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Does anyone else feel uneasy about the idea of children having to curb their behavior because they know they're being constantly monitored by their parents? Th
by okso 2y ago
Does anyone else feel uneasy about the idea of children having to curb their behavior because they know they're being constantly monitored by their parents?
This product concerns me not only due to corporate advertising surveillance but also parental spying.
- quaintdev 2y agoAnd then when they finally break free they don't have any feedback mechanism that they had since childhood. This can go both ways. They might turn out to be model citizen or your worst nightmare. People raised children for 1000s of years without any technology. I bet we can do that too.
- philomath_mn 2y agoPossibly -- but we're looking at a smartwatch to give our 7 y.o. _more_ freedom. If he has a way to call home and we can check on his location, I'm much more likely to set him loose in the neighborhood. Something for us to think about, though.
- School-Cotton 2y agoWhat stops you from giving him freedom even without a smartphone?
- ksenzee 2y agoIn the US, the biggest danger to free-range kids is nosy neighbors, who are convinced kids out wandering alone are in danger of… something! Kidnapping? Sex trafficking? Darned if I know. But it’s a huge problem to those of us who want our kids to be free to walk to the corner store. My kid had a woman call the police on him at age 7, in a safe suburban neighborhood, when she wasn’t satisfied with his answers about why he was out alone. Having a phone would have helped: he could have called me right then. (As it is, he ran away before they got there, and I still chuckle wondering what the cops thought about the whole thing.)
- philomath_mn 2y agoI am pretty comfortable with him moving around w/o a cell device but it would give my wife peace of mind (which is fair). Plus the convenience of calling him home without driving around.
- guilhas 2y agoI don't disagree, but we didn't had a choice and now we have. How much guilt is a parent going to have in, the unlikely situation, that something unfortunate happens and that it could have been prevented by this device?
- throwaway2037 2y ago> People raised children for 1000s of years without any technology. I bet we can do that too. I love these comments. So, no vaccines for you and your kids, right?
- 4ggr0 2y ago> So, no vaccines for you and your kids, right? Depending on the person, the answer you expect might not be the actual answer you get...
- throwaway2037 2y agoCorrect me if wrong, but the anti-vaxxer movement is limited to Americans. I never once heard any other nationality talk about it, except to make fun of loonies from the US. In many highly developed countries, you cannot go to public schools without evidence of many vaccines.
- exitb 2y agoI suspect that parents might be more permissive if they have access to location and means of communication.
- bitshiftfaced 2y agoFrom skimming the page, it looks like it mainly just lets you know their location. Were there other more invasive features than that? Parents keeping tabs on where their kids are and who they're with is associated with positive outcomes like reduced drug use risks.
- michaelt 2y agoWhen I was young (several decades ago now, admittedly) parents couldn't track our locations. We largely turned out fine. To me, someone who wants to track their kid's location 24/7 in real time sounds rather anxious - unless their kid has a history of drug abuse.
- jahewson 2y agoWell, my parents could track my location by just asking other people in our village where I was, but that’s not quite the same.
- pavel_lishin 2y agoFlip that around. My child has more freedom now, because I can let her walk further from home, unsupervised, to see if a friend can play - because she can immediately text me and let me know she's staying at the friend's house for the next few hours. She no longer has to wait for me to be ready to walk with her. She can text me if she wants to be picked up from aftercare early. Or if she wants to stay later. Or if she wants to make plans for afterwards with a friend. I don't mean to dismiss your concerns, they're valid. But this question also varies hugely with age. It would feel very odd tracking every step of my child's life if they were 16; it's different if they're 8.
- pohuing 2y agoI simply called using the landline back in the day, but I grew up in a small village in Germany where roaming the fields unsupervised was the norm.
- School-Cotton 2y agoI don’t know anyone in the U.S. who still has a landline.
- pohuing 2y agoGermany showing its incredible infrastructure again then. But then giving the kids a cell phone really is a necessity huh. Can't even call parents at work if they're back from school or on break and something happens.
- ksenzee 2y agoSure, I did too, or using a pay phone. There are precious few pay phones and landlines anymore.
- throwaway2037 2y agoThank you to share. My experience (different countries) was similar to yours. Do you know anyone who grew up in a big city in the same era? I do. They didn't experience the same type of freedoms. Their parents were much more concerned about crime/kidnapping/"the boogey man".