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This Week in Teens

How to Stalk Your Teenage Children Offline

What if I were to tell you that—surprise!—you’re actually the parent of a teenager? I bet you’d want to know exactly what’s going on in his or her life.

The only thing better than internet stalking is actual stalking. Photo via Flickr user k.ivoutin

Do you ever wonder what your kids are really up to? Probably not. According to VICE’s demographic research, you likely don’t have any children. But what if I were to tell you that—surprise!—you’re actually the parent of a teenager? I bet you’d want to know exactly what’s going on in his or her life.

Luckily, the good folks at Time have your interests at heart. This week, the historied newsfotainment pamphlet published a helpful article under the headline “This Is How to Stalk Your Teenage Children Online.” In it, “one mother comes clean” about her efforts to get more involved in the lives of her children without actually talking to them. She details how she created a fake social media account, befriended her children, and ultimately found out that they’re pretty boring. Some people might suggest that catfishing your kids is a pretty weird way to make sure that they’re behaving themselves. Maybe you should actually just tell them that you’re going to monitor their internet use and then talk to them directly if you find anything objectionable. It's fair to wonder what the author would have done had she actually found misbehavior. “Honey, we need to talk. I impersonated a teenager online, pretended to be your friend, completely violated your trust and privacy, and found out that you’ve been swearing. You’d better watch out—prospective employers can find that.”

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Well, everyone’s a critic. It’s arguable, even, that this feat of stunt blogging didn’t go nearly far enough. We’re slowly seeing an acceptance by both teens and adults that the separation of the internet from real life is a false dichotomy. URL is IRL. Cyberspace is meatspace. The only difference between this computer screen and a sheet of paper is that you can't burn this screen for warmth. Though stricter parenting has forced kids to spend less time with their friends in person and more time chattin’ online, the internet remains just one aspect of your teen’s life. If you truly want to know what your kid is doing, it’s going to take more than just creating a fake Pinterest account. To help, This Week in Teens has put together a guide to keeping up with your offspring in the physical realm.

This is how to stalk your teenage children offline:

School

Unless your adolescent is already a lost cause, most of his no-parents time is likely spent at school. Technically, this doesn’t count as unsupervised, but how can you really know that teachers and principals and militarized campus police are paying attention? You can’t. Luckily, you have a few options here. First, you could always try to get a job at his school, although in this economic climate, that might be a challenge. You could also just try to hang out on campus a lot, but that can create resentment between you and your teen and could cause him to lash out in unpredictable or undesireable ways.

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Your best bet is probably to run with the time-tested “transfer student” route, à la 21 Jump Street. Pick up some false papers, add a bit of concealer and a close shave, toss on some new Hollister threads, and you’ll be one of the popular kids in no time. You can very easily use this new social standing—along with your uncanny ability to provide alcohol for parties—to find out pertinent information about your teen. There are a few risks, though. For one thing, falsifying legal documents and pretending to be a student is probably at least a misdemeanor. More importantly, your teen must not recognize that the school’s new prom queen is his mom. Which brings us to…

Disguises

Whether you choose to become a fellow student or just to closely shadow your children at all hours, going incognito means looking incognito. Appearing to be someone else can be quite difficult, but you’ve got one thing in your favor: Halloween’s next week, and shops across America are fully stocked with costumes. Even better, come November 1, all of it will be totally useless to the 70 or 80 percent of the population that isn’t constantly trying to remain in disguise. That means clearance prices, baby!

When choosing a new look, it’s important to be strategic. Think about where your teen likes to hang out, and dress to blend in. Does your teen love music festivals? Try this Sexy Native American Cherokee Warrior costume. Does your kid have a medical condition? Nurse outfits couldn’t be easier to come by. Suspect your child’s been smoking pot at the park? Freak him out with this human-sized squirrel suit. Your teen will never want to take drugs again!

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Friends? Informants

Face it: You might not know shit about your kid. You’re old and out of touch. Miley Cyrus, the youngest famous person you can name, is almost 22. Even though you’ve told your child that he can tell you anything, maybe he knows that you just wouldn’t understand. Fortunately, there’s someone who does get it, someone with whom your child has no problem sharing his dirtiest secrets: his friends.

If only there was something you had that his friends didn’t—hang on, there's a ton of things. Money. An ID. Theoretical self-autonomy. Any and all of these can be used to gain insights into your child’s life. Next time your teen has some pals over, ask for a bit of innocuous information. Offer them five bucks to know if your kid has a crush on anyone, for example. Once they take the bait, the trap is set. (I’ve never been fishing or hunting, so this may be the wrong order of operations.) Up the ante, bit by bit. As soon as they offer resistance—and they will—you’re going to have to turn the tables on them. Threaten to divulge that they’ve been snitching. Take away your payment and instead blackmail them. Make the little snots beg you not to tell their entire class about their disloyalty. If you play your cards right, you can get years of information out of a single teen, though there’s no reason to have only one teen working for you at a time. Remember, in some information economies, it wasn’t uncommon for millions of people to be working as an informant in some capacity.

When stalking anyone, it’s important to realize that your efforts may ultimately prove futile. The mind of another person is, of course, indiscernible. We’ve all seen troubled teens morph into successful adults, and honor-roll students end up selling Oxys out of a safety-school dorm room. Your efforts to create a bonsai child to precise specifications may go up in flames. It’ll be your fault, but these things can happen to everyone. To borrow a quote from a young adult classic, “Nobody knows anyone else, ever”—teens especially! But that doesn’t mean it isn’t your pseudo-parental duty to try.

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