5 ms·

I totally get your point. However, losing track of young (1-4 years) kids in IKEA or an amusement park is a very real thing. Not using “new technology” to mitig

I totally get your point. However, losing track of young (1-4 years) kids in IKEA or an amusement park is a very real thing. Not using “new technology” to mitigate this issue seems like a waste.

jak92 8y ago
I remember getting lost in a department store as a child. Sure, it was "scary" for a few minutes, but ultimately 99.9999% will be reunited. No need to keep a permanent record of every movement.
- icebraining 8y ago
  I'm betting not all parents even consider these things might be making a permanent record. They just want something to find the kids if and when they're lost.
- barbecue_sauce 8y ago
  I remember purposefully hiding in the hollow center of the circular racks of clothing at the department store as a small child.
  - LeifCarrotson 8y ago
    I do, too. I also remember a few times (both as a young, scared small child, and as an older embarrased teenager) losing track of my parents and having the employees call "Will Mrs. Carrotson please come to the service counter" over the intercom...and I hear similar messages when shopping now as an adult. That said, I'm a lot more fearful of what could happen if my toddler was found by someone other than me in the center of the clothing rack. To be clear, I have little fear of a criminal harming or absconding with my child, I'm much more afraid of what happens when a well-meaning bystander thinks they need to call CPS to make sure that my kid is taken care of.
    - Mirioron 8y ago
      Yeah, it does seem like CPS is the boogeyman. They're pretty much the last people you'd want involved with your kid.
- smileysteve 8y ago
  > I remember getting lost in a department store as a child. I do too; except I remember being so scared of being lost that I kept better track of my parent
skrebbel 8y ago
I don't see it. Both IKEA and theme parks are well equipped to deal with this. Speaker systems, clearly recognizable employees, etc. "Attention visitors, little Luke can't find his parents, can the parents of Luke please come to the infodesk?" (My youngest turns 4 tomorrow and we've visited IKEAs and theme parks many times without trackers)
- barbecue_sauce 8y ago
  You've gone to multiple, distinct IKEAs?
  - skrebbel 8y ago
    Actually, yes :-) Fixed the grammar, thanks.
  - WrtCdEvrydy 8y ago
    Yes, how will know which one has the best meatballs, I'm a fan of number #37, but #43 is a close second.
  - janpot 8y ago
    We have two of those in Brussels...
  - wingerlang 8y ago
    Not the guy but, is that odd?
    - skrebbel 8y ago
      It was a comment on my weird grammar (that I have since fixed) and pretty on point :-)
Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
Losing your kids in IKEA... is not a big deal. kzzzt can the parents of the missing child please report to customer service to pick up their child kzzzt
- jbigelow76 8y ago
  Losing your kids in IKEA... is not a big deal. Somebody else losing their kids in an IKEA is no big deal. To the parent of the lost kid, for the duration the kid is missing, it's probaby a big fucking deal.
  - windexh8er 8y ago
    Losing and being temporarily separated are two very different things. Most everyone likely has a "separation" story. Most don't have a long-term loss / kidnapping story. I personally see the solution as both potentially useful and egregious as implemented. Selling an unaware parent a product with strawman promises that have hidden agendas are not good for anyone. This type of technology will be legitimately useful how many times and at what cost (monetary and privacy)? If, as a parent, you have a tool that you depend on to fulfill a certain task - then part of the selling point is that it offloads the given task at some level. So... Are you more diligent about keeping tabs on your child with this? Probably not. Instead, most of us have learning experiences from becoming separated from our parents. I'm not sure the gist is for a parent to say to their child: "you have this watch so leave it on and I will be able to find you" - but regardless of how a parent describes the watch to the child I'm sure that's a portion of the root idea. Does this diminish the precedence of the situation before it happens for the child? Potentially. It also gives unknowing consumers false confidence at varied levels all while being illegitimate about the entirety of the "product". Don't get me wrong, technology is great for many things. However it's oft over used and diminishes from some life skills. I'm overly scrutinizing of technology use in my children's life and err on the side of as little consumption through technology. Creation using technology is what I support. But far too often parents conflate the two and, simply, have no clue the negative impacts they're supporting.
  - Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
    Then honestly, that's a shitty parent.
mgfist 8y ago
I'd go even further in the opposite direction than other responders and say this can be a good thing. Your child getting lost in ikea is a safe way for them to learn the dangers of getting lost and also a safe challenge to overcome. Similar to how falling and hurting yourself in a playground is a safe way to test boundaries and experience challenge. Imagine you're 5 and you get lost in ikea and get scared to death. Nothing bad will happen because it's ikea, but you'll learn that getting lost is terrifying and you will be a lot less likely to do it again. Kids need to be safely challenged, or else they won't know how to respond to it when it happens for real. Not having challenges makes kids narcissistic and lowers their empathy. Helicopter parenting is turning our kids into the worse kinds of people.
- wccrawford 8y ago
  IMO, the problem isn't "the kid got lost in IKEA". The problem is "the kid was abducted in IKEA". We've got pretty good systems in place for dealing with kids who are merely lost. Dealing with kids who are abducted is another story, and a tracker definitely helps there. It's a sad reality that we have to worry about that situation still.
  - Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
    No, we don't have to worry about this situation, and using them to justify this technology is wrong. Child abduction by a non-parent is exceptionally rare. Each year there are around 200 of them, of which 90% make it home safely. That means that your child's risk of being abducted is about 0.00027%. That's absolutely no basis to justify this awful technology on, and no reason for you to worry as a parent. Not to mention: the abductor could just take your spyware watch off of the kid. source: https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/2016-ncic-missing-person-and-unidentified-person-statistics.pdf/view https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/2016-ncic-missing-person...
    - zestyping 8y ago
      I'm trying to understand how you got 200 from this report. On page 2, I see this paragraph about the Missing Person Circumstances (MPC) field in their database: "Of the 647,435 records entered in 2016, the MPC field was utilized in 315,995 (48.8%). When the MPC field was utilized in 2016 entries, 303,237 (96%) were coded as Runaway, 2,107 (.7%) as Abducted by Non-custodial Parent, 303 (.1%) as Abducted by Stranger, and 10,348 (3.3%) as Adult - Federally required entry." So it looks like one should take the number 303 for "Abducted by Stranger" and perhaps, since only 48.8% of records had this field populated, extrapolate to about 620 cases. Does that sound right, or should it be 200 based on a different reasoning? Of course, 620 cases is still a pretty small number. I just wanted to understand where your numbers came from. How did you get the figure of 90% making it home safely, and how did you calculate the probability of 0.00027%?

