Kids now teens. We never had a tv. Only let them watch dvd on laptop. Never allowed them on tiktok. Never gave them surveillance watches (kiddyzoom). I also did not have whatsapp, or even carried my phone half of the time.
They hated us for it. Other parents called us crazy. “They should learn how to handle social media!” And now their kids are unmanageable and ours thank us for shielding them.
I did not go so far, but things were not as bad when mine were younger (the younger one is 18 now). We did not have a TV, and for a long time they had desktops, and they got phones are teenagers.
It has got crazy. I recently read an article by a journalist whose son had just started university who was watching his tracking app and worrying when he did not get out of bed on time. Not as old as the 29 year old in the article, but she said she could not concentrate on her work because she was worried he would missing things. There are Whatsapp groups for parents at some universities - apparently discussing your now adult child with a group of strangers is normal.
I asked my daughter (also at her first term at university right now) what she though of the idea of having a tracking app on her phone, and (as I expected) there was no way to tolerate this. I think children who have been tracked normalise this. IMO is stalking once they are adults.
I think the perception that kids (or adults!) need constant entertainment is also harmful.
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 cheap 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.
Maybe you did other things right too. Like listening to them. Spending time with them. Passing your genes. Who knows what else. Maybe you’re "just" great parents.
> They hated us for it. Other parents called us crazy. “They should learn how to handle social media!” And now their kids are unmanageable and ours thank us for shielding them.
Life's about boundaries, if you don't set them for your kids they won't grow properly and other people will have to explain them the rules (or they'll be parasites their whole life)
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
> They hated us for it. Other parents called us crazy.
When did this start? And what ages did they start to appreciate the shielding?
Mine are 7 and 10 now and we don't have any complaints... at least not yet. But I feel like parents around us are pretty aware of the dangers here. I'm not seeing their peers getting phones yet; maybe some smart watches. Definitely not social media. We had a principal mention "wait until 8th" at a back-to school meeting and receive enthusiastic applause.
I'm wondering if the culture is catching up, or if they're just a little too young and the pressure is still incoming.
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.
Did you have landlines? I want my kid to just walk over to his friend's place whenever he wants, but while most parents are coming around to having kids without cellphones they all live in extremely un-walkable neighborhoods.
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.
Even without purpose-built things like TinCan, most "landlines" these days... aren't. My parents' house is wired for telephony, but the backhaul is 5G. A box in the house serves as the uplink between the 5G network and the "landline" phones throughout the house.
When was the crossover point, when they stopped hating you for it and started thanking you? And what was the specific thank you about? Not wasting their time with tiktok junk, or helping protect their developing brains from addictive slop?
They should learn how to handle reality before being inundated with an endless overwhelming deluge of unreality, outright bullshit, and lies. Kudos to you for giving them that chance.
In a world where heroin is normalized, it might be a good idea
A similar question as the European vs American approach to handling alcohol. In Europe (vast oversimplification incoming, big continent with lots of cultures and jurisdictions) it's normal to drink beer the first time by 14, in the presence of your parents, and are typically able to buy it freely at around 16. In the US (oversimplification incoming) you typically have your first experience with alcohol in secret, or binge-drinking once you are 21 and free from your parents. The European version typically results in more alcohol being consumed, but in healthier habits
One crux is that this only works if the parents are actually using alcohol/social media in a healthy way. A heroin addict can't teach their children how to responsibly use heroin
> In Europe (vast oversimplification incoming, big continent with lots of cultures and jurisdictions) it's normal to drink beer the first time by 14, in the presence of your parents, and are typically able to buy it freely at around 16.
You did disclaim about this, but my understanding is that most European countries no longer allow you to buy alcohol before you’re 18 (but with some major exceptions like Germany and Belgium). Culturally, you are however quite spot on.
Back about 15 or so years ago, I heard from colleagues and even my sister about how they banned kids from the stupid that was readily available on television. Their kids would be forbidden, for instance, from watching Hannah Montana, or even the entire Disney Channel and/or Nickelodeon. When my nephew was little, Caillou was forbidden to him. I was impressed with these parents' gutsiness and willingness to take action to protect their kids from harmful slop.
Banning kids from social media seems to be the present-day equivalent of that and I commend you.
Minimizing screens has been shown to have a massive effect on children, positively.
