Opinion on Kid tracking apps

[verizyou]

You know how there are apps that track kids cell phones. I think they are kind of ridiculous. I don't care what a kid is doing! This seem like a violation of rights! It angers me parents put these apps on their child's phone. What do you guys think about these child tracking apps?

 

[stainlessray]

Pardon me for answering your question with a question... Are you a parent?

Don't presume too much from my question, it will just help if I'm going to discuss this topic to know wether you are or not...

 

[verizyou]

Pardon me for answering your question with a question... Are you a parent?

Don't presume too much from my question, it will just help if I'm going to discuss this topic to know wether you are or not...

I'm asking for YOUR opinion. My age has nothing to do with YOUR thoughts

 

[stainlessray]

I'm asking for YOUR opinion. My age has nothing to do with YOUR thoughts

i didn't ask you your age

 

[Dwight Schrute]

This thread better be closed soon before a fight break out

 

[stainlessray]

not necessary.... he can have the topic, i will bow out. no need to close his thread.

 

[gvillager]

As someone who is responsible for the account and pays the bill the parent can do whatever they want to the phones.

 

[AMDXP]

This does not violate any child's rights. A parent has every right to know what their child is doing until they turn 18 years old and they graduate from High School. This is what is called responsible parenting. Its up to each parent to decide if they want to track their child in this detail.

There are so many parents out there that don't give a hoot what their kids do,and their kids go out and get in trouble ( that's not to say responsible parents do have kids that get into trouble---it does happen)

I really doubt most parents are on their computers all the time worrying about what their kid is up to most do it randomly and lessen it as time goes on.

 

[Member138406]

I don't have kids. But also what age are we talking? I would feel fine putting this on my under 12 year old kids phone. After that you need to really have some kinda trust for your kid, nothing to do with rights. Your going to develop a bad relationship with them if they know you don't trust them and your just going to end up a mess when they start growing up... Now if they have proven they can't be trusted.. then ya I might depending on the situation.

 

[byteware]

You know how there are apps that track kids cell phones. I think they are kind of ridiculous. I don't care what a kid is doing! This seem like a violation of rights! It angers me parents put these apps on their child's phone. What do you guys think about these child tracking apps?

A couple of things.

1) If I, as a parent, feel the need to know where my child is every second of every day, then I will put that software on their phone.

2) Legally, kids don't really have rights, the parents effect those rights for their children as they see best.

3) For a time, after I give my kids their cell phones, I will have programs like these installed on their cell phones. I think that at about 16, I need to let them live their lives as if they were adults. I want to be there to support them when they fall. I cannot do that, if they are taking their first falls away at college. I want to be there to give them advice, and help them. So, yes, I want to give them the ability to make those mistakes when they are home with me so that I can help them learn from them and prevent them from happening again.

4) I think that I will probably always have the ability to activate my kid's cell phones and get a location (like a stolen cell phone program) for as long as I'm paying for their phone. If something happens and they can't be located, maybe, just maybe, I can find them with their cell phone... quickly, and in time.

 

[OfTheDamned]

Whether I use something like this or not really all depends on my kids. If they are honest with me majority of the time and I can trust them then I won't really need it. At this time I doubt I would ever need this for my son, but my daughter will probably get a GPS tracker implanted in her spine at some point. I really do think it depends on the kid though.

I also think that if the parent is paying the cell phone bill then they call the shots on something like this and the kids have no right to complain. If they have a problem with it then they can go get a job and pay their own cell bill. I also don't see how any kid under 18 with a smartphone has any room to complain. Just my opinion.

 

[powerkiter]

Must stop the urge to write something sarcastic about tracking kids down after all it is illegal...

To be fair there are home alarm systems where the perents have one code to deactivet the alarm and then another code for the kids and if this code is entered outside of a set time zone then the alarm will call you and allow you to listen to what your kids are upto and you can even shout down the phone at them "GO BACK TO SCHOOL" as the system comes with speakers and microphones dotted around the house.

Would I install a tracking app on my kids phone? Yes.

Im all for letting the kids run free but esp if it allows me to track them and I get a complaint "Your kid was here doing X" I could see if they was in that area at the said time. Also, imagine its 10pm and they should have been back at 9pm you can just go to your pc and see where they are.

