9 ms·

> 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 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.

jagged-chisel 2y ago
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.
- khazhoux 2y ago
  > 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.
  - lolinder 2y ago
    > I didn't ever have even a dime for a phone booth. Neither did I, but I knew how to place a collect call and my mom knew that if she got a collect call while I was away it was most likely me.
    - prpl 2y ago
      Collect call from “Pickmeup”
  - danielmarkbruce 2y ago
    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.
    - pavelstoev 2y ago
      Keyword - survived. Everything must become better.
      - NegativeLatency 2y ago
        Is this watch better though? Or is it just some gadget to be thrown away in a few years.
        windexh8er 2y ago
        I would gather Google gives up on this branch of hardware within 3 years. You're better off getting an Apple Watch SE.
  - ImPostingOnHN 2y ago
    > I have no reason to think they're impacted by me knowing where they are. It's easy to have no reason to think something (especially when you don't want to), but that's not evidence it's false. Why not just ask them?
- lolinder 2y ago
  > 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.
  - fireflash38 2y ago
    I'm tempted to get it for my son as a divorced Dad - specifically so he can call Mom or Dad anytime he wants.
- adolph 2y ago
  > I think the important part is whether the children are affected by the tracking. This is an aspect discussed in “‘I've Got Nothing to Hide' and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy“ https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=998565 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=998565 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.
  - dbish 2y ago
    100%. Most of the arguments here for it nap directly to this fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_to_hide_argument https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_to_hide_argument
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- kelnos 2y ago
  > Providing a safety net while allowing freedom boosts self confidence. That's a bit tricky, though, because 24/7 tracking is the antithesis of freedom, regardless of the intent behind it.
  - fireflash38 2y ago
    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.
BenFranklin100 2y ago
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.
- khazhoux 2y ago
  “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.
  - Gud 2y ago
    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?
    - taylorius 2y ago
      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.
      - throwaway290 2y ago
        It's about consent perhaps?
        scotty79 2y ago
        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.
gofreddygo 2y ago
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.
- donw 2y ago
  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.
  - elaborate4013 2y ago
    > 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.
    - vasco 2y ago
      Your no nonsense suggestions aren't appreciated, we like sending our kids locations to the NSA in real time here.
matrix87 2y ago
> I don't FrEaK oUt that my kids are going to die if I'm not tracking their every movement. I find it kind of hard to believe that they just happen to have location sharing on without any sort of incentive I'm not sure what's worse: enforcing that outright or having them see that level of invasion of privacy as normalized
- scotty79 2y ago
  > I find it kind of hard to believe that they just happen to have location sharing on without any sort of incentive The incentive might be as simple as not being bothered by a phonecall from a parent. I'm sure most kids would be delighted to wear a brick if it reduced the stupid "where are you?" phonecalls by 90%. Or even a small bacpack if it had a satiety sensor and cut out "have you eaten?" phonecalls as well.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
wg0 2y ago
The government also wants to know the same.
jajko 2y ago
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.
beretguy 2y ago
> 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. That’s creepy.
helpfulContrib 2y ago
[dead]
gizmo 2y ago
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.
immibis 2y ago
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.
beeboobaa3 2y ago
Abuse of power is very convenient to the abuser, yes.
bkanuka 2y ago
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.
xdennis 2y ago
> 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.
BiteCode_dev 2y ago
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.
- jorvi 2y ago
  > attempting stupid stunts 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.
  - BiteCode_dev 2y ago
    You can do plenty of stupid stuff at a friend's home, in a forest, in a quiet street... Unless you live in India/China, there are plenty of places where you can get privacy, and kids look for them. Do you think they have sex in public?
- rayiner 2y ago
  > 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/3012198t1.pdf 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.
wholinator2 2y ago
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?
- CyberDildonics 2y ago
  Will you still track them when they're 25? Or 30? You think someone keeping track of their small child means they will somehow track their location when the child is 30 years old?
  - teddyh 2y ago
    Oh, absolutely. Basically all parents treat their children as just that, children, regardless of their age.
    - CyberDildonics 2y ago
      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?
      - teddyh 2y ago
        > 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.

