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When my kids went away to college it was something of a relief. They were on their own. I would not know where they were, who they were with, how late they were staying out, or any of the stuff I was much more aware of when they were living at home.

I never GPS tracked them even when they were younger. They got inexpensive Android smartphones in 8th grade, with a talk about what to watch out for. I didn't read their email or text messages, I didn't lurk on their school website checking grades every day. If a teacher or administrator emailed me, I'd deal with that, but otherwise I tried to let them learn to run their lives. They made some mistakes. That's how you grow.

When they were about 13 and 14 they started to appreciate what they had. Both girls shun Insta and TikTok. They get angry when people take pictures without their permission.

The hardest period was when they were 10-13 I think. Because around that time all other kids got their own phones without any screentime limitations, or app store limitations. We'd hear about their friends being on tiktok and snap until 03:00am on schoolnights. Our kids were really jealous about that. But to us, it was like other parents had forgotten that they could actually... you know... parent.

if you set the boundaries on their behalf, they just learn dependence and not how to establish boundaries for themselves. let them get in trouble while they're kids. as soon as they move out or go off to college, they'll be wise not to get caught and to be responsible for themselves if they've had practice doing it already. otherwise, like several people I grew up with, they'll go off the rails and flunk out because they don't have any self discipline and the freedom they were denied their whole childhood was intoxicating

I’m seeing more retro-style tech spring up for kids. We just got one of these for the kiddo: https://tincan.kids/ and have found out several other parents have them so there’s a small but growing network of kid landlines forming.

No but we did have a 'house phone': a mobile phone that would always be in the house and anyone could use. Shared whatsapp for playdates.

Do you call your parents and thank them that you aren’t a lazy drug addict? That your aren’t a prostitute?

When is the last time you wrote a “thanks for not letting get eaten by a shark” card?

Parents don’t get thanked for things that didn’t happen. If you are waiting around for that, you’re in the wrong care taking business!

Social media is such trash, and so much of it is optimized for addiction. You might as well say "They should learn how to handle heroin."

The kids hated us for it. Obviously. (Edit: typo)

I think they mean their kids hated them for it, initially

I agree - it wasn't that we'd block them from tech without explaining. We take our little people seriously. We always saw them as inexperienced, not dumb. And turns out that if you take people seriously, they return in kind.

So we'd sit them down and discuss what Meta et al were doing to them. And why we thought that was a bad idea. They still hated us for haha but a little less I guess. Rephrase: they still thought it was unfair because their friends got to be on tiktok 24/7 and they couldn't even get a phone.

We told them 'life is not fair', and other parents were ignorant of the dangers but that didn't make the dangers any less.

I don't know - maybe we just got lucky with our kids.

No, you don't. That need is artificial.

But: they have phones. Since they were about 12. But with screentime, with us controlling the apps, without tiktok, behind a pi-hole and pivpn. With the initial agreement that we - the grown ups - were _always_ allowed to open their phone and look at any content.

For the past year or so the eldest doesn't have any screentime limitations anymore, but she still does not use insta or tiktok.

What we did was constantly explain our decisions. And showed them how boundaries were there for protection, not holding back. And if they showed us that they could handle lifting of a boundary we would lift a boundary.

Other parents in our neighbourhood just gave phones to their kids at age 11 and never set boundaries. Those kids now take pictures of girls in their classroom, and turn them into nudes. And send them around large groups on snapchat. Police was involved. But I look at the parents. Kids _need_ boundaries.

  > like in the rafters in the garage, or in various forts and hideouts 

Privacy is in my opinion one of the most important human rights that exist and the most frequently diminished or ignored, especially around parent/kid relations. Hence why it is a part of the UDHR (universal declaration of human rights).

With regards to kid/parent relation we are often too lenient as a society. One good measurement that you can keep in the back of your head to judge a kids invasion of privacy is the following question "If this kid was suffering from abusive parents, would this allow the parent to intervene the kid reaching out?".

Technically, the wristband dream isn't totally dead. Like you said, the real poison pill is internet access. As long as tech is physically walled off from bad actors who really really really want to take a look at it, it's not impossible. But as 'the future' comes for us all, the idea of computerized, but not connected devices becomes more of a pipe dream.

I'll be stealing said term myself since it's perfect. Depressingly so, but still perfect!

yeah and that filter is the point - only the truly dangerous stuff would make it back to your mom, but nothing else.

> none of these are prevented when you have an airtag in your pocket.