Infact me and my girlfriend have set google maps to update our location all the time so if I'm down the beach teaching or at the pub she can go on to her phone and see where I am and come and join me without the need for a phone call and if I'm somewhere I shouldnt be then I just register where I'm safe and then deactivate it so me last location shows up

 

[Pryomancer]

Why are kids young enough to need tracking having phones in the first place?

 

[byteware]

Why are kids young enough to need tracking having phones in the first place?

After school activities. Walking home from school. Going to the mall with friends and their parents.

I can name a million times when my children are not with me, but I would like them to be able to reach me if they wanted/needed to.

 

[OMJ]

I dont have issue with this at all. If my parents would have had the ability to track my movements when I was 16 and 17 I probably would have been a much more well behaved kid. They would have known I was skipping school and generally lying about what I was doing. They also would have known I was regularly driving their cars 80+ mph. I turned out just fine but if any of my kids act like I did I wont hesitate to track their cell phones.

 

[Schwin97]

I will go one farther than most people on here... Even if my child is paying for their own phone, I still wouldn't have a problem tracking them through the phone if I thought it was necessary.

Just because my child is able to get gainful employment and purchase things on there own doesn't mean that there aren't rules related to those purchases. If my child has done something to lose my trust, there will be consequences until my child is able to regain my trust, or moves out of my house.

 

[J03]

Wow, I am surprised at some of these answers. This reminds me of the Verizon commercial with the child at the mall.

"So heres your moment of truth, mom. Which 3G Network would you trust to run apps like Family Locator, when it matters most?"

Then it shows her handing her daughter a phone and immediately checking her every move. Really? That's what you guys are advocating? Apparently this woman doesn't even trust her daughter in the mall with a group of her friends, a mall the mom is in no less. God forbid this girl turns 16 and get's a car. If it wasn't for technology her mom would spend her life savings on a full time private investigator for 2 years...

 

[OfTheDamned]

Wow, I am surprised at some of these answers. This reminds me of the Verizon commercial with the child at the mall.

"So heres your moment of truth, mom. Which 3G Network would you trust to run apps like Family Locator, when it matters most?"

Then it shows her handing her daughter a phone and immediately checking her every move. Really? That's what you guys are advocating? Apparently this woman doesn't even trust her daughter in the mall with a group of her friends, a mall the mom is in no less. God forbid this girl turns 16 and get's a car. If it wasn't for technology her mom would spend her life savings on a full time private investigator for 2 years...

Not sure if you are a parent or not, but I think you were looking at that commercial the wrong way. I didn't view it that way at all. I was thinking along the lines of how nice it is that the mom could monitor her child and make sure that she wasn't being taken away from the mall by a gang, child molester, kidnapper, serial killer, psycho, etc. As a parent I get concerned every time my kids leave the house. There are crazy people everywhere that are willing to do all sorts of horrible things to anyone they can. I understand that she was in the same mall, but I have read stories about people being abducted while they were standing right beside someone else. I had my car stolen out of my driveway at the house I used to live in and it was a really nice gated community.

This is one of the major reasons I think that these types of apps or features are good to have. It isn't so much to keep tabs on good kids, but to make sure that those kids are safe.

 

[stainlessray]

I definately think some people are to quick to assume the only reason to use this tech is because you don't trust the kids. Even if you trust them, it's healthy to be able to track them down in an emergency, pick them up, even just being able to contact them on the phone was once considered unnecessary.

I even recall a story about a girl who was kidnapped and was subsequently found because she had a cell phone. Why wouldn't I use it in the interest of protecting my own?

It's not a matter of control or trust, it's a duty I aquired the day I became a parent.

 

[byteware]

Wow, I am surprised at some of these answers. This reminds me of the Verizon commercial with the child at the mall.

"So heres your moment of truth, mom. Which 3G Network would you trust to run apps like Family Locator, when it matters most?"

Then it shows her handing her daughter a phone and immediately checking her every move. Really? That's what you guys are advocating? Apparently this woman doesn't even trust her daughter in the mall with a group of her friends, a mall the mom is in no less. God forbid this girl turns 16 and get's a car. If it wasn't for technology her mom would spend her life savings on a full time private investigator for 2 years...

Your child is late to meet you at the car from shopping at the mall. They aren't answering their phone.

Let's look at how you can handle this with scenario A and scenario B

A) You go running through the mall security in tow looking for your child, and people are announcing your child's name on the speaker and telling them to report to security.

