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A cell phone is the best tracking device I've found for knowing where my kid is. They won't leave it behind and if it's outside of where I expect it to be, I ge

A cell phone is the best tracking device I've found for knowing where my kid is. They won't leave it behind and if it's outside of where I expect it to be, I get an alarm. I'd love a better option but I really haven't found something that's more reliably close to them at all times.

pwdisswordfishc 3y ago
Gotta teach your kid about surveillance capitalism.
mosselman 3y ago
The better option is to not track them and to trust them and teach them about risks and autonomy and then allow them to make small mistakes now, so they won’t make big mistakes later when they don’t listen to you anymore.
- RALaBarge 3y ago
  Another cloistered bad take on the internet. You are legally responsible for your child until they are 18. There is a universe of difference between not trusting your children vs taking reasonable steps to ensure their safety by knowing their location when necessary.
  - doublerabbit 3y ago
    Sometimes somethings don't have a one direct answer.
  - TrickardRixx 3y ago
    This somehow wasn't an issue when my parents were raised. It's just me that has to bear having been raised by a controlling narcissist.
  - skeeter2020 3y ago
    How did "legally responsible for your child until they are 18" turn into "track them 24/7"? I would strongly argue permanent surveillance exceeds "reasonable steps", but I know I'm in the minority.
    - dangus 3y ago
      Non-parents seem to forget that children don’t have the same rights as adults. They don’t get all the same rights to privacy and freedom because they were birthed by their parents. Parents have a legal right and obligation to know where their kids are. The technology used to achieve it is a mere implementation detail. Also, technically, any adult who owns a smartphone has already consented to be permanently location tracked by their carrier and various entities that can buy location data from your carrier legally.
      - tarboreus 3y ago
        That's...not true? You don't have a legal obligation to know where your child is. Contextually, you might often want to know where they are, or who they're currently with in a broad sense. For older children, they can have autonomy for periods of time that can be pretty long.
  - mosselman 3y ago
    Ah yes. Maybe we go back to the good old days before cell phones and the internet where kids were tethered to their parents with a 50m piece of rope. /s
- billy99k 3y ago
  Do you have kids? Kids don't make good decisions and trust takes time to build. Tracking kids is so the 'small mistakes' don't turn into something more serious.
  - skeeter2020 3y ago
    >> Tracking kids is so the 'small mistakes' don't turn into something more serious. The obvious question is "what did we do before?" I'm not sure how tracking stops serious mistakes; maybe it resolves them after the fact, suggesting that tracking their phone is not going to help parenting and you need another approach? And yes, I do have kids of my own ranging from pre-phone to a brand new driver, so I get your motivation.
    - igetspam 3y ago
      Before the advent of cell phones, kids couldn't call you or tell you where they were, if they were lost. We lose fewer kids now.
  - averageRoyalty 3y ago
    > Kids don't make good decisions and trust takes time to build. Agreed, and it's our job as parents to sheppard them. Handing them a skinner box and plonking them into the world doesn't solve that problem. And tracking then 24/7 isn't likely to help. Kids have been finding ways to get around their parents knowing what they're doing throughout all of humanity, and smartphones won't (and haven't) changed that.
  - igetspam 3y ago
    Trusting little kids to not get abducted or wander off is how kids get lost. We're not talking about teenagers here, we're talking about children.
pstuart 3y ago
Yes, but only if its a smart phone. We started with cheap cell phones with gps but they'd leave them behind because they had no incentive to use them. I really really wanted to delay them getting a smart phone as long as possible, but when all the other kids have one it's so fucking hard. We held up for a while but the tantrums and crying wore us down. One of the joys of parenting is knowing what the right thing to do is and then failing to see it through.
- averageRoyalty 3y ago
  If a kid is at the tantrum and crying stage, they are probably not ready for the responsibility of unfiltered, 24/7 phone and internet.
  - pstuart 3y ago
    We all have our failures. She was otherwise mature and a great kid. Literally every one of her friends had one and she was unable to participate with them in that way. Yes, we caved but held out as long as we could. She's turned out to be an awesome young adult and seems to have come out of teen-land unscathed.
    - averageRoyalty 3y ago
      I apologise, I've reread my comment and realised it comes across as a direct criticism of you. It's not intended that way. Parenting is hard, and there's no way I'm judging your entire experience off a single comment. My point was that broadly speaking, maturity should be a key factor in _anything_ for the individual child. Some kids can be trusted to ride a motorbike across a propertly at 9. Some shouldn't have a smartphone until 17. Some can fly across the country unaccompanied at 12.
      - pstuart 3y ago
        Thank you, that means a lot to me -- such recognition and correction is in short supply in forums. She actually is quite mature for her age, but I think the pressure broke her. I agree on the maturity factor, but society has gotten weird on allowing that to happen.
phalangion 3y ago
I love how every time a parent posts that they use a phone so they know where their kids are, it turns into the same argument about "surveillance." I have kids who are <10 years old, and a phone or watch that lets me know where they are makes me much more comfortable allowing them to roam our neighborhood. I can always get in touch with them and call them home from whoever's home they are playing in. And then the argument becomes "when I was young, we didn't have phones, and we still found our way home." Which to me feels a bit like "I never wore a bike helmet, and I was fine." Not entirely the same argument, but along the same lines. Sometimes new technology helps us do things better than it was done in the past. Back in the day, we couldn't keep touch with our spouses throughout the day at work or especially while traveling. Now we can, and in my opinion, that's largely an improvement over what we had in the past. Sure, some parents use it poorly to track and interrogate their kids about their location 24/7. But just because I track my kids does not mean I am spying on them or "getting them used to a surveillance state" like some arguments I have seen here.
- ghaff 3y ago
  I do get the pushback against the sentiment that some comments seem to have suggesting that the existence of smartphones creates some moral imperative to track kids under the age of 18 24/7 and make them always reachable. On the other hand, I pretty much agree with you. Just because some technology didn't exist when I was growing up doesn't mean I'm not being a little reckless if I leave my cell phone at home when I go off in the woods by myself. As someone else wrote, a smartwatch may be a reasonable compromise.
ghusto 3y ago
Believe me I understand the anxiety around not knowing where your kid is, but consider that nobody knew where we were at that age. Think about the absolutely insane shit you got up to, that should have gotten you killed a thousand times over, and yet here you are. Control will not keep them safe, and is in fact counter-productive. The more you control, the less responsibility and trust you give, the less of that, the more prone to catastrophic mistakes.
- igetspam 3y ago
  The idea that this is about "control" is incorrect. It's about safety. I want to know where my kid is, if I can't find them. I want to know they're at school and not the woods between school and home. I don't need to know what they're doing but I do want to know where they are, if they aren't where I expect them to be because I love them and don't want them to get hurt.
  - ghusto 3y ago
    Sorry, maybe "control" was misplaced. What I mean is that you can't keep them safe in that way (by trying to "control" the situation).

