X-Detect. Spy Agent. Followit.

They sound like part of an elaborate new espionage game, and in a way, they are, only the targets are teens, and parents are the undercover agents.

Lake Fong, Post-Gazette Dan Suter, 16, does his homework on a computer as his brother, Chris, 15, watches at their home in Point Breeze. Click photo for larger image.

Thanks to a proliferation of new software, more and more parents are finding ways to spy on their children by secretly monitoring their movements on the Internet or by planting tracking devices in their cell phones.

This supply of kid-surveillance devices has grown alongside concerns about how to keep children safe in a world of school violence, teen suicides and Internet predators.

But how far to go in tracking a child's behavior is the subject of debate among parents and professionals, many of whom remember an era when invading a teenager's privacy meant little more than reading a hidden diary or digging out a copy of Playboy buried in a boy's bureau drawer.

Kim O'Donnell, a Mt. Lebanon mother of three, hasn't bought any monitoring software yet -- her oldest child is 12 -- but she's not ruling it out. For now, she reads her son's e-mail periodically.

"I don't think it's spying. We're their parents," O'Donnell said. "And I really believe it's our prerogative as parents to keep an eye on our kids. I don't think we need to hear every phone conversation, but we need to check on things occasionally because they aren't going to let us know themselves."

Other parents say they are deeply uncomfortable with the notion of surreptitious monitoring of their children through high-tech devices or by any other means.

"I think that crosses the line," said Cindi Nelson, of Squirrel Hill. Nelson describes her family as fairly computer-savvy. Her husband, a physics professor at Carnegie Mellon University, and her three children each have a computer, as she does, for her freelance editing work.

"Granted, there's a lot of stuff out there we need to be worried about with respect to our children, but we as parents can't be so paranoid about what they're doing that we turn into spies. That's appalling. If you're reduced to that level, it's an indicator that many more serious things have gone wrong in your communications with your children."

There are other ways to pick up on behavioral changes, Nelson said.

"If I were to see my children closing themselves up in their rooms and become resentful at intrusions, that would lead me to take some action. But I don't think that authorizing people to spy on their kids will address the issue of the depressed child who is thinking about suicide."

'They'll find another way'

Others are more conflicted. Elaine Wertheim, of Mt. Lebanon, recalls that she did "absolutely nothing" to monitor her son Ben's Internet activities, "And I hate to admit that. It just seemed like it was unnecessary, and that may be very naive on my part.

"There are so many ways in which we don't know what's going on with our kids. I just cannot buy that idea that if you raise them well, that they'll never be faced with these kinds of issues, about doing drugs, teenage sex, all the things you worry about.

"Our computer is in an area that's very open, and while that may have helped during the day, at night, he could have been down there doing anything," she added, sounding increasingly frantic at the thought of what Ben, now 20 and a sophomore at Penn State, could have been up to.

Not to worry, says Ben Wertheim.

"I never did any of that stuff. I had friends who were rebels, but I wasn't. Still, kids are going to figure out ways to do things, no matter what. If they want to sneak around, and they know their parents are reading their e-mails, they'll find another way to do it."

Besides forcing teens to hide their activities, parents also may be breaching the bonds of trust that have already been strained by adolescent yearnings for independence, some experts say.

"The risks definitely outweigh the benefits," said Dr. David Brent, a psychiatrist at UPMC's Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic.

"In the long run, parents are much better off with an open relationship where there's trust, rather than trying to sneak around and monitor their kids without them knowing it."

"If you're worried about the fact that your teen is using drugs, or their school performance is declining, if they're irritable, withdrawn, preoccupied with death or negative themes, these are all things you can talk about without having to monitor them on the Internet," Brent said. "You can never be 100 percent successful in such endeavors, and if a child learns that you're doing this kind of monitoring, they may be less likely to communicate directly with you, which is your goal. You don't gain very much, and lose a lot."

Carol Weston, a child-rearing expert for Girls' Life Magazine and author of "The Diary of Melanie Martin" and other books, understands the motivations behind parents' concerns.

"If you have a valid reason as a parent to be concerned about your daughter or son's well-being, then the rule becomes: Safety first. You think your child is about to meet that stranger he "met" online, or you fear your child is suicidal? Then you're not invading his privacy, you're trying to protect him. It's different."

But for the most part, she cautions against even such time-honored parental snooping techniques as diary reading.

"If your daughter keeps a diary, that's a wonderful way for her to express herself and perhaps even to find her voice as a budding writer. If she thinks you're snooping, she'll stop writing. And what will you have accomplished? Kids deserve privacy just as much as adults."

'A million predators online'

Electronic snooping on one's children is legal, but, "There's something fundamentally creepy about covertly monitoring other people, even children," said Lee Tien, a senior staff lawyer with Electronic Frontier Foundation, an Internet privacy watchdog group. "We are not big fans of covert surveillance in any form. We feel it's much better to talk to your children."

He's worried about other devices, too, such as cell phone programs like uLocate, which will notify parents when a child leaves a house with a phone. Current law doesn't recognize privacy in what he calls "location information, at least if you're in a public place. And we think it's a big loophole that needs to be closed." Tien worries that this tracking technology will fall into the wrong hands -- not parents with a legitimate interest in protecting their kids, but criminals or just unscrupulous people.

"Who's going to be snooping on your kids' movements?" Tien asked. "Just you? Or do uLocate's company's employees also have access to that information? "

Tripp Blair, president of uLocate, said a limited number of his employees did have that access, but he noted that other institutions, such as banks, had similar arrangements with their customers over private information.

Still, Blair's company takes privacy very seriously, he said, noting that cell phone users can turn off the tracking device. "We don't encourage covert tracking. We want it to be upfront and honest, and almost all the families who've contracted with us say they're very open with their children."

Some phone companies have become increasingly sensitive to these unresolved questions. Verizon Wireless, the nation's largest cell phone provider, "is not planning on selling tracking devices, because of concerns about privacy," said Laura Merritt, a spokeswoman.

But manufacturers of the Internet software are charging full speed ahead, saying they're responding to a real need.

"I don't think parents really get how dangerous the Internet is and how sick people are," said Leslie Kirchman, whose company, ActionTec, makes Kid Defender. For $39.95 a year, the program allows a parent who may still be at work to read "over the shoulder" of his teenager who is instant messaging with friends at home after school. If the parent sees that a child is talking to someone she is concerned about, she can block that conversation immediately.

"You should sit for half an hour in one of these chat rooms sometime," Kirchman said. "During that time, I guarantee you, you'll get someone who comes on and asks for the age and gender of people in the group so he can initiate a conversation, which leads to a request for a meeting. There are a million predators online."

Josh Finer, 26, the founder and president of Software4Parents.com, a company that sells a variety of online monitoring devices, concedes his products aren't for everyone.

"What people need to realize is that not all families and situations are equal. A parent may have an excellent relationship with their child, and that is wonderful. They may communicate well enough to not be concerned about what she is doing online. But what about the parent who found drugs in their 13-year-old daughter's room? They confronted her, they talked, it's over. But she may still be hanging out with the wrong crowd and talks to them online frequently. This is when a parent comes to me for the software. Should I not sell it to her?"

Finer describes himself as a former "bad" kid whose parents had "a lot of trust in me."

In retrospect, though, he thinks they should have bought some of the software he's selling now.

"I turned out OK, but I did a lot of bad stuff. I was constantly playing with fire and various nonlethal firearms. I think my parents could have probably pried a little more."