> This constant tracking of kids is unnecessary and dangerous. Generations of kids survived without their parents needing to know their location at all times.
This topic is always so alarmist. I have kids and a spouse. We all have Find My and Location Sharing on our phones. I don't FrEaK oUt that my kids are going to die if I'm not tracking their every movement. But it's nice to glance at Find My app and see if the kids are still hanging out at Starbucks or they got to school on time. It's convenient to see which corner of the park they're at when I need to go pick them up. I can see if my wife's still at Whole Foods and send her a message to pick up baru nuts. They can see if I'm still at work or headed home.
This idea of helicopter parents vs free-range glory is a false dichotomy.
Oh jeez. I'm so glad i had none of this goofy tracking gump growing up.
If teenage me had something that tracked every location, and I knew it, and my friends had them on too, I'd probably miss out on a lot of stuff I cherish.
I had time limits, and a hard immovable low budget that made a lot of the bad stuff impossible. The rest was up to us to figure out and learn and improvise as we go. I'm better for those learnings.
Having said that, I'm not in this teenage parenting position today and so I have no idea what I'm going to do when i'm in that spot.
I agree with you that tracking as a teenager is not ideal, although teenagers track each other's locations incessantly at least they should be free from their parents tracking. However this watch is aimed at younger children than teenagers.
My kids started walking to school and friends houses at 7 and are still preteen. After school they can be anywhere as they'll go to a friend's house or just hang out somewhere for a while on the way home. Neither of my kids has a device that I can track, only one of them as a dumb Nokia phone, which end up being left at home most of the time.
If I want to know where they are to reduce worry then either I have to call them, which feels intrusive to what they're doing; or it relies on their friend's parent letting me know where they are. I know people who worry a lot more than us, so a non-intrusive location finding of a 10 year old would reduce parental worry without making the child feel like they were being hassled. Currently these parents are giving their young kids smart phones, often without any parental controls, and I think that's a lot worse than a watch option. My main worry with these watches is about how good the security & controls are on them to prevent unauthorized messages or calls.
Yes, I'm absolutely against tracking for teenagers or adults but I could see it when my son is around 8 years old and I let him walk to a friend's house or go to a nearby playground. We live in Hong Kong, and it's very safe here once he's old enough to understand the rules of the road and be careful when crossing.
Having something to track them between 8 and 12 years old I think is useful. I remember when I lived in Japan (where children start walking to places as early as 5 years old) before the iphone came out, there were plenty of children phone that sent gps to the parents and only allowed calling to a select set of numbers.
Where are you living? Asking because I think letting kids walk alone to/from school and friend's houses depends a lot on the culture of the city/country.
Suburban Scandinavia, so we live in a relatively safe bubble. It sounds like in some other countries we'd be reported to some kind of protective services for child abandonment or neglect.
We live in Stockholm city, and it's usually considered very safe for kids, and yet most people tend to worry about young kids wandering without adult supervision, which was ok in the small city where I grew up in France (I'm 48).
To be fair: the only reason I want trackers for my kids is so that I can find them if (a) they run off and get lost; or, (b) they get nabbed.
The average small child can't say what Dad's phone number is, or even his full name. Young kids have really limited awareness of their surroundings, and can get lost very easily. Add multiple kids into the mix and it can be a real challenge to keep them all together when you're out.
But how? My five year old knows his home address and his full name. If he ever gets lost he'll be safe. Actually getting lost at that age is really hard too, because a five year old is not often left unattended.
Besides, in the coming years I very much want him to grow up knowing that if he gets lost or in a dangerous situation, he will have to rely on himself in the first place. That means not freezing and just waiting for the helicopter parent to swoop in to a blinking dot on the map, but knowing how to get help and how to be safe. He'll need to do that if his parents are unavailable (some freak accident?) too in any case.
And kidnapping? Don't kid yourself. If you live somewhere where this is even remotely probable and your kid is a target (kidnapping is usually done by family), the chance that the kidnapper will take the tracking device along are remote, unless you intend on hiding it in their clothing or chipping them like a pet.
> The average small child can't say what Dad's phone number is, or even his full name. Young kids have really limited awareness of their surroundings, and can get lost very easily. Add multiple kids into the mix and it can be a real challenge to keep them all together when you're out.
I grew up memorizing my dad's number and was told to go find a trusted adult, stranger danger, etc. There was only one time I needed to use it, and I recalled it perfectly fine. If your kid has trouble memorizing it then turn it into a song, give the letter version, or change numbers. It worked fine then and works fine now. Get a grip.
Cant imagine growing up under that kind of parental surveillance.
When I was a kid, my parent's phone number was 6 digits long. You can memorise 11 digits of course, I did this aged 10 with digits of π, but also I'm a nerd.
One of my memories was losing track of where my mum was when we went shopping. She was right behind me, but 5-6 year old me panicked and ran out of the main doors.
There was a school trip to teach us personal safety issues (not sure the age, I'm going to say 11 with low confidence), and one of the tasks was (to the entire group) "Go along this corridor to meet the policeman, Officer FooBar"; we went along the corridor, someone not in uniform asked us where we were going, one of the group said "to meet Officer FooBar", and this un-uniformed person said "I'm Officer FooBar, wait in this room". Then he left and the real Officer FooBar came in and asked us to explain the situation, and that we'd been fooled because we'd volunteered too much information. (The fake Officer FooBar was also an officer, but one who was pretending to be a Bad Man™ who was pretending to be an officer).
The UK school system, at the time I went through it, the year before you finished you were sent to a "trident work experience" thing for a week (I think to keep them out of the way of those doing exams) — mine was to be a teaching assistant in a primary school. The kids all called me "Mrs Ben" because to them "Mrs" was the title given to all teachers and they didn't get the difference between family names and given names.
My parent's number growing was initially 77099, though it later became 577099 when the numbering system was tinkered with to allow for growth and efficiency at the exchanges. This was only as far back as the 90s, and such short numbers still work for landline-to-landline calls today. I don't have a landline, and if I did I'm not home enough for it to be a useful way o get hold of me. My numbers now are 11 digits, not as easy to drum into the head of a kid I expect (I don't speak from direct experience: child-free and planning to stay that way, but I know many people with kids at various ages).
