Parents live every day with the fear that something could happen to their children — and a multibillion-dollar security industry has grown to give them ways to keep their nightmares in check. From baby monitoring to computer spyware to home drug tests, worried moms and dads now have many, many ways to check up on their kids at any time of the day or night. Here, a look at the protective parent market, by the numbers:
$3
Cost of a home kit to test for a single drug; kits that test for 10 substances sell for $19.95
$30
Price of a basic baby monitor
$279
Price of a high-end baby monitor with audio and video
$200
Approximate price of a GPS tracker that doubles as a digital children's watch, sold by BrickHouse Security
3.5
Number of "hyper-texters" — teens who send more than 120 text messages per day — who have had sex for every non-hyper-texting teen who is sexually active
20
Percentage of high school students who qualified as hyper-texters in a recent Cleveland study
$5
Monthly fee for SafeText, a system that lets parents monitor their children's text messaging
$100 to $150
Range of prices, per year, for systems such as Mobile Spy and MobiStealth, which can monitor smartphones using Google's Android operating system
72
Percentage of parents who monitor their kids' activity online
$99
Price of Spector PRO and eBlaster software for monitoring online chats, instant messages, and emails
80
Percentage of teens who use privacy settings to hide some of their online activities from their parents or friends
8
Percentage of teens who say they accept all social-networking friend requests they receive from people they don't know
Sources: Associated Press, Better Parenting, TIME, TRUSTe
