Published December 18, 2023
Pros and Cons of Having a Video Doorbell.
Home security is a big issue for people living in the Bay Area. Especially as the holiday season is here, and packages of all sorts are left daily on porches In all kinds of neighborhoods.
Most of the pros of having a video surveillance camera on one’s front porch come to mind straight away. The most obvious one being if someone were to steal or attempt to enter your home through the front door in view of the camera the person would be on film. If your Amazon package got snagged from your residence, the individuals would be caught on your surveillance device. Even if nothing comes from tracking down those responsible for taking the belongings, it gives people a piece of mind to know when and how it was taken, and possibly allows an insurance claim to be validated if it was a particularly pricey loss.
It can be very illuminating to see what all goes down in front of your house throughout the day. You could accidentally record some juicy neighborhood drama, you could capture a hit and run, maybe something fun like a teenage car egging incident.
If you’re a household with elderly people or a newborn baby, or a person trapped under a napping toddler, not having to go to the door to sees whose there, and the ability to talk through the camera can be hugely convenient. Also, you can spy on your kids or maybe your housemates to a further degree, some people really benefit from that feature.
People have the sense that it’s less likely thieves would target a home with an obvious recording security camera, although that assumption is seemingly less the case than it used to be. Another perk is being able to monitor some of what’s going on around your house while you’re on vacation or out of town, you could see if your pet sitter came by when they were supposed to, you could see a big windstorm blow your lawn chairs around, you get the sense you know what’s up and that feels good.
Thinking outside the box of the camera catching literal crimes in action, people might consider checking the footage for any suspicious casing type behaviors occurring around their home. This angle brings us around to the less awesome aspects of the video doorbell.
The downside is video surveillance does not directly equate to security. Burglary and home invasion in the Bay Area have become alarmingly brazen recently. Car jackings regularly occur in broad daylight in front of tons of onlookers. The threat of a camera, or visual evidence of the committed crime, is diminished by a modern world where everyone whips out their smart phones to record any little indiscretion. There is no direct response or immediate repercussions attached to being recorded on the video doorbell, so big whoop.
We’d like to remind folks to remember to keep their eyes open and remember to be smart about home and neighborhood safety. We can become complacent that our technology will be our eyes and ears. It’s important to be aware of our surroundings and pay careful attention to irregularities that could be cause for concern.
There is also the issue of the large spans of your home and property that may not be encompassed in the range of video surveillance. Garages or storage sheds might be left vulnerable, and tools and bikes are easy to snag, expensive, and easy to resell. Back and side doors are often used for unlawful entry. We’ve got to stay aware of other points of entry and not get comfortable feeling it’s got to be all good because we didn’t see any weirdness on our ring alerts.
Another less than stellar quality is that it can be annoying. It will alert you when a cats cruising around, when too many leaves blow by at once, every time the mailman comes by. In a lifestyle where we get alerts when a person hits a like button online- it’s a lot to field all these alerts we really don’t benefit from.
There’s a good and bad to most everything we utilize these days, and the doorbell camera mostly provides positives to people who use it and like it. It’s useful however, to pause and assess how we interact with all our technologies in the modern world. The holiday season is an important time to be thoughtful about our home security.
Happy holidays, be merry and safe in your home with your loved ones, and soak in all the joy.