OK, technically my parent's number was 10 digits rather than 5 because it was <areacode>577099, but that didn't matter as I'd almost always be local to that code, and if not could state my home town if talking to an adult who was doing the calling (or if I'd dialled the operator number, which I'd need to do anyway for a revere-charges call) and they'd know that bit.
We didn't need an area code for much of the time I was growing up in the 90s in the Atlanta area. It was a huge media thing when we got a new code and finally had to start thinking about it. We had an area code (404) but nobody used it until that pesky 770 (1995) complicated life for some, and 678 (1998) later messed it up for everyone.
For years the government used cell phone data to track locations without it being known. Why wouldn't they use a more reliable way of doing it? Is there any reason to NOT suspect it?
Would you suspect a known burglar of wanting to rob your house? Well the NSA violated privacy of hundreds of millions of people. They deserve all the suspicion and no forgiveness.
> The average small child can't say what Dad's phone number is, or even his full name
Is that really true? I guess I'm not sure what the age cutoff for "small child" is. I was at Disneyland with my seven-year-old nephew recently, and he was able to immediately and without hesitation recite both his mother's and father's phone numbers. Incidentally, I still remember the phone number of the house my family moved out of when I was five years old, nearly 40 years ago.
Admittedly, I don't think my four-year-old niece knows her parents' phone numbers, and my other nephew, who is two, certainly does not. But that's why their parents don't let them out of sight in public.
And yes, there's the possibility that someone screws up, and they get lost. But I'm not convinced that assuaging fear of that is worth the trade-off of getting kids used to being tracked 24/7. (Regarding kidnapping, nowadays only the dumbest of kidnappers won't know to spot a smartwatch or smartphone on a kid and ditch them immediately. And regardless, the risk of a kid getting kidnapped is likely orders of magnitude lower than their parents might believe it to be.)
First, how often do your kids get nabbed? And if they get lost, they should hopefully have the skills to get unlost.
>The average small child can't say what Dad's phone number is, or even his full name. Young kids have really limited awareness of their surroundings, and can get lost very easily.
Kids can be taught at a very young age too. Teaching our kids our address and numbers was really important and surprisingly easy when they were still toddlers. To this day they still know our numbers despite rarely if ever having to actually dial it into a keypad.
I have a toddler, and that has changed my view on it a bit, from the same starting point you are expressing.
With the social pressure going on, I expect she'll get a smartphone earlier that I'd honestly prefer (not that we are there any time soon), and quite a bit before she's a teenager.
So I honestly expect we'll be location sharing for a while, but I don't expect it to continue into the teenage years. By then it'll be up to her, if she wants to continue sharing it.
Why would her having a smartphone lead to an expectation of location sharing? I completely expect my five year old son to have the freedom to just not have his future gadgets on him if he so prefers when he gets to the age that a smartphone is unavoidable, and I certainly don't expect him to let us track him.
Hopefully the age where a smartphone becomes a requirement to not be marked as a social outcast will gradually rise again.
> With the social pressure going on, I expect she'll get a smartphone earlier that I'd honestly prefer (not that we are there any time soon), and quite a bit before she's a teenager.
Our kids (8 & 10) keep telling us nearly every kid in their class has a smartphone, but we're still not letting them have one. Fuck social pressure; that's an important lesson to be learned in itself.
I do not understand how anyone can be so categoric about this - it should not depend on peer pressure but also it should not be dictated by some ideologies. Phones (instant communication actually) is part of modern world and is here to stay and children should learn it as fast as they are able to handle it. Otherwise there is a danger of being left out for them. And at their age there is few other equal things that can make or break their future as being accepted by their peers.
And of course not all children are the same so you need to know yours and decide on case by case basis (my dauther got her first phone when she was 9, my son on the other hand will have to wait)
> And at their age there is few other equal things that can make or break their future as being accepted by their peers.
Hard disagree to this idea as justification for purchasing something for a kid.
The most useful gift that my parents gave me is a cultivated disregard for what is popular. It's not that I go out of my way to alienate my peers—I try to get along well with everyone and it mostly works—but the habit of wanting to participate with the crowd is one that I've watched hamper many a life, and the lack of that habit has allowed me to get a lot further in my career and in my personal and social life than most of my peers.
I'm guessing you are in software dev or something auxiliary to it? And probably you were passable in STEM topics at school?
Then maybe, just maybe, your whole career is just happy accident of right time (software eating world) and right predispositions (STEM).
I know mine is.
And if I would not have that I would be earning what 85% of my peers here in Poland do (barely enough to pay bills).
The only ones that are doing ok without this are the ones that invested everything in social skills (by happy accident of not having socially akward parents or by themselfs intuitively knowing that your group is everything).
So this is just implementation of my deepest believe that the best what we can do for our children is to make them as socially sklled as possibile. And limiting channels of communication does not look like a good way to this.
Of course Im not advocating unlimited access to everything for everyone - it depends on emotional development and predispositions.
Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation and other books and investigations on the topic of childhood smartphone usage are only starting to get traction.
There's also a really simple hack: they can just leave their phone/watch at home. And now even if you or they have an emergency, you can't reach them :)
Yes, that's why it's useful to set rules and consequences based on outcomes instead of effort sometimes it eliminates the possibility of making excuses. If they want to avoid the consequences they can learn to take more seriously double checking to avoid the relevant mistake.
For example, we had this issue -- kid would "forget" the phone and then go out. We set the expectation that if they forgot they had to come straight home or else face a week or two long grounding. Lo and behold they quickly got very good at remembering.
Similar issue with "forgetting" to do all the homework and we followed a similar strategy with some success.
It's a useful technique to combat weaponized incompetence. It's nice and appropriate to reward effort instead of outcomes for new things that are still being learned, but once you know they get it, and if you suspect weappnized incompetence-- try tying an outcome they care about that you're OK with them losing on if need be, directly to the goal, and provide support and model appropriate behavior regarding reminders, todo lists, etc.