At the same time children are exposed to things and if they don't know how to navigate it, it's critical.
I take small people through what the screens and computers are trying to do their brains and then ask them to watch their brain watching the thing that catches their interest.
It could be someone's smart watch, someone's phone, or a tv.
One time a small humanoid self reported to me that sugar makes them want to have more sugar, and some screens seem to do the same thing, but other screens don't make them feel bad.
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.
You literally need to give your kids a phone now.
They need to login to school apps to complete their assignments and similar cases.
Yours probably grew up in the interim time before these tools became mandatory.
The thing is the parents normalizing this kind of intrusion of privacy think they are in the right while creating a very dangerous world. Even things like going through your kids rooms (yes even when they live at home) is a huge privacy violation.
No wonder the "but think of the kids" argument is so effective, we all grew up being propagandized by or own parents and environment.
Privacy feels like such an innate desire. Your mention of parents going through your room brought back a few negative emotions tied to a few memories, where my mom either came to me with something she found in my room, or walked into my room and went directly to where something was hidden and pulled it out (indicating that she had already been snooping in my room and found it). Thinking about it, I realized that's one of the reasons I started hiding things where my parents couldn't easily get to them, like in the rafters in the garage, or in various forts and hideouts I created in the neighborhood.
> like in the rafters in the garage, or in various forts and hideouts
Now imagine your parents tracking you going into the garage every time or to specific 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?".
Both of my parents grew up in very small houses with a lot of children, and my wife shared a room with her sister. I'd guess that the vast majority of humanity now, and certainly in the past, had very little individual privacy because there was no room!
It seems like a modern luxury in western suburban living. Nice if if you can get it, I suppose.
There was a time when I liked having intricate data about things because it was interesting for me to learn about my own world. That rosy-eyed picture was polluted by surveillance capitalism, and it's gotten to the point where I'd often rather write things down on paper or in a markdown or yaml doc rather than use an tracker app, just because I know that my own hand-written data isn't one profile in a global data set used to squeeze value out of me.
Also, after reading the free part of the article, I propose the word "pramopticon".
Same, early 2000s I remember dreaming about having some wristband or something that would read all the "data" from my body and automatically know what's wrong and so on, even dreaming of being able to have "automatic journals" created from dreams and what not, my imagination was the limits, collect all the data, create miracles!
Then Snowden happened, and Cambridge Analytica, and Event X and everything else. Now I'm the same, all "family data" lives on harddrives that are physically in my home, I prefer paper notes over anything on my computer, for my journal at least, and my perspective is basically that secrets are impossible over the internet. If you want something secret, it cannot go through internet pipes even once.
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.
Some of that baby phase and younger kid stuff in the article sounds pretty insane.
My daughter is a teenager and I appreciate being able to look at her phone's location when I pick her up from a place. I don't tend to monitor her phone use, occasionally I will check it out but the "deal" I have with her makes sure she understands she is an individual and I respect her individuality. I have a few apps blocked.
Modern marketing just preys on parental guilt. If you don't buy a $300 sensor or track your kid's location every second, they subtly make you feel like an irresponsible parent.
It's actually sad for kids. In childhood being able to stay out a bit longer, solve sudden problems without calling mom, or just sit alone taught you how to cope with the world. But if someone monitors a child all the way to their college dorm door, it's unclear how they're supposed to develop personal autonomy at all
Many decades ago - there was barely a dangerous / dumb thing you could do roaming my neighbourhood that the network of mothers wouldn't relay back by the time you got home.
I'm being seen by everyone else when I walk around the street, but there is friction to the information, it's not being collected, transferred, or cross-referenced unless it meets certain thresholds that involve many people signing off on it as notable or unusual.
There's a big difference between all your neighbors running purely on-premises camera setups versus all of them running individual nodes of a giant panopticon.
> being able to stay out a bit longer, solve sudden problems without calling mom, or just sit alone
none of these are prevented when you have an airtag in your pocket
my hesitation is from knowing these _dont_ work: by the time airtag shows where someone actually is that isnt a 500m circle, you can see them with your analog eyes :/
> 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.
> 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.
if it involved asking a business (car service in my case) to let you use their phone, or already having a quarter and using a payphone to call mom... thats an airtag :)
> a child might get accustomed to this "saving" being automatic
i dont fear a perfectly functioning society; im an adult and am also used to 911/999/etc being available. some people watch Demolition Man and get the wrong idea...