I totally get your point. However, losing track of young (1-4 years) kids in IKEA or an amusement park is a very real thing. Not using “new technology” to mitigate this issue seems like a waste.

jak92 8y ago

I remember getting lost in a department store as a child. Sure, it was "scary" for a few minutes, but ultimately 99.9999% will be reunited. No need to keep a permanent record of every movement.

icebraining 8y ago
I'm betting not all parents even consider these things might be making a permanent record. They just want something to find the kids if and when they're lost.
barbecue_sauce 8y ago
I remember purposefully hiding in the hollow center of the circular racks of clothing at the department store as a small child.
- LeifCarrotson 8y ago
  I do, too. I also remember a few times (both as a young, scared small child, and as an older embarrased teenager) losing track of my parents and having the employees call "Will Mrs. Carrotson please come to the service counter" over the intercom...and I hear similar messages when shopping now as an adult. That said, I'm a lot more fearful of what could happen if my toddler was found by someone other than me in the center of the clothing rack. To be clear, I have little fear of a criminal harming or absconding with my child, I'm much more afraid of what happens when a well-meaning bystander thinks they need to call CPS to make sure that my kid is taken care of.
  - Mirioron 8y ago
    Yeah, it does seem like CPS is the boogeyman. They're pretty much the last people you'd want involved with your kid.
smileysteve 8y ago
> I remember getting lost in a department store as a child. I do too; except I remember being so scared of being lost that I kept better track of my parent

skrebbel 8y ago

I don't see it. Both IKEA and theme parks are well equipped to deal with this. Speaker systems, clearly recognizable employees, etc. "Attention visitors, little Luke can't find his parents, can the parents of Luke please come to the infodesk?" (My youngest turns 4 tomorrow and we've visited IKEAs and theme parks many times without trackers)

barbecue_sauce 8y ago
You've gone to multiple, distinct IKEAs?
- skrebbel 8y ago
  Actually, yes :-) Fixed the grammar, thanks.
- WrtCdEvrydy 8y ago
  Yes, how will know which one has the best meatballs, I'm a fan of number #37, but #43 is a close second.
- janpot 8y ago
  We have two of those in Brussels...
- wingerlang 8y ago
  Not the guy but, is that odd?
  - skrebbel 8y ago
    It was a comment on my weird grammar (that I have since fixed) and pretty on point :-)

Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago

Losing your kids in IKEA... is not a big deal. kzzzt can the parents of the missing child please report to customer service to pick up their child kzzzt

jbigelow76 8y ago
Losing your kids in IKEA... is not a big deal. Somebody else losing their kids in an IKEA is no big deal. To the parent of the lost kid, for the duration the kid is missing, it's probaby a big fucking deal.
- windexh8er 8y ago
  Losing and being temporarily separated are two very different things. Most everyone likely has a "separation" story. Most don't have a long-term loss / kidnapping story. I personally see the solution as both potentially useful and egregious as implemented. Selling an unaware parent a product with strawman promises that have hidden agendas are not good for anyone. This type of technology will be legitimately useful how many times and at what cost (monetary and privacy)? If, as a parent, you have a tool that you depend on to fulfill a certain task - then part of the selling point is that it offloads the given task at some level. So... Are you more diligent about keeping tabs on your child with this? Probably not. Instead, most of us have learning experiences from becoming separated from our parents. I'm not sure the gist is for a parent to say to their child: "you have this watch so leave it on and I will be able to find you" - but regardless of how a parent describes the watch to the child I'm sure that's a portion of the root idea. Does this diminish the precedence of the situation before it happens for the child? Potentially. It also gives unknowing consumers false confidence at varied levels all while being illegitimate about the entirety of the "product". Don't get me wrong, technology is great for many things. However it's oft over used and diminishes from some life skills. I'm overly scrutinizing of technology use in my children's life and err on the side of as little consumption through technology. Creation using technology is what I support. But far too often parents conflate the two and, simply, have no clue the negative impacts they're supporting.
- Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
  Then honestly, that's a shitty parent.

mgfist 8y ago

I'd go even further in the opposite direction than other responders and say this can be a good thing. Your child getting lost in ikea is a safe way for them to learn the dangers of getting lost and also a safe challenge to overcome. Similar to how falling and hurting yourself in a playground is a safe way to test boundaries and experience challenge. Imagine you're 5 and you get lost in ikea and get scared to death. Nothing bad will happen because it's ikea, but you'll learn that getting lost is terrifying and you will be a lot less likely to do it again. Kids need to be safely challenged, or else they won't know how to respond to it when it happens for real. Not having challenges makes kids narcissistic and lowers their empathy. Helicopter parenting is turning our kids into the worse kinds of people.

wccrawford 8y ago
IMO, the problem isn't "the kid got lost in IKEA". The problem is "the kid was abducted in IKEA". We've got pretty good systems in place for dealing with kids who are merely lost. Dealing with kids who are abducted is another story, and a tracker definitely helps there. It's a sad reality that we have to worry about that situation still.
- Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
  No, we don't have to worry about this situation, and using them to justify this technology is wrong. Child abduction by a non-parent is exceptionally rare. Each year there are around 200 of them, of which 90% make it home safely. That means that your child's risk of being abducted is about 0.00027%. That's absolutely no basis to justify this awful technology on, and no reason for you to worry as a parent. Not to mention: the abductor could just take your spyware watch off of the kid. source: https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/2016-ncic-missing-person-and-unidentified-person-statistics.pdf/view https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/2016-ncic-missing-person...
  - zestyping 8y ago
    I'm trying to understand how you got 200 from this report. On page 2, I see this paragraph about the Missing Person Circumstances (MPC) field in their database: "Of the 647,435 records entered in 2016, the MPC field was utilized in 315,995 (48.8%). When the MPC field was utilized in 2016 entries, 303,237 (96%) were coded as Runaway, 2,107 (.7%) as Abducted by Non-custodial Parent, 303 (.1%) as Abducted by Stranger, and 10,348 (3.3%) as Adult - Federally required entry." So it looks like one should take the number 303 for "Abducted by Stranger" and perhaps, since only 48.8% of records had this field populated, extrapolate to about 620 cases. Does that sound right, or should it be 200 based on a different reasoning? Of course, 620 cases is still a pretty small number. I just wanted to understand where your numbers came from. How did you get the figure of 90% making it home safely, and how did you calculate the probability of 0.00027%?