Not sure if maybe you misinterpreted my comment backward.
Good lord. As I recall, a big part of growing up was spending time and doing things my parents didn’t want me to do. The idea of them tracking me is super creepy, as is tracking one’s spouse for that matter.
It’s also possible to be more liberal than your parents were with respect to expecting teenage experimentation but still want to know why your kid/spouse isn’t home within an hour of when you expected them and they aren’t responding to texts. Parents are still adults with lives and have better things to do than sit around watching a dot on a map.
“huh, I guess they went to get some boba, we’ll just go get dinner without them”
on the flip side, I would have killed to know where the hell my parents were when they didn’t show up for 30+ minutes after school, pool, or baseball practice.
If the main reason seems to be that you want to know where they are when they've decided not to answer the phone... maybe that's fine that you don't know. If you're expecting them for dinner, and they decide to do something else instead, they should learn that consequence: if they don't come home when they're expected for dinner, they don't get dinner with the family.
I don't have kids, so of course my opinion is irrelevant. But I do remember decently well what it was like to be a teenager in the 90s. I was a "good kid" and didn't get up to much that my parents didn't want me to do, but a) I did do some things my parents didn't want me to do, things that they would figure out real-time if they'd been able to track me, and b) despite me doing things they didn't want me to do, everything turned out fine. The idea that I wouldn't have been able to do those things, and the feeling of being trapped and constantly surveilled... that's gross.
And... you mention spouse, too? I would never let my spouse track me 24/7, and would never ask her or expect her to allow me to track her. To me, that would be creepy and an invasion of privacy. I get that some people do this (and know some of them), but I just think it's weird.
What did you do that your parents didn't want you to do? Some concrete examples? I'm asking because I'm having a hard time coming up with examples of things that both my parents wouldn't have wanted me to do and would be obvious if they tracked me in real time.
Not that hard to come up with. Going to a friend’s house instead of going to any variety of scheduled things you usually do (sports, theater, whatever). Similarly, the classic sleepover at approved friend’s place but actually sneaking out to do something else that isn’t at their house. I can think of many more. Maybe you were a by the book kid lol
Ok, yeah as teen if I skipped any schedule things to go to a friend house, my parents wouldn't have batted an eye. Outside of school obligations, the rest was my own choice.
This. And also, the problem is people want to have too much control. You should build your society in such a way that if you lose control (a bit), its no problem.
That is the real problem with tracking of parents and -for that matter- the security agencies.
You should raise your children to be resilient. If they get lost, teach them how to get unlost. They should recognize danger by the stories we tell them and the experiences they had. Sometimes this goes wrong, and that is super sad, but things go wrong in life. There is no real way of preventing things to go wrong.
We are now making sad human beings by putting our kids into a safe bubble.
kids today will also remember in 30yrs from now how's they had so much freedom... they just had to leave their watch (btw, apple have had kid mode on their watches for a while now) in the school locker and they could roam around, heck maybe even get an uber to some place
Don't worry, if it doesn't have it then I'm sure a future model of this watch will have a "I'm not on a wrist" logging/alerting function.
So the kids need to figure out that in order to do this kind of thing they need to attach their watch to some less-cool kid's wrist that stays at school while they do the fun things. At least that less-cool kid hopefully gets some kind of reimbursement for offering that service.
"Google Fit isn't reporting your heart rate in the last 5 minutes and your accelerometer isn't detecting any movement so I called 911 to check on you since you likely had a heart attack".
If you worry about your parent knowing your exact location, then maybe it’s not a healthy parent-child relationship to begin with.
They don’t have to sit at school, and they can wander around, without telling me — but if there is a serious trouble then it’s in everyone’s interest to have a up to date location data.
> If you worry about your parent knowing your exact location, then maybe it’s not a healthy parent-child relationship to begin with.
Are you kidding me? I remember being a teenager in the 90s. I had a great relationship with my parents (not perfect, of course, but who does?), and I absolutely would not have wanted them to have my exact location on-demand. I didn't get up to all that much that they didn't want me to do, but being tracked would mean I would not have done those things, and would have missed out on valuable experiences, because I would have been afraid that they'd randomly check up on me when I was in a place I wasn't supposed to be. (And no, I'm not talking about drinking or drugs or anything like that.)
I share my location with my kids and ask them to do the same. They are aware that I can see their location. Since they never pick up their phone or respond to messages, it's the quickest way to check if they are already on their way home.
If they want to do something that they don't want me to know, they can just turn off location sharing, or leave their watch at home.
“Tracking” is a scare word. The ability to see where my spouse is, when needed, without having to call or send a text, is a convenience. There’s nothing wrong with not sharing your location with your spouse if you don’t want to, but there’s also nothing weird about doing so. Neither of us “cares” one bit where the other is, but it’s frequently useful to know.
I do personally think it's weird, but if other's are fine and comfortable with it, what two consenting adult decide about tracking each other is none of my business.
But kids don't get to consent to this. Their parents decide for them, regardless of what they do or don't want. I don't think kids should be forced to submit to 24/7 tracking, regardless of the intent behind it.
Only if you both are mature enough though. If you are constantly looking at the location of your spouse to see of they are cheating or something, and then question every unexpected movement they do, you won't benefit from it.
Yes, because spouses are adults. But kids being constantly tracked is absolutely scary. Do you really think it's healthy that kids grow up always being watched, constantly monitored by their primary authority figures?
I don't think that distinction is as stark as you make it. Spouses can be overly, annoyingly controlling - and it can happen gradually. I'm sure that for every person who doesn't mind their partner knowing where they are, there's another who has been pressured into it - perhaps by it being insinuated that their not wanting to be trackable means that they have something to hide.
Right, exactly. So if it's not ok to pressure a spouse into tracking them when they don't want to be tracked, why is it ok to force a child to be tracked? Obviously parents have a lot of -- necessary -- leeway in what they decide their child must and must not do, regardless of the child's wishes. But I don't think it's healthy to get children used to the idea that the norm is that they'll be tracked 24/7. Even if the intent is to stop the tracking at, say, 12 years old, that's some powerful conditioning that they've been exposed to in their formative years.
