it already was. If you’ve ever been personally victimized by an overbearing parental observer, these cringy parenting texts might strike an accord.