It is not an airtag. The payphone doesn't use a network of snitches to say where you are at all times. It is really bad to instill the idea that you are never private, it makes our surveillance situation worse and more accepted. Which i am sure hackernews and the EFF have plenty of articles to show why normal people need privacy.
> having a quarter and using a payphone to call mom
I had enough coins for 2 phone calls in a sealed envelope in my school bag for emergencies - probably still in the bottom of my bag wherever it may be.
How so? Mom has no way to know where you are until you initiate the call. Isn’t a big part of the developmental point to have kids recognize they’re lost on their own and then ask for help from a friendly stranger? What’s the ‘no airtag’ scenario you imagine?
> if it involved asking a business (car service in my case) to let you use their phone, or already having a quarter and using a payphone to call mom... thats an airtag :)
No. An airtag works for your mom no matter if you want it or not, some payphone on the street places the agency about calling help into your hands.
> 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).
> It instills a Panopticum-like philosophy in said kids since their very early ages
Santa Claus has been around since before airtags; you dont need technology to make kids fearful of invisible retribution, just a clever song ("he sees you when youre sleeping, he knows when youre awake")
We’ve strip-mined every cultural superstition and monster for the entertainment industry, but those superstitions and monsters often existed - even in the minds of adults - to warn against certain behaviors, actions or locations.
If that was so people who were more religious would be more accepting of surveillance and I do not think that is the case.
God is also perfectly good, outside time, unlikely to question your actions, and completely forgiving. Rather different from being watched by human beings.
I do not think belief divine omniscience by itself had much impact on people's behaviour.
It's true that the idea of 'someone is watching you' is very old and a well-tested method of social control. The religious angle may be why so many people are receptive to mass surveillance today. But not everyone is religious, and those that are rarely live with a true, 24/7 feeling of dread and fear that someone is actually watching. The fear of consequences is very distant, and there is often forgiveness for small infractions. That fear becomes very different when you can put a face and a name to the people watching you, and you know they can affect your life in very real and immediate ways. This is the preconditioning that starts with childhood surveillance.
I've spoken to many of the deconverted who where genuinely afraid of committing real and mental sins as a direct condition of omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence. Have you not met someone like this?
Yeah, but then there's religion with an all-viewing God or gods. And years of these ideas repeated never really goes away. After all, what if there really IS a God, or Vishnu, or Allah, and a Hell, etc.! The very idea is enough to drive a kid to Pascal's wager.
There’s many people who don’t believe in either Santa or god. Only about half of younger people believe in hell in the US.
Unfortunately, even those who escape such beliefs now have to face the reality of surveillance not by gods, but by men, many of whom don’t have your best interest in mind.
> 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.
Presumably, when this generation comes of age they will largely answer this question with "sure, I don't see the problem", which many will consider a big win.
Most marketing for most things preys on guilt, fear, and avarice - negative emotions are uncomfortable, and you first create the negative emotion in the target's mind, and then sell them the solution, to alleive their discomfort.
I was a kid who wandered. Sometimes through bear infested forests at night. Sometimes through abandoned factories with collapsing roofs. Sometimes to the homes of people my parents strongly disapproved of.
I lived. So did pretty much everyone else. I had a few significant fuck-ups. I learned from them, and didn't repeat them. In my childhood, I knew one kid who died from misadventure - grain silo - and many who died from disease - meningitis, cancer, sepsis. Perhaps parents should keep their children in protective plastic bubbles, if they're going to be consistent about it.
My kid - no tracking, and autonomy that I see makes other parents writhe with discomfort, as they're like "she'll be stolen! Her kidneys!", and I'm going "you guys don't understand statistics, and your kids are going to live with you until you die, and lead stunted lives".
"If you don't buy a $300 sensor or track your kid's location every second, they subtly make you feel like an irresponsible parent."
It's not just marketing - the laws are getting more and more restrictive too. Not having some tracking on your kid starts to be used against people in court cases (criminal or civil). The think of tha children crowd has the ear of law enforcement and prosecutors.