I'm not going to say that consent doesn't exist - but it's sufficiently ill-defined as a concept that it is somewhat meaningless. What constitutes consent?
If I finally agree to something after being nagged interminably - have I consented, or have I just given in?
At the other end of the spectrum, if someone asks for something which doesn't particularly suit my purposes, but I agree to it as it seems fair enough - is that consent?
One situation seems like it is, the other one probably not. But where is the line? To me, consent seems like a vaguely letter-of-the-law, CYA type of word.
It's totally vague. Some decisions are considered okay for parents to make for their children without consent but others aren't.
I feel like as a teen I would consent to being tracked by my parents but that doesn't mean it would be a good idea. It all depends on intent and parent-child relationship in the first place (looking back I didn't have a great one :shrug:)
This is wild. Parents decide where and when their kid eats and sleeps and, what they eat and wear and thousand other very intrusive things, but suddenly when electronic device is involved, consent is required.
Parents decide that for babies. Kids going through puberty that let their parents continue to decide every decision can be an actual abusive relationship. You need to be influencing good behavior, not forcing it at a certain point.
Kinds going through puberty are already tracked through their phones, if not by their parents then by uncle Google. I thought we were talking about younger kids.
How can you so casually equate mass tracking by Google and direct surveillance by family member? that's not even whataboutism, completely different situation
Google doesn't need to know who I am to track me, Google cannot lock me up in my room, Google cannot gaslight/manipulate/abuse me based on where I went today
You are right, those are two completely different things. Some people are more concerned by one than then other. Some the other way around. However the technology exists. Children are living and will be living in the world in which that technology exists. They need to figure out how to live in this world. The same way kids of previous generations figured out how to live in the worlds they were born into.
And even in the context of abusive relationships, sometimes the more tools the abuser has, the more secure they feel in their abuse, the less impactful is their abuse on daily lives of the abused. The abusers get worse when they feel like they are loosing control.
Work for one of the FANGS, a social media platform, in ad tech, in big data (anything with humans) or any company that monetises through a) advertising or b) selling user data.
I am sure there are some people who work in financial services as well but they are probably considered to have lower moral standards.
In the 80's/90's if I was somewhere I shouldn't be or doing something that I shouldn't there was a 70% chance that when I got home my mother would know. The neighbourhood network of eyes was more powerful than googles all seeing eyes.
are you under the impression that the same neighborhood network of eyes is in operation all over the place like it was then or?
Also - when my daughter hacks all of her ex-boyfriend's social media accounts, should I monitor her activities by going and talking to the snooping neighbors?
I know we're not supposed to assume reading comprehension problems here, so I just have to assume that your dealing with it when they stray does not have any component of monitoring in it? Because I said "or monitoring more closely a child that has done improper things." and everyone seems to think that you shouldn't monitor someone that has done improper things - I really don't get it?
Seems like apathy, oh your kid is sneaking out with other kids to drink, well give them a talking to and then whatever you do, don't monitor them!
Oh your kid got a sugar daddy on Roblox, hmm, well go talk to the neighbors next door, the 1980s neighbor network was the best way to ever keep track of your kids for every kid that didn't grow up in the 1980s.
Half of the commentators here seem to think I'm living in the 80s, and the other half seem to think I'm living in Kansas, but everyone is in agreement on one thing which is that I should definitely behave myself to their model of raising kids in 1980s Kansas.
> a big part of parenting is making sure your kid actually is at school
Quite sure that is the schools job. At least where I live the schools tend to assume several of the rights and responsibilities that normally fall on the parents.
> or monitoring more closely a child that has done improper things.
Do I want to know what you fucked up in your childhood that you assume your kids need constant monitoring to prevent a repeat?
> Quite sure that is the schools job. At least where I live the schools tend to assume several of the rights and responsibilities that normally fall on the parents.
Yes. The school is responsible for their safety and whereabouts. US K-12 public schools, if the child is missing from school, parents are contacted immediately. Teachers are responsible for attendance. All this is accomplished without device tracking. Federal law explicitly defines the school's responsibilities with regard to privacy rights of children in school. If parents wish to contact their child during school hours, they are asked to call the school, and school personnel will contact the child.
Device use is an enormous problem in schools. Talk to any teacher / admin: they will tell you allowing devices into schools has been a disaster.
>Quite sure that is the schools job. At least where I live the schools tend to assume several of the rights and responsibilities that normally fall on the parents.
whoops, you got me - I live where you live too so your argument is like really super good.
>> or monitoring more closely a child that has done improper things.
>Do I want to know what you fucked up in your childhood that you assume your kids need constant monitoring to prevent a repeat?
Do I want to know what was done to you in your childhood that you uh, whatever that was?
Kids need to mess up, and do things outside of the sight of their parents to grow.
They need to be able to do things their parents disapprove from time to time, or just hide some behavior that they feel shy about.
Sex, meeting people outside of your social norms, attempting stupid stunts, and all that is part of growing.
The simple fact you can know where they are at all time steal those opportunities from them, and normalize spying so that they grow into citizens that will accept it in the future by the gov.
It also removes the parts of the day when they are on their own, and have to figure things out, then deal with the consequences of their action because the parents are not there to get them out of trouble.
In my opinion, part of that is how societies have made their societies less and less safe. If you look at a child the wrong way in the US people are ready to call the cops on you. It was a very odd experience to me, but then I realized that the US has one of the highest child abduction rates in the world.
My daughter is loving a little book of a little girl that her mom sends to buy milk on her own for the first time. It's a Japanese book. Now Japanese and Taiwanese and much Asia for that matter are not famous for letting children just roam without freaking out every step of the way, but there is a pretty common theme in Japan of letting small children do groceries, sometimes as young as 4 years old.