B) You look up the locator and determine that your child is headed for the car (albeit slower than you would like), that you child is somewhere shopping (and you can head toward their location), that your child is moving away from the shopping center (and you can notify the police, and begin pursuit... because I would be hot on their tail), or you can find where your child's cell phone was dumped and call police and begin the search hours earlier than would have happened otherwise.


It's not necessarily something you sit all day and watch (it's not a program in the corner of my PC that I just monitor all day), but it's something that you can look up when you have reason to believe you need to.

 

[Frisco]

My kids have always come to me or to their mother or both with their plans; we've always trusted them, to a point.

The parental curiosity that we all have can easily morph into paranoia and distrust when we don't have much information or familiarity with the friends of our kids and the places they go, so we don't let that happen.

No devices needed.

 

[J03]

I understand the pros to using this software but its just too easy to abuse and I don't think many parents have the self control to simply sit back and only activate the software in an emergency. Having the option to track your child but only turning on the phone to check after curfew or when they are late to meet you at the car is great. However you have to think about it from the kids perspective too. Do they trust you to not abuse it? If not they will find ways around it. Then instead of having that feature in an emergency you wont have it at all or worse, your kid leaves his cell at a friends house and is without it. You may not think it's a trust issue but I can guarantee they will. My parents required me to keep my cell phone on me at all times (at that time it was the startac flip analog phone lol) and i was ok with that because I still had some freedom. I would not have been ok with being tracked.

 

[OfTheDamned]

I understand the pros to using this software but its just too easy to abuse and I don't think many parents have the self control to simply sit back and only activate the software in an emergency. Having the option to track your child but only turning on the phone to check after curfew or when they are late to meet you at the car is great. However you have to think about it from the kids perspective too. Do they trust you to not abuse it? If not they will find ways around it. Then instead of having that feature in an emergency you wont have it at all or worse, your kid leaves his cell at a friends house and is without it. You may not think it's a trust issue but I can guarantee they will. My parents required me to keep my cell phone on me at all times (at that time it was the startac flip analog phone lol) and i was ok with that because I still had some freedom. I would not have been ok with being tracked.

I think many of the parents that have these features with teenagers will abuse it to a certain degree. I personally don't have a problem with that. I have a great relationship with my kids at 6 and 3 right now. They know it is always better to tell me the truth and even though punishment could happen, it will always be lighter with honesty. When they are teenagers, I have a feeling that that will be a different story. I hope that we will still have a great relationship and that they will still be honest, but I remember what it was like to be a teenager I know some of the things I did as one. While I can't stop all of those things from happening I can try to prevent the ones that may ruin their lives.

Also, things have changed quite a bit since most of us were teenagers. The world is different and the people in it are different. Kids are having sex, getting pregnant, taking drugs, getting arrested and going to jail at much earlier ages these days. I saw a 13 year old pregnant girl at my doctors office the other day....THIRTEEN!!!!!!!! As a parent that freaks me out more than you can possibly imagine and makes me think about GPS tracking via chastity belts and skipping the cell phones all together. People can say that it is invasion of privacy on a teen or that it is unfair all they want, but when you realize that your little three year old daughter could be a mother in less than 10 years, that will scare the everliving crap out of you. I have no interest in being a grandmother that soon. I plan to keep an open dialog with my kids and keep them informed as well as smart enough to know better, but if all else fails I'll buy a tracking satellite and armed guards to keep them safe.

 

[ari-free]

It's not a joke when kids get lost and even get kidnapped.

 

[SB13X]

Truth of it is my point of view again being a parent myself is that until they are 13-14 I won't need this kind of software.

1.Because up until then the only places they will be going is into town and back post age 11 and I will ensure they tell me where they are going and what time they will be back, and to let me know if they are going to be late, like in the olden days lol.
2.Prior to being 11 they won't go anywhere without me or their Mum unless visiting friends houses for tea and we will know they parents well enough that they share our parental ideas, otherwise their friends can come round to ours.

After they hit 13-14 then yes I'm more than happy to plonk this software on their phones. Not only for the benefit of tracking them but tracking what will effectively be my phone. The fact is I know what I was like as a teenager and it wasn't pretty, all this even though I was brought up in a well rounded, understanding loving home with 3 brothers who haven't been as rebellious as I. This again though is a major stretch because truth be told unless the phones a hand-me-down or they buy one from the local tech exchange they ain't getting one as I'm not buying them no contract they can go PAY as you GO and learn the value of things.