pwdisswordfishc 3y ago

Gotta teach your kid about surveillance capitalism.

mosselman 3y ago

The better option is to not track them and to trust them and teach them about risks and autonomy and then allow them to make small mistakes now, so they won’t make big mistakes later when they don’t listen to you anymore.

RALaBarge 3y ago
Another cloistered bad take on the internet. You are legally responsible for your child until they are 18. There is a universe of difference between not trusting your children vs taking reasonable steps to ensure their safety by knowing their location when necessary.
- doublerabbit 3y ago
  Sometimes somethings don't have a one direct answer.
- TrickardRixx 3y ago
  This somehow wasn't an issue when my parents were raised. It's just me that has to bear having been raised by a controlling narcissist.
- skeeter2020 3y ago
  How did "legally responsible for your child until they are 18" turn into "track them 24/7"? I would strongly argue permanent surveillance exceeds "reasonable steps", but I know I'm in the minority.
  - dangus 3y ago
    Non-parents seem to forget that children don’t have the same rights as adults. They don’t get all the same rights to privacy and freedom because they were birthed by their parents. Parents have a legal right and obligation to know where their kids are. The technology used to achieve it is a mere implementation detail. Also, technically, any adult who owns a smartphone has already consented to be permanently location tracked by their carrier and various entities that can buy location data from your carrier legally.
    - tarboreus 3y ago
      That's...not true? You don't have a legal obligation to know where your child is. Contextually, you might often want to know where they are, or who they're currently with in a broad sense. For older children, they can have autonomy for periods of time that can be pretty long.
- mosselman 3y ago
  Ah yes. Maybe we go back to the good old days before cell phones and the internet where kids were tethered to their parents with a 50m piece of rope. /s
billy99k 3y ago
Do you have kids? Kids don't make good decisions and trust takes time to build. Tracking kids is so the 'small mistakes' don't turn into something more serious.
- skeeter2020 3y ago
  >> Tracking kids is so the 'small mistakes' don't turn into something more serious. The obvious question is "what did we do before?" I'm not sure how tracking stops serious mistakes; maybe it resolves them after the fact, suggesting that tracking their phone is not going to help parenting and you need another approach? And yes, I do have kids of my own ranging from pre-phone to a brand new driver, so I get your motivation.
  - igetspam 3y ago
    Before the advent of cell phones, kids couldn't call you or tell you where they were, if they were lost. We lose fewer kids now.
- averageRoyalty 3y ago
  > Kids don't make good decisions and trust takes time to build. Agreed, and it's our job as parents to sheppard them. Handing them a skinner box and plonking them into the world doesn't solve that problem. And tracking then 24/7 isn't likely to help. Kids have been finding ways to get around their parents knowing what they're doing throughout all of humanity, and smartphones won't (and haven't) changed that.
- igetspam 3y ago
  Trusting little kids to not get abducted or wander off is how kids get lost. We're not talking about teenagers here, we're talking about children.

