Hinsdale South Case Raises Parenting Question: Is It OK to Breach Your Teen's Privacy?

Police and educators in the Hinsdale area are speaking out about the high school student who was charged last week with eight felonies for threatening a fellow student via social media and possessing several weapons, a Nazi uniform and explosives.

Darien Police Chief Greg Thomas told the Daily Herald it surprised him as much as the public that the minor’s parents said they didn't know about any of the things the police found. At last Wednesday’s detention hearing, the findings were revealed in more detail: a flare gun that had been converted to work as a real gun; a shotgun; a sawed-off rifle; more than 150 rounds of ammunition; knives; ski masks; brass knuckles; Nazi posters and flags; a World War II German soldier’s uniform; a Soviet flag; and paper targets.

“So, you know full well it wasn’t one minor item hidden between the mattress and bed frame,” Thomas said. “This is something obviously more intense than that.”

The case of a Hinsdale South student who authorities say had an arsenal of weapons in his Darien bedroom once again raises questions for parents of teenagers: How much privacy is appropriate, and what's the best way for parents to set effective boundaries?

Most teens aren't going to have guns, ammunition and IEDs in their rooms, but some are hiding something, be it drugs, inappropriate pictures or bad report cards.

Tammy Prentiss, Hinsdale High School District 86’s assistant superintendent, said the parent-teen privacy talk needs to happen much earlier than high school so parents can set reasonable privacy boundaries with their children.

"That conversation needs to happen in middle school, typically around sixth grade, when parents decide kids can have their own computer and devices," Prentiss said. "And we all have to be in this together. Technology changes so rapidly, and the kids are always three steps ahead of the adults because that's the environment they're growing up in."

Speaking of technology, Thomas also suggested parents have access to their teens’ passwords and that they check their social media accounts from time to time.

Parenting.com suggests tips like keeping kids in a central location when they’re using a computer, purchasing filtering software for electronics and staying airtight on those Facebook privacy settings. There are several child monitoring apps available for parent use, many of them elaborate in content and structure. Among them are NetNanny, Safe Eyes, Find My Kids and GPS Tracker Pro.

But is this effective? Caroline Knorr, parenting editor at Common Sense Media, told CBS News in 2014 that child monitoring apps, for example, might actually prey on parents’ fears.

"Kids know technology better than their parents do,” Knorr said. “If you rely on technology to monitor your kids or prevent them from engaging in online risks you are getting a false sense of security. Any determined kid can defeat any technology you put out there.”

Furthermore, Knorr says parents need to recognize that kids "believe that their phones are sacred and private." To her, parents who try to intrude on that are setting up a "parent versus kid situation, even for good kids who are not doing anything wrong."

Experts told CNN that a smart move for monitoring a child’s online behavior could be to engage with the social media yourself, create an account and follow them on it. And, since social media use has been associated with increased levels of distress, talking to your kids about it could be a really important part of modern parenting.

As for snooping in rooms, there doesn’t seem to be a consensus as to whether it’s okay at all, let alone how much or how often it should happen.

"Part of getting our kids to be productive members of society requires us protecting them from themselves," Darien Police Chief Thomas said. "How do you do that? You start by making sure there's not any bad stuff in the common areas and you go into their bedrooms. You're not necessarily snooping or trying to find stuff, but you're definitely seeing what's going on."

So, what do you think? Could the case of the Hinsdale South student have been caught earlier with some more vigilant parenting? Is peeking into your teenagers’ private lives okay? Let us know in the comments below.

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Photo by Anicka Slachta for Patch.