By Analia Garcia
We all know that nothing we do on our school computers is completely private. Last year it was Securly; this year it’s Linewize. Many of you may be wondering the same thing: why the switch?
In the 2025–2026 school year, Securly was used to filter and monitor activity on our school computers. This year, the district changed to Linewize and its partners, Classwize and Qustodio. And yes, I am not making these names up. Qustodio is the parental-control component of Linewize, and according to Linewize, schools can choose to share information about students’ activity on school-managed devices with their parents. Depending on the settings chosen by the school, parents can see websites a student has accessed, blocked websites, Google or Bing search terms, YouTube videos, and a chronological timeline of internet activity from the previous 30 days.
Allegedly, these changes are meant to keep students safe and focused. And to be fair, there is a legitimate reason for schools to care about cybersecurity and student safety. The U.S. Department of Education acknowledges that educational technology creates important questions about how student information is collected, used, and shared, and it provides guidance for schools evaluating the privacy practices of educational technology companies. But at what point does protection turn into absolute control?
Now, not only do we students have to deal with the Bell to Bell Ban, but now a stricter computer program to monitor students? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying districts shouldn’t have any cybersecurity rules. I understand why schools need to block dangerous or inappropriate websites and protect students from genuine online threats. Linewize itself advertises monitoring tools that can identify potential safety risks and send real-time alerts to designated school staff.
But at the same time, we are not middle schoolers; therefore, we shouldn’t be treated as such. I understand the switch to a newer, stricter program for younger students who may need more supervision, but the whole point of high school is that it comes with a whole new set of freedoms. I don’t know about you, but when I got to high school, I felt so refreshed that I could just walk around with my AirPods in between classes and in study hall, that I could take a break from schoolwork when I didn’t have anything due, and that I could use my computer for things beyond simply completing assignments. With stricter monitoring, those freedoms and several more could eventually be stripped away from us.
And this isn’t just about whether students can play games during study hall. It is about whether high school students are ever allowed to practice responsibility. Mature students who are preparing themselves for college should gradually be trusted to make their own decisions. The students who choose to be irresponsible should face the consequences of their actions, so why should everyone else lose their freedoms because of them?
I’m just saying that maybe trapping older students into their studies and not allowing them to even have a choice to take a fun break probably won’t have a good effect on their motivation. It could contribute to burnout, senioritis, junior jeopardy, sophomore slump, and freshman fever. I’m sure you’re familiar with at least one of those terms.
There is also a larger privacy issue here. According to Linewize, schools can choose to share students’ online activity with parents, including search terms and websites visited. Linewize even gives schools the ability to configure whether parents see activity during school hours, outside of school hours, or 24/7. That may be useful for some families, but it also raises an important question: how much digital privacy should a high school student have on a school-issued device?
In my eyes, these programs are not automatically bad. They can protect students from genuine online dangers, and some monitoring is probably necessary on school devices. But there needs to be a line between keeping students safe and monitoring their every digital move. Adults in authority only understand us as a fragment of their lives; we have been young forever, it impacts us now, and it’ll impact the futures of others.
Without an outlet, school can become an endless, all-consuming void. Once summer arrives, will we even know what games are? What music sounds like? Will we remember the Wordle craze? I may sound extremely dramatic, but this is serious. If change doesn’t happen soon, we’re all going to turn into boring adults who forgot that the whole point of life is to live. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be dissatisfied with my life in my mid-30s, working a 9-to-5 in an office with nearly 700 cubicles, breaking my neck in a swivel chair with the only sound being that of keyboards click-clacking away sentence after sentence.
The point is, freedom has its consequences when put into the wrong hands, but so does excessive control. Linewize and its counterparts can keep students safe without treating every high school student like they are incapable of making responsible choices. We are old enough to understand our school responsibilities and what they imply for Chromebook usage. Maybe the real question isn’t whether schools should monitor students. Maybe it’s how much monitoring is enough.
