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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 creep

• 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.
          • Larrikin 2y ago
            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.
            • scotty79 2y ago
              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.
              • throwaway290 2y ago
                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
                • scotty79 2y ago
                  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.
      • Gud 2y ago
        Yes, they absolutely can be. The difference is you can leave your spouse, an option not really realistic for a child.
        • taylorius 2y ago
          You CAN leave your spouse - but in many common circumstances, it's by no means an easy option.
      • kelnos 2y ago
        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.
        • taylorius 2y ago
          Absolutely, I agree with you entirely. But I'm sure the state doesn't mind such indoctrination one bit.
    • iiio8 2y ago
      [dead]
    • blitzar 2y ago
      > kids being constantly tracked is absolutely scary Isn't that how the vast majority of the net worth of NH readers was generated?
      • kelnos 2y ago
        ... by... tracking... kids? No, I don't think so. You have a pretty weird conception of what HN readers do for a living.
        • blitzar 2y ago
          > what HN readers do for a living. 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.
  • kelnos 2y ago
    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.
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  • Double_a_92 2y ago
    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.
• 1oooqooq 2y ago
  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
  • poyu 2y ago
    They’ll have to leave the phone too
    • gofreddygo 2y ago
      Such a good, unintended consequence !
  • iiio8 2y ago
    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.
    • sgerenser 2y ago
      Some enterprising 13 year old is developing WaaS (wrists as a service) right now.
  • kaba0 2y ago
    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.
    • kelnos 2y ago
• prpl 2y ago
  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.
  • vasco 2y ago
    If the premise is that they have a phone, why not just ask them where they are when you need to know?
    • pineaux 2y ago
      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.
    • Double_a_92 2y ago
      Because that's an extra annoyance on both sides.
      • BiteCode_dev 2y ago
        Extend this logic to other thing you should ask about, and you'll see it gets creepy very fast.
  • kelnos 2y ago
• bryanrasmussen 2y ago
  >As I recall, a big part of growing up was spending time and doing things my parents didn’t want me to do. a big part of parenting is making sure your kid actually is at school, or monitoring more closely a child that has done improper things.
  • josefx 2y ago
    > 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?
    • rsa4046 2y ago
      > 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.
      • bryanrasmussen 2y ago
        >US K-12 public schools, if the child is missing from school, parents are contacted immediately. The US is definitely the world, and I am definitely in that world, and the people who make that assumption are definitely super smart all around.
    • bryanrasmussen 2y ago
• scotty79 2y ago
  Is doing things your spouse doesn't want you to do a big part of your adult life too? For me spause tracking was mostly for knowing when to go out of our apartment building to help her carry groceries from the car when she arrives.
• newaccount74 2y ago
  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.
• Double_a_92 2y ago
  I guess it only works if your parents are mature enough to not actually judge everything you do.
  • dbish 2y ago
    This is very “nothing to hide” fallacy