When parents start chatting about their tween or teenage children at a party, the conversation invariably turns to their anxiety about their child’s devices. So, it was a mother I met at a baby shower who told me about a fairly new app she was planning to use to keep on top of her teen’s digital life.

There are divergent schools of thought on monitoring apps: One group believes that keeping close tabs on their children’s every online move is a creepy invasion of privacy, and prefers to teach their children to independently make good choices. On the other end, there are parents who believe that children lack the emotional maturity and self-regulation to make good decisions all the time with technology, and require supervision until they are older and better equipped to control their impulses.

But keeping track of a child’s (or children’s) entire daily digital communication can seem like an overwhelming full-time job. Not to mention, there are secret codes and hidden apps that can be used to hide or disguise inappropriate content on a child’s phone.

In between these groups are parents who try to keep open lines of dialogue, keep a list of their child’s passwords and do random spot-checks on their devices.

There isn’t much good data on how many parents fall into each of these categories, although anecdotally, it seems to be about half who try to keep some kind of monitoring, even if just spot-checks, and half who are pretty hands-off.

This is where an app called Bark offers a different type of solution. It’s a subscription-based app ($9 a month for a family) that uses algorithms to scan a child’s phone for potentially harmful activity from bullying to sexting to mental health crises. When something is spotted through these filters, the parent gets an alert with the flagged content and advice on how to handle it with their child.

On one hand, it affords a child far more privacy, since all of their communication is not being watched or reported to a parent. Yet, it allows some measure of a safety net for parents.

Brian Bason, CEO of Bark, launched the company in February of 2016.

“Teens don’t understand the permanency of their online activities and the downstream effects they can have,” he said. Among their subscribers, 54 percent of kids have at least one issue per month that generates an alert for a parent to review. The vast majority of those parents, 80 percent, were completely unaware of the issue until they received an alert.

In some cases, they have been alerted about 10-year-old boys trying to download the dating app Tinder. But others have been more serious. There have been about two dozen situations in which a parent was alerted about a potentially suicidal child, Bason said. He said they see a large amount of cyberbullying, violence, threats and drug use, along with mental health concerns.

While the app can scan content over 20 different platforms on a child’s phone, there are things that can slip through the cracks. For example, not all “snaps” sent via Snapchat can be filtered. On Android phones, messages sent using WhatsApp cannot be filtered. On an iOS device, the content is captured when the device is connected and backed up to iCloud. On Android, the app is installed on both the parent’s and child’s phones.

While there are still some loopholes and the technology is evolving, this will help those parents who believe something is better than nothing. Ideally, this sort of careful monitoring service should be provided as an option to all cellphone subscribers through the monthly charges and fees that cellphone providers already charge.

For many parents, a child’s constant connectivity provokes a fear similar to when an adolescent starts driving, but unlike that rite of passage, there is no formal “digital citizenship exam” or learner’s permit that comes with the technology that connects them to the world and their friends. And yet, just like the potential risks that come with driving, there’s a legitimate worry that a foolish mistake could derail a child’s life.

Regardless of whether a parent is pro-monitoring, anti- or somewhere in between, it’s a relief that tech companies are continuing to find ways to help parents keep kids safer online.

Maryellen Pado started talking to her son when he was in elementary school about the responsibilities and risks involved with drinking alcohol. She had conversations with her children periodically over the years, so they would be prepared to make good decisions as adults.

And yet, the call still came during his senior year of high school: The cops had raided a party at a friend’s house, where he had been drinking.

“I was glad he told us the truth,” Pado said. “But I wasn’t sure what to say to him or to the parent who hosted the party.” That parent had provided alcohol to the underage drinkers.

Pado, who lives in the St. Louis area and works for Anheuser-Busch, turned to M.J. Corcoran, the parent coach who designed the company’s “Family Talk about Drinking” program. Corcoran says these conversations need to begin when children are young and evolve as they grow up.

When kids are younger, the focus should be on explaining clear boundaries and rules. When they move into tween and early teen years, parents should start asking more open-ended questions, such as: If you go to a party, and people are drinking there, what will you do? Ask kids how they might handle certain specific scenarios and situations.

As children get into later teen years and have more independence, the conversations should still include information about where a teen will be, what the transportation will be and who else will be there. Parents should share ways in which they can support a child’s decisions. For instance, come up with a word or emoji that can be texted if a teen find himself in an uncomfortable or unsafe situation and needs to be picked up. He or she may not be able to offer details in a phone or text conversation in front of friends. But the emoji could trigger a call back from a parent, who then says they are coming to pick up the child. This could help a teenager save face, and possibly, save a life.

Corcoran also says that parents need to sit down with each other and make sure they are on the same page before talking to their child. If one parent offers firm rules, but the other softens that stance later, it give a child mixed messages.

“Be very clear about what your beliefs are,” Corcoran said. “That will come through.”