Technically true. However I think there is a very small percentage of parents that can keep themselves from interrupting in such a situation. Actually I think it leads to a slippery slope situation (the article calls it a downward spiral) where the interruptions will be easier to make the more you do it as a parent. The only question remaining is how high up the slope do you start and how fast do you slip?

> none of these are prevented when you have an airtag in your pocket

When I was about 8 years old I was allowed to go with the bus by myself between my mom and my dad.

I can remember two times I fell asleep on the bus, and ended up some other place, and had to figure out how to get home from there, by myself.

I'm sure of the technology was available at the time, my mom would have placed an airtag on me, and without a doubt, would have seen me miss my bus-stop and jumped into her car to pick me up wherever I ended up. Bless her heart, but I'd miss the opportunity of figuring it out by myself.

Of course, just one silly example, but I could see if this was constantly happening, a child might get accustomed to this "saving" being automatic, and not even trying to solve things yourself because you know your parent will come save the day. Until they don't, of course.

> none of these are prevented when you have an airtag in your pocket

It instills a Panopticum-like philosophy in said kids since their very early ages, meaning they become aware that they're being watched at every moment of their lives. In my opinion that does affect said kids' future look on life (once they will have become adults, that is).

> none of these are prevented when you have an airtag in your pocket

Do you want to install an app on your phone that will track you and your online activities for the government? They won't interfere, they just want to know what you're up to and help. Children are people and want some privacy too. I know I did.

AirTag showed a mom her kid was in a lake, she made a big scene, frantically calling 911. Kid was not in the lake.

Stranger kidnapping is an extreme black swan, but there’s plenty of more realistic scenarios where tracking could mitigate a bad outcome. Kid gets off the school bus at the wrong stop: found in minutes. Kid is riding bike, falls and knocked out: found easily.

There’s a ton of rare, negative scenarios where risk reduction is so cheap and easy that you’re silly not to do it. Car accident deaths are about 1 in 100 million miles driven, you certainly can’t control other drivers, but not putting on a seatbelt is stupid.

doesnt really seem to be the case youth crime is down dramatically, like 80% compared to the 90s

> Some of that might be true, but I can assure you, people _really do_ want to prevent harm to their children.

They do, and they should. But due to the fact that this really is a legitimate concern in society, and always will be, it is also an infinitely renewable source of discontent that sways public opinion towards pursuing policies and parenting methods that don't actually help or protect children. Nothing short of a total panopticon can prevent 100% of harm to children, if even that. Yet saying "we will have less visibility into the safety of children if we choose to do this instead" is seen in the current climate as one of the most distasteful things you can say. So people are afraid to speak up and find alternatives.

Anything short of absolute perfection in child safety is seen as an unacceptable failure that merits new barriers to autonomy to prevent the next failure. To preserve the freedom of childhood, there has to be a middle ground.

This is a classic short-term/long-term trade-off. Being informed at all times is gratifying in the moment. It is harmful for everyone, including the parent, long-term.

And seatbelts are one of the cases where it is good short-term and long-term, but you’re right, the same mechanic applies. No one wears a seatbelt because “over a lifetime. I have a lower chance of dying in a car crash“. We wear it because “I’m less likely to die today.“

People have become very fearful. Here in the UK people (especially people on social media!) express fears about letting their children have the same freedom they had as children because "its so dangerous now".

Crime rates are far lower, road accident fatalities and injuries are far lower, but people are a lot more afraid of both of them.

> Seems like "people only wear seatbelts so that they won't get tickets" type of reasoning, which is true for some, but many (myself included) like the additional safety and wear it regardless of law enforcement

I wore them and made by kids wear them even in a country where they were not required by law. Admittedly I had become accustomed to wearing them in a country where they were required.

> Maybe its not perfect, but most parents would give everything they have if it meant saving their child's life or health, so spending a few hundred at the chance is a no-brainer.

Any price? What about a portion of your child's development and autonomy?

The problem is that protecting children overzealously in the short term can make them more vulnerable in the long term. By attempting to protect them from every concievable risk, real or imagined, you risk preventing them from developing the defences that they will need later in life.

Traffic collisions and drowning are the major causes of death in children in developed countries; not childhood illness, as it was formerly, thanks largely to vaccination. Better road safety - that starts with _you_, car owners! - swimming lessons, and greater adult supervision when children are near water, are the most important things here, not surveillance.

When people do horrific things to children, it is almost never a stranger, but someone close to home, and again surveilling the child will not prevent that.

"but I can assure you, people _really do_ want to prevent harm to their children."

To what point though? Overprotective upbringings could delay development or produce adults lacking development in critical areas.