pstuart 3y ago

Yes, but only if its a smart phone. We started with cheap cell phones with gps but they'd leave them behind because they had no incentive to use them. I really really wanted to delay them getting a smart phone as long as possible, but when all the other kids have one it's so fucking hard. We held up for a while but the tantrums and crying wore us down. One of the joys of parenting is knowing what the right thing to do is and then failing to see it through.

averageRoyalty 3y ago
If a kid is at the tantrum and crying stage, they are probably not ready for the responsibility of unfiltered, 24/7 phone and internet.
- pstuart 3y ago
  We all have our failures. She was otherwise mature and a great kid. Literally every one of her friends had one and she was unable to participate with them in that way. Yes, we caved but held out as long as we could. She's turned out to be an awesome young adult and seems to have come out of teen-land unscathed.
  - averageRoyalty 3y ago
    I apologise, I've reread my comment and realised it comes across as a direct criticism of you. It's not intended that way. Parenting is hard, and there's no way I'm judging your entire experience off a single comment. My point was that broadly speaking, maturity should be a key factor in _anything_ for the individual child. Some kids can be trusted to ride a motorbike across a propertly at 9. Some shouldn't have a smartphone until 17. Some can fly across the country unaccompanied at 12.
    - pstuart 3y ago
      Thank you, that means a lot to me -- such recognition and correction is in short supply in forums. She actually is quite mature for her age, but I think the pressure broke her. I agree on the maturity factor, but society has gotten weird on allowing that to happen.

phalangion 3y ago

I love how every time a parent posts that they use a phone so they know where their kids are, it turns into the same argument about "surveillance." I have kids who are <10 years old, and a phone or watch that lets me know where they are makes me much more comfortable allowing them to roam our neighborhood. I can always get in touch with them and call them home from whoever's home they are playing in. And then the argument becomes "when I was young, we didn't have phones, and we still found our way home." Which to me feels a bit like "I never wore a bike helmet, and I was fine." Not entirely the same argument, but along the same lines. Sometimes new technology helps us do things better than it was done in the past. Back in the day, we couldn't keep touch with our spouses throughout the day at work or especially while traveling. Now we can, and in my opinion, that's largely an improvement over what we had in the past. Sure, some parents use it poorly to track and interrogate their kids about their location 24/7. But just because I track my kids does not mean I am spying on them or "getting them used to a surveillance state" like some arguments I have seen here.

ghaff 3y ago
I do get the pushback against the sentiment that some comments seem to have suggesting that the existence of smartphones creates some moral imperative to track kids under the age of 18 24/7 and make them always reachable. On the other hand, I pretty much agree with you. Just because some technology didn't exist when I was growing up doesn't mean I'm not being a little reckless if I leave my cell phone at home when I go off in the woods by myself. As someone else wrote, a smartwatch may be a reasonable compromise.

ghusto 3y ago

Believe me I understand the anxiety around not knowing where your kid is, but consider that nobody knew where we were at that age. Think about the absolutely insane shit you got up to, that should have gotten you killed a thousand times over, and yet here you are. Control will not keep them safe, and is in fact counter-productive. The more you control, the less responsibility and trust you give, the less of that, the more prone to catastrophic mistakes.

igetspam 3y ago
The idea that this is about "control" is incorrect. It's about safety. I want to know where my kid is, if I can't find them. I want to know they're at school and not the woods between school and home. I don't need to know what they're doing but I do want to know where they are, if they aren't where I expect them to be because I love them and don't want them to get hurt.
- ghusto 3y ago
  Sorry, maybe "control" was misplaced. What I mean is that you can't keep them safe in that way (by trying to "control" the situation).