When I grew up in Germany, it too was a very safe society, so we would play in the street on our own. Before that I still have memories of my older brother taking me to buy Bread when I was 3 years old in the Normandie, I think in more remote places in France you can still do that.
Part of the issue is safety from people and the other part is actually just the proliferation of cars, but if I had children in the US I would not let them out of my eyes even one second.
That being said, I do sometimes put a Xiaomi smart band on her when I'm concerned about her heart rate. It's way less intrusive than fitbit. To put a device on a child where the makers used to brag internally about being able to know when people have sex is insane to me.
That ship has sailed, regardless of parental tracking. I feel very lucky I was still among the generations that could do stupid stuff and not immediately have ten cameras dump my personal live on YouTube or a livestream.
> Sex, meeting people outside of your social norms, attempting stupid stunts, and all that is part of growing
That’s an American cultural fallacy, like how Germans believe you’ll get sick if your kidneys get cold. Asian kids in America are strongly discouraged from doing these things (some do it anyway, but there’s measurable differences in aggregate behavior: https://www.guttmacher.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/tables/3...) and have vastly better outcomes than European American kids, especially in the bottom 20% of the income distribution. Similarly regimented communities like Mormons are also highly successful.
Cultivating impulsiveness has its benefits. If you’re trying to build a world empire, maybe give your kids the freedom to succumb to the impulses of their underdeveloped brains. If you’re trying to maintain and perpetuate an orderly civilization, carefully regiment their behavior until they’re capable of controlling themselves.
I think the important part is whether the children are affected by the tracking. Is it a big deal if they don’t have service and you can’t Find them for a couple hours?
Mine are grown now, but I’ve always told them: I’m not worried about where you are, I want to know where to go when something happens and you need a rescue. I want them to have the peace of mind that, if needed, the safety net is within reach. When I was a teen, my parents were in reach if I was in reach of a [wired] phone, but I didn’t always know how to tell them where I was at that moment.
Providing a safety net while allowing freedom boosts self confidence.
> my parents were in reach if I was in reach of a [wired] phone
This is the biggest reason why I'm not against this tech. When I was a kid I was almost always within reach of a wired phone: at school they had a phone explicitly available for kids to use, and while out and about I was almost always in reach of a pay phone. Even if I had no cash I occasionally would call collect.
These days, the network of wired phones that I relied on is mostly gone. My kids aren't quite old enough to roam far enough for it to matter, but soon they will be, and a smart watch (with a limited set of contacts and no distracting features) currently seems like our best bet in the absence of the strong wired phone network that my parents relied on.
> I think the important part is whether the children are affected by the tracking
I have no reason to think they're impacted by me knowing where they are. They're confident, run around for hours, and are growing up just fine. So what if their parents can look up their location... big deal.
Pushing the alarmist argument, though: should I just take away their cell phones, to give them the same experience I had growing up? I didn't ever have even a dime for a phone booth.
I either a) find that very hard to believe, or b) am horrified at the environment children are growing up in these days that the prospect of 24/7 parental location tracking is something they'd agree to without question.
I do wonder how they will feel after the first time you ask them, "Hey, why were you at place X, I thought you told me you would be at place Y?" (even if there's an innocent, reasonable explanation). Sometimes kids don't recognize the negatives to agreeing to something until they experience them.
> I do wonder how they will feel after the first time you ask them, "Hey, why were you at place X, I thought you told me you would be at place Y?"
First, I have to say again that I'm not sitting there watching the map icon when they're running around.
But to your direct point, I'm very mindful not to call them out like that unless it was a very strong concern warranting a serious talk (which hasn't happened yet). I don't think that's wildly different than my parents not busting me for all shit they knew I was getting into, because they (more or less) trusted I knew right from wrong.
This particular thread has missed an important part of the equation: what are the consequences of NOT taking the trackable phone along, or turning off the tracking? If you’ve proven to them it is of little consequence, and they can trust that, then they’re less likely to develop issues.
However, if the consequences are dire, you encourage them to feel oppressed.
I find it difficult to imagine ubiquitous surveillance not shaping behavior and thought.
I was born in the mid 90s and remember some of my friends getting flip phones in the early 2000s. One friend was given a phone that would report its location to their parents, presumably through some web-portal. I vaguely remember the conversation where my friend told me about this phone and the location tracking, and I remember the uncomfortable feeling that new idea provoked. I believe that reaction is a natural one to the idea of being followed everywhere you go, but that reaction is only possible if the idea hasn't been normalized from birth.
Just because surveillance is largely ubiquitous and societally normalized doesn't mean it has no impact, and that impact is unlikely to be articulated by those experiencing it.
> I find it difficult to imagine ubiquitous surveillance not shaping behavior and thought.
I wish more people in these threads would think about this and understand this point.
In an imaginary world where tracking tech isn't available, and it's feasible and affordable to do so, I worry that some of these parents would hire someone to follow their child around all day. Any parent who thinks that's absurd should agree that device tracking is similarly crazy. (And any parent who actually would make that hire... wow, I just don't know what to say, other than that I feel sorry for your children.)
I think it comes down to trust in whether your watcher provides dire consequences. The likelihood that parents are honest with their children that there is little consequence to avoiding the tracking is greater than the same being said of a (perceived) larger, distant group/organization/agency.
We must all remain vigilant against the latter. But trust in the former is where we must start.
Thinking about what I was as a child, I truly wouldn't care if parents knew where I was until the first question "why you are/were at X". After that I would always think what my parents think about where I go. If asked I would not say it's a problem for me, it would just be a fact of life.
I probably wouldn't try to evade surveillance but if I got into the wrong(?) company I would probably be instructed on how to fake location (give devices to someone or put them in place etc).
No TV, no video games, no smart watches, no vaccines, no doctor visits, no stored food, no radio, no refrigerators, no nothing. You came from 1000 generations who survived just fine without them. Everything must stay the same.
Even surveillance of legal activities can inhibit people from engaging in them. The value of protecting against chilling effects is not measured simply by focusing on the particular individuals who are deterred from exercising their rights. Chilling effects harm society because, among other things, they reduce the range of viewpoints expressed and the degree of freedom with which to engage in political activity.