And avoid a lecture at all costs.

“That won’t work,” she said. “That just shuts kids down.”

In Pado’s situation with her son, who is now a college student, Corcoran suggested having him research how alcohol affects a teen’s mind and body, and report back to his mom. Corcoran also recommended backing off a conversation with the adult who had provided the alcohol.

Pado told her son that even though he broke the rules in this instance, the rules still applied. They don’t allow underage drinking and insist upon following the law.

Pado had forbidden both her son and daughter from attending parties where alcohol was served when they were in high school. By their junior year, they informed her this would restrict them from attending any parties at all.

“You are saying ‘don’t go to parties,’” her son told her. She appreciated their openness and talked to them about staying away from alcohol and watching out for the safety of their friends. Her biggest fear was of them getting into a car accident.

“Remember, if you make a mistake, don’t make a bigger mistake after it,” she said. Before her son left for college, she talked to him about the different types of alcohol and how it’s impossible to know the alcohol content when people are mixing drinks at a party.

“You can’t just put your head in the sand and keep them locked in the house,” she said.

There’s a group of people in our schools I never knew existed: adults who believe it’s OK to humiliate a hungry child who doesn’t have money for lunch.

These people came to public attention when New Mexico had to pass a law specifically banning “lunch shaming.”

“Lunch shaming” involves the adults in a school deciding that embarrassing a hungry child whose parents are behind on the bill is a good way of getting parents to pay up.

A report in the New York Times describes the ways some schools do this: In Alabama, a child short on funds was stamped on the arm with “I Need Lunch Money.” In other schools, children are forced to clean cafeteria tables in front of their peers to pay the debt, or wear a wristband. Some schools require cafeteria workers to take a child’s hot food and throw it away if he can’t pay for it.

They throw a perfectly fine hot lunch in the trash and hand the child a sandwich with a single slice of cheese in it.

What a disgrace. What an utter failure on the part of any adult who would support such a policy. It’s an indictment of our collective sense of empathy if adults have to pass laws telling school workers not to shame a child in a lunch line.

How can anyone with a shred of human decency justify humiliating children -- who cannot get jobs and earn their own money -- for their parents’ inability to pay?

I’ve had two children in public schools for eight years, and I was an education reporter for many years prior to that. I’ve seen my share of inexplicable or misguided school policies, but I’ve never seen something so cruel devised by adults charged with educating or caring for children.

School principals like to talk about their school communities as “families,” but could they behave with such callousness toward a hungry child in their own family?

There are schools in our wealthy nation with an overabundance of food that have a “no money, no meal” policy. Cafeteria workers have quit over it.

Stacy Koltiska, a Pittsburgh-area cafeteria worker, had to take a hot lunch away from an elementary school child who had a negative balance on his account in the Canon-McMillan school district last fall. She resigned over the policy.

“As a Christian, I have an issue with this,” said Koltiska in news reports. “It’s sinful and shameful is what it is.”

I’m with Koltiska. Any Muslim, Jew, Christian or decent human being should have an issue with this.

Research shows that it’s harder for hungry kids to learn. That’s common sense, and some helpful policies do exist. Federal guidelines state that a family of four with an income of $31,590 or less qualifies for free school lunches, while families making up to $44,955 qualify for reduced-price lunches.

Some districts with high concentrations of poverty have moved to providing universal free lunch. But what about children in suburban districts where there are lower percentages of children eligible for free or reduced-price lunch? What about cases in which parents don’t know how to apply, or are too embarrassed to admit they are struggling financially? Or families who fall just above the cutoff?

There are adults who believe these children should be denied a lunch and humiliated in front of their peers.

I didn’t know lunch shaming existed. I didn’t know we needed a law to tell adults these practices are deplorable. And I’m embarrassed to admit that I didn’t know how my own school district handled situations where students’ lunch balances went unpaid.

I called my district’s communications office to find out, and learned that parents receive an email and a letter when their child’s lunch balance drops below $5. Our schools allow three charges against an account that hasn’t been paid. After that, cafeteria workers are told to call the principal, who can access an emergency fund to pay for the lunch and contact the parents to see if they need help filling out eligibility paperwork for reduced pricing. If the principal determines there isn’t a financial hardship, and the bill is still unpaid, the child will get a sack lunch -- cheese sandwich, a piece of fruit, and milk or juice -- instead of the hot lunch. No child is denied food completely.

This is likely a typical procedure in many districts. It’s not overt shaming, but it’s still the child with the sack lunch who bears the consequences for a parent’s behavior.

I thought about what home circumstances might lead to a parent ignoring repeated emails, letters and calls about an unpaid lunch balance. I don’t know what that child had for breakfast, nor do I know what he or she will eat for dinner. Yet, as a school community, as a so-called “family,” can we really not ensure that any child who wants a hot lunch in our school gets one?

Well, then, shame on us.