  > my mom required only that I let her know where I was gonna be, call her if those plans changed and let her know the new ones, and apart from that I was basically out the door by 7am and home for dinner, absent like sleepover plans or something.

  > but these were the foundations that IMO made me a responsible human

Let's be honest that was the average of that day, and today the average is tracking location at any time. If your mom was taking the average measures in that environment she would probably exercise the average measures in the current day environment.

I'm not saying that it was bad. I am saying we should probably be careful with the balance between autonomy and tracking since the same reasoning is used with your mom having you call in vs the current day tracking.

I have heard people say "free range kids" about this.. the one that gets to me is the line of cars in front of each school now.. this is a different age

I lived a chunk of my childhood on a road where most of the traffic was tractor trailers. I went outside and even waited for the bus. Nobody died, nobody got hurt.

Maybe teach your kids to have awareness of what happens on the road when they are outside, rather than oblivious to it.

You're not helping them if when they go off to college they don't know how to be a cautious pedestrian.

And not just dog owners; car drivers are apparently invulnerable to criticism or shame as well. Big SUVs have been demonstrated to kill children; people buy them, they don't care. Driving fast has been demonstrated to kill children; people speed, they don't care. They think it will never happen to them, as they believe themselves to be Good People, and getting to their destination fast in their nice big car is important to them, and any attempt to curtail that an affront to their freedom.

And when they mow children down, as statistically some of them always will, it's then always described as "an accident", as though performed by some capricious god beyond all human control.

I generally agree but would love to see data on it. I know some adults who had little oversight as kids and they became very independent, while others did not because they knew they could just have their parents fix things later for them even if they weren't there. It seems money related to me. Something like the saying of I know how to do so many things because I can't afford to hire someone to do it for me.

It seems to me that there are many people who never really grew up, never had a struggle that only they could solve or a situation where they were responsible for somthing that could cause great damage (and they cared). Many people just seem to defer to someone else - just call the guy to fix things, repeat their political stances from the "news" (talk show) they perfer, etc. As the percentage of voters who share this mindset increases, this is not a future I look forward to.

Surveillance from parents while I disagree with it is about protecting the child. Surveillance from companies/state is about protecting the company/state not the individual being surveilled.

It's very different.

> I've learned it's not that uncommon. Even letting friends track you.

This is actually somewhat old news. Snapchat pioneered this with the Snap Map, where essentially the whole purpose was to broadcast where you are to your friends.

That was so long ago now that even Snapchat is long last its peak relevance.

I don’t get how posting their location in this instance matters. Unless the friend has a stalker, is a famous celebrity, or is operating under some really unusual threat model, what risk is there in the whole world knowing some random 20-something is at a random juice bar in NYC? They aren’t being targeted, this isn’t a controversial location, etc.

It seems to be a trend that is gaining popularity, and it is showing up in media as well. In the newest season of Ted Lasso, two characters share location while dating, and hijinks ensue when one turns it off.

I know some families who have enabled location sharing family-wide. It gives them a sense of security. I feel it invades my privacy, and so I do not mandate this for myself or anyone in my family, and would actively refuse to engage.

The ensuing argument is almost always "are you hiding something", but it's not that I have anything to hide (my location history would be quite boring, really), but just that I have an aversion to it entirely out of principle.

YMMV.

Exactly my take. There can be a privacy and trust issue with tracking and location sharing, but the way my wife and I use it, it's a very casual thing so I can see if she's on her way home yet or something like that without having to have her text me while she drives.

I have nearly the exact same situation. I like being able to see when my mom is visiting my sister or some other place we used to go, and I like my mom being able to see what I'm up to, like when I visit museums or parks. Sometimes on a phone call she'll say "I saw you visited ...some place... so I looked it up online. Did you know ...something interesting about it...?"

Can you give a justification for either of those things? Would you not let your older child be on your phone plan or drive your car under your insurance 20 years ago because both of these things weren't really trackable back then? If you would, what changed? I simply don't get what 'lesson' this is meant to impart on them.

I don't see how that follows, at all. You can pay the bill and not track them. Do you have them hand over their phone everyday to check their Internet history because you pay the bill? If you don't want to pay their bill, don't, but spying on your kids isn't justified and is a weird control issue.

You sound like a parent that would charge their kids rent and not claim it on your taxes.

An individual refusing the tech simply disadvantages them against others and the state. Also, individuals who used to be railroaded by those who were more powerful gained the power to expose it with the advent of technology.

However, now that video editing is cheap and easy, perhaps the individual loses this advantage since one video recording might just be one version of the truth and you need more recorded angles/versions that prove consistency.