Kids that know their parent has their back or will help them often tend to use that freedom more.
Like a kid who won't climb a tree cause they're afraid of falling... But then will climb way higher with a parent there to catch them. And as a parent, you have to be willing to let them fall sometimes too - to show that they can handle it.
You might not freak out that you don't have to track your kids all the time.
Your kids, however, freak out that you could be tracking them at any time. They are effectively barred from going anywhere that might not elicit parental approval, ALL THE TIME - not just when you are actually tracking them. It's the panopticon principle.
Depending on their age, this could have major effects on their development. If they are 6, it is probably fine - especially if they don't know you can track them. If they are 16, not so much.
> But it's nice to glance at Find My app and see if the kids are still hanging out at Starbucks or they got to school on time. It's convenient to see which corner of the park they're at when I need to go pick them up.
I've heard other parents say they only track their kids in case of an emergency, while you admit you admit you track your kids for trivial issues.
I'm not a parent, so I wouldn't know, but I'd like to think I can trust my kid if he tells me he goes to school on time. Seems more useful to build trust than to know for sure his precise location, because there are a lot of things which can't be tracked by technology.
No adult would share their location with uber 24/7 so pickups would get marginally more convenient. Living under constant surveillance is bad psychologically, even when the surveillance itself is benign. Being able to lie to your parents about your whereabouts gives children valuable freedom even if they never exercise it.
I do not know the ages of your children but i fear for them if/when they're teenagers. A small child does not care, a teenager _very much does and should_. Will you still track them when they're 25? Or 30? What if they ask you to stop, what will you do?
I gained very very significant experiences by lying to my parents about where i was. I never got hurt, not once, we were never running from the cops or anything and i solved every problem on my own. Those are invaluable experiences! A 6 year old simply cannot, but a teenager must.
What is your true motivation in tracking them? Is it based in fear? And I'm sure you're aware that any apps they have installed on their phone can also be capable of storing and selling this location data you'd like them to provide. Are you comfortable with Google storing a record of every movement your child makes?
To be perfectly clear here, you think that a parent that buys this smart watch and tracks their kid's location will "oh absolutely" track their child's location into their 30s when they are old enough to have their own career and family?
Can you explain why this completely abnormal behavior is an accurate prediction?
> Can you explain why this completely abnormal behavior is an accurate prediction?
“Abnormal” is ambigous. It can either mean “unhealthy” or “uncommon”. I mean that this behavior, while unhealthy, is not uncommon. Most parents absolutely do not trust their kids to be adults, since in the eyes of the parents, the kids still are just that; kids. It takes an uncommonly strong sense of self-discipline and insight on the side of the parents to force themselves to break out of that thinking.
> What are you saying exactly? This was about location tracking.
The question, as posed by you, was whether a parent who was keeping track of their child while the child was very young, would still do so when the child comes of age and into adulthood. I proposed that the likelihood was very high indeed, since most parents have trouble reevaluating their perception of their child, even though that perception was formed and solidified while the child was very young. It follows, that parents would not see a good enough reason for deliberately altering their habitual tracking as the child turns into an adult.
keeping track of their child while the child was very young
You keep avoiding saying location tracking. Are you seriously talking about location tracking an adult in their 30s? Say it directly.
Are you saying this happens with knowledge or without? With consent or without? Are you saying parents are putting live location trackers on their 30 year old children's owned phones?
Why do you keep ignoring the actual point and saying abstract irrelevant things like 'parents want to keep track of their children' ?
(Please keep this conversation about the topic and less about what you evidently consider some sort of personal conflict.)
> You keep avoiding saying location tracking. Are you seriously talking about location tracking an adult in their 30s? Say it directly.
Yes, of course. I did not intend to be obscure.
> Are you saying this happens with knowledge or without? With consent or without? Are you saying parents are putting live location trackers on their 30 year old children's owned phones?
I’m saying that parents will probably keep location trackers on their kids’ phones, and never get out of the habit of installing them, regardless of how their child ages into adulthood. Show me a parent who had such a tracker installed in a child’s phone, but go out of their way to make an effort to uninstall it the day the child turns 18, and I will show you a rare parent indeed. With or without knowledge and/or consent? Of course without their child’s consent; the parents originally put the tracker in the child’s phone without consent, and so the habit will continue. They key word in all of this is habit; parents acquire habits about their kids, and will continue to follow these habits regardless. The same goes for knowledge; if the child originally was always told about the tracking, this will continue, but if the child was never informed, this will also continue.
Parents, like all people, are creatures of habit, and will not easily change their ways and opinions, even though time passes, things change, and children grow up.
> Why do you keep ignoring the actual point and saying abstract irrelevant things like 'parents want to keep track of their children'?
You are quoting something I did not write, and I can therefore not answer this question.
> Address the actual point and show some evidence.
If you think I am ignoring the point, please state what you would like the point to be, and I will comment on it as proper in this forum. Contrary to what you seem to believe, I am not trying to be obtuse.
Regarding evidence, I am not aware of any research about any of this.
Regarding evidence, I am not aware of any research about any of this.
You don't say. In other words you are making up and hallucinating these vague scenarios. You saying things like 'parents are creatures of habit' is not evidence that these made up things actually happen.
This smart watch is being advertised for actual kids. 6-12 year olds. Do you actually think a 30 year old is going to keep using their toy watch for 20 years, stay on their parents phone plans and their parents are going to track their 30 year old child?
If you ask 100 people if they think a child is going to keep their toy watch that is made for tracking kids for 20 years and let their parents track them decades into adulthood, they wouldn't just say no, they would look at you like you're speaking a different language.
This has never happened and you aren't even close to showing this is something that happens normally because all you keep doing is repeating your claim without evidence.
> you are making up and hallucinating these vague scenarios
You are using very combative and insulting language, which is not helping.
> This smart watch is being advertised for actual kids. 6-12 year olds. Do you actually think a 30 year old is going to keep using their toy watch for 20 years, stay on their parents phone plans and their parents are going to track their 30 year old child?
