Life 360 and other spyware apps on phones

I read an article about how a role of an assistant principle at a middle school was to “look through kids phones that were confiscated for usage during school hours”.

I have feelings about that in general because he said he found a ton of inappropriate videos and pictures which is essentially him looking at child pornography but I digress.

The assistant principal essentially said that parents should be randomly checking their kids phones, going through their stuff, don’t let them have their phones behind closed doors, make your kid show you their conversations, etc.

Thoughts?

My personal thoughts is that this is how you get really sneaky kids. By monitoring them, randomly going through their stuff, telling them they don’t have a right to privacy, and making them go through conversations they are having with you, you become an unsafe space for your child. Your kid won’t want to share anything with you since it’s mandated that they do. I think this can also teach kids to have a huge lack of boundaries because if this wasn’t a parent and a child and was two people in a relationship, we would say it’s incredibly toxic relationship.