Essay Sample on Parental Surveillance: Protecting Children or Violating Privacy

Introduction

Every parent always aims the best for their children. In the story, Marie injects a sophisticated surveillance device to monitor her daughter, Sara’s whereabouts after suffering a scare with her while out in a playground. The device grants Marie access to Sara’s viewpoint seeing everything she does via a tablet monitor. She is also able to get alerts whenever her daughter is in distress and having the ability to block terrifying images (Bramesco). However, their relationship unfolds over the course as Sara grew up when her mother spots her through the device, having sex while out during her teenage years (Longo). This episode marks the effort of taking existing technology, the arkangel system, and nudging it to a terrifying and believable future Boren.

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Technology Devices

The featured information technology devices are a parenting surveillance system with a monitoring device that could track the daughter's movements and actions. The daughter is injected with an implant that is connected to an app on her mother’s tablet (Longo). It proves an unethical act where Mary deprives her daughter of her privacy by monitoring all she did. An example of an event in the film is where the mother unpacks the surveillance device and witnesses her daughter having sex while she was out (Longo). According to the practical approach to ethics, it is good to consider who will be affected by the action and the benefits thereof (Bramesco). The information technology used was the surveillance device, with its uniqueness being the installment of a chip on Sara’s head, which was connected to Marie’s tablet to help in monitoring.

According to the utilitarian approach, the technology could be ethically justified by demonstrating that the mother wanted benefits by monitoring her daughter, thus protecting her. The common good approach would also help in justifying the mother’s action as helpful to both (Bramesco). However, the technology could be ethically problematic where the daughter’s right to choose what they want is interfered with by the mother (Longo). The fairness in the use of the device is compromised since the daughter is not treated with justice.

According to the utilitarian argument, one could justify torture because it will save many lives. In this incidence, torturing the daughter could be justified since it will benefit both daughters, in terms of moral behavior, and the mother in salvaging her child from immorality (Longo). According to the rights argument, one could argue torture is never justified due to a duty to uphold certain principles (Bramesco). Torturing Sara will not be justified under the rights argument since, as a human being, she has the dignity to choose what she wants with her life and to have her choice respected.

Conclusion

In conclusion, an example of a conceptual muddy in some films is the installation of a chip in a person’s head to monitor their whereabouts, behaviors, and controlling them. This new technology, however, keeps the mother and daughter so separate. It seemed there is a lot of untapped potential to the premise of the new surveillance technology (Longo). A policy vacuum exists with the invention of this new technology that has never been into place. If this fictional depiction became a reality in the real world, parents would have control over what their children do (Bramesco). However, this would still result in crashed relationships between parents and their children who would stress for freedom to choose what they want.

Works Cited

Bramesco, Charles. “Black Mirror Recap: Parents Juts Don’t Understand. Vulture. 2017. https://www.vulture.com/2017/12/black-mirror-season-4-recap-arkangel.html Accessed on 12th July 2020.

Longo, Chris. “Black Mirror Season 4 Episode 2: Arkangel Review. Den of Geek, 2017. https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/black-mirror-season-4-episode-2-arkangel-review/