No. I was not discussing the watch. I made a comment specifically on your statement about whether a parent, which initially has used location tracking on a child, will keep doing so as the child has reached the age of 30. And my position is that yes, very many parents will do so if they don’t need to alter their habits significantly in order to keep doing it.
You are using very combative and insulting language, which is not helping.
No I'm not. This is something people do when they say things without evidence, they try to attack how the other person is pointing out they have no evidence.
If you don't want to be told you're making things up, prove that you're not. You keep repeating the same claims and you haven't shown anything to support that.
No. I was not discussing the watch.
You might want to look at the title because that's what this thread is about.
I made a comment specifically on your statement about whether a parent, which initially has used location tracking on a child, will keep doing so as the child has reached the age of 30. And my position is that yes, very many parents will do so if they don’t need to alter their habits significantly in order to keep doing it.
You have definitely made the comment over and over, it's just that it's nonsense and you have zero evidence that it's true. Repeating yourself isn't evidence and rephrasing your claims isn't either.
It doesn't even make sense. Why would someone become and adult and never get a new phone so they can keep using what they had when they turned 10 for multiple decades?
Who has ever heard of this happening let alone enough that "very many parents do so"?
This is not reality. This is like someone saying that bigfoot exists and when someone asks for evidence they just say "what I'm saying is that bigfoot exists".
I maintain that your usage of the word “hallucinating”, “nonsense”, and associated language is combative and insulting. Of course, I have no proof whatsoever for this claim.
> You might want to look at the title because that's what this thread is about.
A thread very frequently strays in topic, and comments are not all strictly about the article’s headline.
> It doesn't even make sense. Why would someone become and adult and never get a new phone
My thinking was that parents would typically keep installing tracking software on the child’s phone whenever they get the opportunity to do so, provided they have acquired the habit of always doing that.
It’s quite possible, of course, that, in practice, most adult children don’t have any tracking software on their phone, simply because they have gotten a new phone without the parents having access.
> This is not reality. This is like someone saying that bigfoot exists and when someone asks for evidence they just say "what I'm saying is that bigfoot exists".
We don’t have any hard evidence either way. I mean, either parents who track their children’s location do mostly stop doing that when the children become adults, or parents do try to keep tracking the kids as long as practically possible. Both are observable phenomena (unlike bigfoot, whose non-existence is not observable).
I think you mean that you started making outrageous claims that you can't back up.
My thinking was that parents would typically keep installing tracking software on the child’s phone whenever they get the opportunity to do so, provided they have acquired the habit of always doing that.
So in this made up scenario, a parent is stealing their 30 year old child's phone and installing tracking software on it?
Where are you even getting these ideas? You keep repeating them, what even made you think this stuff in the first place?
We don’t have any hard evidence either way.
You're the one making the claim and you don't have any evidence at all, hard, or soft. You can't even explain how it would happen.
I mean, either parents who track their children’s location do mostly stop doing that when the children become adults,
Now the backpeddling finally begins because you keep replying without evidence.
Both are observable phenomena
So observe it and show me evidence.
Here's some actual evidence. Most people replace their phone every 3.5 years on average. Not every 20 years while using the toy watch they got when they were 10.
> So in this made up scenario, a parent is stealing their 30 year old child's phone and installing tracking software on it?
If a parent did so for a 15-year old kid who got themselves a new phone, I would assume that a parent is likely to do it again when the child is at 18, and beyond.
> Where are you even getting these ideas? You keep repeating them, what even made you think this stuff in the first place?
People’s opinions and habits change slowly, if at all. This is especially noticeable in parent’s opinions of their kids; parents frequently treat their children as if they were underage, regardless of the children’s actual age. It’s a habit the parents fell into, and is hard to break, and most parents have neither the motivation nor the insight to do so.
This parental behavior is observable to most people. I used this information to deduce that parents who already track their kid’s location when the kid is underage would still do so, by mere force of habit and unchanging attitude, at 18 and beyond.
> Here's some actual evidence. Most people replace their phone every 3.5 years on average.
All right, in that case the parents who are habitually tracking the location of their children will probably only track their kids up to the age of about 20, when the child statistically has gotten a new phone without the parent’s access. This will make the tracking stop naturally in any case, whatever the parent’s wishes are.
My thinking was mostly about the attitude of the parents. I.e. whether the parents would wish and try to keep tracking the location of their children, given that the parents did keep track of their kids’ location when they were under 18. Your data, however, shows that tracking becomes infeasible as soon as the child acquires a new phone without the parent’s access, and therefore the wishes of the parent becomes moot.
I remain unmoved on my point about the attitude, wishes and inclinations of parents, but since your data has made those moot in most practical cases, the issue becomes uninteresting. I think we can therefore wrap up this discussion.
> you started making outrageous claims that you can't back up.
> in this made up scenario
> you don't have any evidence at all, hard, or soft. You can't even explain how it would happen.
> Now the backpeddling finally begins because you keep replying without evidence.
Your attitude is frankly terrible and can I see from your comment history that this has been a recurring problem for you. I would prefer it if you would refrain from commenting further on this forum until you have at least learned to restrain yourself.
I would assume that a parent is likely to do it again when the child is at 18, and beyond.
Your assumption is wrong, why would an adult with a new phone let them? Where is your evidence that this happens?
People’s opinions and habits change slowly, if at all.
Not kids.
This parental behavior is observable to most people.
Prove it, you haven't linked a single thing.
All right, in that case the parents who are habitually tracking the location of their children will probably only track their kids up to the age of about 20,
More back peddling. Now it's not 30 year olds any more to try to save some face. This is like people doing rain dances or using leeches for medical treatments. Repeating the same thing over and over then seeing if you can get the other person to stop showing that it's made up is not the same as figuring something out. You need actual numbers, data, statistics and you have none of that.
I would prefer it if you would refrain from commenting further on this forum until you have at least learned to restrain yourself.
