Parents turn to tech toys to track teens

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | July 9, 2006 | Janine DeFao

[Ben Mugged]

Paige White was surprised when her parents figured out soon after she started driving last year that she'd gone 9 miles to a party, not 4 miles to the friend's house she'd told them she was visiting. It seemed to her almost as if her car was bugged.

It was.

Paige's parents had installed a device in their daughter's SUV that can tell them not only how far she's driven, but how fast and whether she's made any sudden stops or hard turns.

"I was kind of mad because I felt it was an invasion of my privacy," said the Los Gatos resident, now 17.

Parents, some of whom feel outmatched by their offspring in this tech-savvy world, are using a growing number of gadgets, software and specially equipped cell phones to track kids' driving, read their instant messages and pinpoint where they're hanging out.

~snip~But cyber-snooping is simply a new tool, experts say. It doesn't resolve the dilemma parents have grappled with for generations: How much free rein do you give children so they can learn the lessons they need to grow up and be independent?

~snip~

Proponents of the new technology say it can help protect kids -- whether from predators lurking online or their own bad driving. But while there may be gains, monitoring also can take a toll.

"The bottom line is, surveillance will cut down somewhat on potential risk behavior kids will engage in, but it is at a cost," Wolf said. "To the extent that you do surveillance, you are potentially interfering with your kids developing responsibility for their own lives."

[daybreakcoming]

Not having any teens yet, I hope that sooner or later I will be able to trust mine.

I have a grand plan for letting go but you know about the best laid plans of mice and men. You obviously made good choices and your parents knew it. Gotta be a story there about your driving though. lol

I'll never forget taking the family car to a neighboring town to take a friend home after I was told not to leave town. I ran out of gas in neighboring town and guess who I had to call to come get me. Dad never said a word to me that very long ride home. He didn't have to. We laughed about it in later years. Another time he found my sis at a dance she wasn't suppose to be at. She was dancing with her eyes closed and when she opened them there was 6'2 Dad a'la John Wayne standing there instead of her little dance partner.
My Dad didn't need no stinkin' GPS tracker.

[spinestein]

[You let a machine track your children instead of exercising your parental responsibility of teaching your children to tell the truth?]


You're saying that the best and most effective parents teach their children right from wrong from an early age and when they reach the teen-age years they won't need to be monitored like this. Unfortunately, not every teenager IS trustworthy and there are some who need to be monitored because they're irresponsible. It's all too common for teens to get used to using drugs or alcohol after trying it at parties with their friends and when that happens it's time to rescind their "right" to privacy.

Obviously these parents had a reason to distrust their child BEFORE they went to the trouble of buying the tracking machine.

[Calpernia]

Related

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1613468/posts
Nintendogs and Bark Mode

[Calpernia]

Nanny State and dual abuse purpose ping

[Calpernia]

Remember my thread back in April about Nintendogs and bark mode?

IMO, this is related.

[GrandEagle]

6'2 Dad a'la John Wayne standing there instead of her little dance partner.
LOL!!

[HairOfTheDog]

This is related to Nintendogs ~how~?

[Calpernia]

The SmartChip. It is in the Nintendo DS also. That was what I was trying to figure out when I posted that thread back in April about Bark mode.

[Cobra64]

You're saying that the best and most effective parents teach their children right from wrong from an early age and when they reach the teen-age years they won't need to be monitored like this.You are implying something I never said. Regardless, I sure as hell would not put a GPS on a car or chain one around their ankle like a criminal. You can see what total disaster my kids turned out to be on my FR homepage. (the tatto on my daughter's hand is a temporary one used in an Indian religious wedding of which she was a part.

No jail time, no tattoos, no piercings, two degrees, and both working.

George Orwell would be deeply saddened.

[Gabz]

I don't see how a parent choosing to do this qualifies as a nanny state issue.......it's a parent's perogative. Or am I missing something?

[Cobra64]

I forgot to ask. How old are your children?

[Calpernia]

Kinda missing something.

SmartChip is the Verichip Smartchip.

It goes back to the National Nanotechnology Initiative that Clinton funded. Everything is suppose to get chipped and recorded into the Data2010 database.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1563271/posts
Healthy People 2010

[metmom]

You can teach your children to tell the truth and make them suffer the consequences when they get caught but if they want to lie, they are going to do it no matter what you tell them. Teaching them what's right is no guarantee that they are going to do it. If that's the case, you do what you have to.

[Gabz]

I should have known.

This Healthy People 2010 crapola is really starting to get on my nerves. Not you posting about it - the prinicple of it.........

[misterrob]

Is calling the house where the kid is supposed to be to check on them not surveillance? Or asking the parent at that house to call you when the kid gets there or leaves not surveillance?

Is taking a drive by the house where your kid is supposed to be not surveillance?

Is looking at the cell phone bill when it comes in not surveillance?

These are all things that parents do as they should so that underage kids know that they are not free to do as they please. Knowing that Mom and Dad are watching can keep a kid from making bad choices.

When they are on their own and paying their own way they can do as they please.

[HairOfTheDog]

Calpernia... you've lost me, again.

Are you just saying it's the same kind of chip? Same kind of technology? So what?

[Junior]

As long as I am responsible for them, "privacy" is what I say it is.

[Calpernia]

When they first launched, they actually sent out a ChipMobile in Florida thinking they could just drive from neighborhood to neighborhood and chip everyone.

That didn't go over too well.

Since then, they have been packaging and repackaging the approach, IMO, to condition everyone that everything is chipped.

And the fact that they set themselves up in an affiliate program, gives financial leverage to everyone that wants to sell out the personal data that has people under them.

[Calpernia]

Works the same way as PAWS and NAIS.

It can be considered so what.

[HairOfTheDog]

An interactive video game is not the same as a parent putting a chip in their kid's vehicle, and that is not the same as the government making a database of animals.

Calpernia, you may see all this as one very complicated 1984 conspiracy, but that doesn't make it so. What all this ~is~ is people having the same issues we've always had: Parents pry into their kids' privacy, and unleashed governments tend to grow in size and scope. All these chips do is add technology to the same human tendencies... only instead of just listening in on the phone call or reading the kid's diary, parents can now put a GPS tracker in the car. Dang! Glad they didn't have that when I was a kid!