jagged-chisel 2y ago

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.

khazhoux 2y ago
> 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.
- lolinder 2y ago
  > I didn't ever have even a dime for a phone booth. Neither did I, but I knew how to place a collect call and my mom knew that if she got a collect call while I was away it was most likely me.
  - prpl 2y ago
    Collect call from “Pickmeup”
- danielmarkbruce 2y ago
  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.
  - pavelstoev 2y ago
    Keyword - survived. Everything must become better.
    - NegativeLatency 2y ago
      Is this watch better though? Or is it just some gadget to be thrown away in a few years.
      - windexh8er 2y ago
        I would gather Google gives up on this branch of hardware within 3 years. You're better off getting an Apple Watch SE.
- ImPostingOnHN 2y ago
  > I have no reason to think they're impacted by me knowing where they are. It's easy to have no reason to think something (especially when you don't want to), but that's not evidence it's false. Why not just ask them?
lolinder 2y ago
> 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.
- fireflash38 2y ago
  I'm tempted to get it for my son as a divorced Dad - specifically so he can call Mom or Dad anytime he wants.
adolph 2y ago
> I think the important part is whether the children are affected by the tracking. This is an aspect discussed in “‘I've Got Nothing to Hide' and Other Misunderstandings of Privacy“ https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=998565 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=998565 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.
- dbish 2y ago
  100%. Most of the arguments here for it nap directly to this fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_to_hide_argument https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_to_hide_argument
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
kelnos 2y ago
> Providing a safety net while allowing freedom boosts self confidence. That's a bit tricky, though, because 24/7 tracking is the antithesis of freedom, regardless of the intent behind it.
- fireflash38 2y ago
  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.

BenFranklin100 2y ago

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.

khazhoux 2y ago
“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.
- Gud 2y ago
  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?
  - taylorius 2y ago
    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.
    - throwaway290 2y ago
      It's about consent perhaps?
      - scotty79 2y ago
        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.

gofreddygo 2y ago

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.

donw 2y ago
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.
- elaborate4013 2y ago
  > 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.
  - vasco 2y ago
    Your no nonsense suggestions aren't appreciated, we like sending our kids locations to the NSA in real time here.

matrix87 2y ago

> I don't FrEaK oUt that my kids are going to die if I'm not tracking their every movement. I find it kind of hard to believe that they just happen to have location sharing on without any sort of incentive I'm not sure what's worse: enforcing that outright or having them see that level of invasion of privacy as normalized

scotty79 2y ago
> I find it kind of hard to believe that they just happen to have location sharing on without any sort of incentive The incentive might be as simple as not being bothered by a phonecall from a parent. I'm sure most kids would be delighted to wear a brick if it reduced the stupid "where are you?" phonecalls by 90%. Or even a small bacpack if it had a satiety sensor and cut out "have you eaten?" phonecalls as well.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

wg0 2y ago

The government also wants to know the same.

jajko 2y ago

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.

beretguy 2y ago

> 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. That’s creepy.

helpfulContrib 2y ago

[dead]

gizmo 2y ago

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.

immibis 2y ago

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.

beeboobaa3 2y ago

Abuse of power is very convenient to the abuser, yes.

bkanuka 2y ago

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.

xdennis 2y ago

> 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.

BiteCode_dev 2y ago

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.

jorvi 2y ago
> attempting stupid stunts 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.
- BiteCode_dev 2y ago
  You can do plenty of stupid stuff at a friend's home, in a forest, in a quiet street... Unless you live in India/China, there are plenty of places where you can get privacy, and kids look for them. Do you think they have sex in public?
rayiner 2y ago
> 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/3012198t1.pdf 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.

wholinator2 2y ago

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?

CyberDildonics 2y ago
Will you still track them when they're 25? Or 30? You think someone keeping track of their small child means they will somehow track their location when the child is 30 years old?
- teddyh 2y ago
  Oh, absolutely. Basically all parents treat their children as just that, children, regardless of their age.
  - CyberDildonics 2y ago
    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?
    - teddyh 2y ago
      > 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.