I would prefer it if you had evidence when making claims. I've seen this dozens of times. Someone with no evidence and a ridiculous claim can't admit that they have no evidence so they repeat their claims more forcefully and say the other person is being a big meany by pointing out that without real data it's all made up.
The other two scenarios are trying to pretend the burden of proof is not on the person who made the claim and pretending you already gave evidence, but we haven't gone there yet.
Here's an actual outside perspective where people are universally mortified at the idea of someone tracking a 24 year old.
I’m not “back peddling”, I’m conceding that the point is now moot and uninteresting.
> I would prefer it if you had evidence when making claims.
I’ve seen no evidence from you, either, that those parents who track the location of their child will mostly give that up volontarily as the child becomes an adult. You have shown that those parents will lose the tracking anyway for technical reasons, and you have shown that most people find the tracking of adults to be disagreeable. But nothing which speaks to the issue in question.
> Here's an actual outside perspective where people are universally mortified at the idea of someone tracking a 24 year old.
Oh, I agree; most people do find the idea to be distasteful, especially when presented like in that link, i.e. from the now-adult child’s perspective. But we were not talking about “most people”, the issue is whether parents who already track their children’s location would continue to try to do so.
Me: You think someone keeping track of their small child means they will somehow track their location when the child is 30 years old?
You: Oh, absolutely.
You: And my position is that yes, very many parents will do so
You said “a parent is stealing their 30 year old child's phone”, so consent is not required.
This is just a lie. I asked if that's what you were saying, which it seems to be since people switch their phones every few years.
I’m not “back peddling”, I’m conceding that the point is now moot and uninteresting.
I think you mean 'I realize what I'm saying is ridiculous and defensible'.
I’ve seen no evidence from you,
I certainly called this, the reversed burden of proof for your claims.
parents will lose the tracking anyway for technical reasons
Now it's 'technical reasons' and 'the point is uninteresting' instead of "parents that track their small children track them when they're 30 and very many parents will do it".
would continue to try to do so.
Now it's "try to do so". What does that mean? People turn into adults and get new phones. Now you're not saying they will, you're saying "they'll try".
This was ridiculous from the first reply, how many times are you going to shift these goal post, back peddle, lie and repeat yourself without evidence?
I originally said (paraphrased) ‘parents will’, and I reasoned that since I was convinced that parents will try, they will mostly succeed. But you have presented evidence against this, and therefore I was wrong in saying that “parents will”.
You seemed, however, from the start to argue against the “trying” part and not the “will succeed” part, which confused the issue, since I still think parents will try. If only you had been more clear, this could have been settled quite soon.
> This is just a lie.
I should perhaps have worded it like “the phrase you used was…”, which is what I meant. I did not mean to claim that you said some parent was actually stealing someone’s phone.
> I certainly called this, the reversed burden of proof for your claims.
Since we both claimed things which can be observed, any one of us could potentially give proof. I did not mean to push the burden on proof wholly unto you, only to point out that it was not completely mine.
> Now you're not saying they will, you're saying "they'll try".
Yes, that is my position. But it’s an uninteresting one, since they’ll fail (as your reference showed).
> This was ridiculous from the first reply, how many times are you going to shift these goal post, back peddle, lie and repeat yourself without evidence?
You have a real problem with following the guidelines for this forum. I suggest you re-read them. Note, for example, that most of your actual reply now consists entirely of references to what I wrote, and references to me, and not about the actual issue we are supposedly debating. This is usually something to be avoided.
Note, for example, that most of your actual reply now consists entirely of references to what I wrote, and references to me, and not about the actual issue we are supposedly debating.
Stop with the persecution complex. Pointing out that you don't have evidence is not a personal attack. You could avoid everything by showing evidence but you won't.
I never meant to accuse you of a personal attack, only of not following this forum’s guidelines. I am guessing that you must have become accustomed to some really horrible forums, since you seem to read accusations and underhandedness into every post. But I assure you that this is not what I am doing, and it is not what this forum is supposed to be.
I could not show evidence I did not have, which is understandable since I was wrong. You did have a reference, which you showed, and so you did resolve the issue. And after some further confusion about the actual issue (the “will” vs. “will try”), the issue is now resolved.
> it's nice to glance at Find My app and see if the kids are still hanging out at Starbucks or they got to school on time. […] I can see if my wife's still at Whole Foods and send her a message to pick up baru nuts.
Yeah, what you call convenient is exactly what OP had in mind, and I have to strongly agree with him/her. No, thank you, there is absolutely 0 trust in what you describe, and kids realize this very well.
Choppers flying around and all that. But sure, its 'convenient' for you. It would be also convenient if we all had tracking chips under our skin, so that good ol' government can fight crime better, a wonderful world to live in.
I completely agree. My wife and I have our locations shared with each other. I'm not "surveilling" her. I almost never remember that we have this feature until we need it for some reason, and even then its normally very benign (how far from home are you? should we wait before having dinner?)
Honestly, it's because I just don't care. I'm not worried about her changing plans or going somewhere without telling me (the feels dirty just thinking about) and at a certain age, I also won't care what my kids do. They will also change plans, or explore off the path. So what? But that one time I _really_ need to call them or they need help, we will be glad they have a little bit of tech on them.
I also find it somewhat interesting that many of the same people who are so worried about this type of surveillance _already_ have the devices and/or technical knowledge to surveil others and choose not to for whatever reason. For example, we have home networks and could track what our families do online. We _could_ put a malicious app into someone's phone, or a tracker on someone's car. Simply having the ability to do something does not imply that it will be done, and certainly doesn't imply that it will be done maliciously.
This topic is always so alarmist. I have kids and a spouse. We all have Find My and Location Sharing on our phones. I don't FrEaK oUt that my kids are going to die if I'm not tracking their every movement. But it's nice to glance at Find My app and see if the kids are still hanging out at Starbucks or they got to school on time. It's convenient to see which corner of the park they're at when I need to go pick them up. I can see if my wife's still at Whole Foods and send her a message to pick up baru nuts. They can see if I'm still at work or headed home.
This idea of helicopter parents vs free-range glory is a false dichotomy.