Childhood surveillance may become a very lucrative proving ground for new tech. The usual outrage about privacy doesn't apply here because of a combination of a very helicopter parenting-friendly society and a common understanding the even older children have zero latitude in making any choices for themselves and are owned by their parents and institutions, who can at any point choose to force them into any new schemes.
I think the next direction these surveillance companies are going to head into is even more invasive aggregation and processing. Instead of just giving parents a basic rundown of what's happening now, have phones record every spoken word and then mine it for sentiment analysis to reveal hidden thoughts and opinions. Schools could deploy software onto all students that tracks everything they say to each other on school property, which then could be used to build social graphs, identify misbehavior, rank social cohesion and obedience to understand which groups are good and bad influences - with all this data immediately provided to teachers and parents so they can take action. Once this is normalized, it will come for us all, just a bit more covertly.
I think the problem here is what are you supposed to do with very low probability really bad events. I.e. your kid being kidnapped or similar. The probability of this extremely low, but it is unimaginatively bad. Therefore any small thing you do that will reduce the chance of this happening may seem reasonable.
It is not clear to me how to think about this rationally.
Part of the way to think about it is that you simply can't control such events. We never could and we never will. Trying to do so is a losing game for temporary psychological comfort only. I think the key is that the "small things" that you do are unlikely to actually reduce the probability in practice.
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.
> Kid gets off the school bus at the wrong stop: found in minutes.
if they have a phone they can call for help. before mobile phones they used payphones.
> Kid is riding bike, falls and knocked out:
Unless its somewhere very lonely, someone sees the kid, calls emergency services, who contact the parent. I do not know how this works in the US where you pay for ambulances though.
I doubt it’s so easy. More likely they’ll overtly break rules and violate norms with no sense of shame or embarrassment, like…(the future is now, just not evenly distributed)
Being accused of hurting children is a social death sentence. Parents don't want to be accused. Politicians don't want to be accused. Nobody ever does.
So parents keep their children indoors for fear of being arrested from them crossing the street on their own. Politicians are unable to renege on "child safety" laws because the populace will believe they are harming children and vote them out.
But these things work the way they do because of the social consequences embedded in our culture, caused by the perceived harm to children from inaction. People want to avoid accusations of being complicit in harming children by supporting politician X or failing to do Y, as that has legitimate societal consequences when taken far enough, so there little incentive to diverge from this narrative.
Some of that might be true, but I can assure you, people _really do_ want to prevent harm to their children. Most of the people I know who are using this stuff do it completely voluntarily, not because of how they will be seen, but because they genuinely want to increase safety for their child.
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.
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 do actually care about my safety and health, and will take reasonable measures for a chance to preserve it; and that same feeling extends to my children.
> 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.“
Strange, I wear the belt because I believe it may save me some day over my lifetime. I have very little concern for it happening this particular day. Or at least I used to. Its just SOP now.
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.
That's not an adequate comparison. A ticket is simple. Child services (in the US) is very powerful and complex. I would easily choose to risk my life and a ticket over risking child endangerment or neglect charges and possibly even having them sent to a foster home.
I agree, but i was replying to a comment that made the comparison.
My other point is that it is also happening in the UK where a lot of people do the same without the same fear of child services, so i think its a cultural change that is common to both countries.
> 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.
I think the problem is that parental instincts are protective, and it takes a conscious effort to let go. Its easier if you understand enough maths to weigh up the risks rationally.
It's so wild to me as a millennial who grew up with a single mom who worked all day to see the obsession with child surveillance/protection that permeates society today. When I was a kid, 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. In the wintery months I was regularly gone for all daylight hours, and yeah she knew where I was, in theory, but I wasn't wearing a GPS, and her up-to-date information on my place of being was strictly down to my communicating that info.
And this situation was not unique to me, my friends all had basically the same thing going on with minor differences. And like, I dunno maybe this is a reach, but these were the foundations that IMO made me a responsible human, who is able to move and function in the world autonomously, and it seems like newer generations of kiddos are really struggling with that in particular. Perhaps these are connected?
> 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
These are the same foundations that the surveillance of kids today is build on. It is the same reasoning just further down the slope (enabled by technology).
You probably also knew friends that did not have to call their parents at the same frequency (or more).
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.
I don't know about worldwide, but in Germany[1] the number of children injured or killed in traffic has been on a downward slope for about 40 years. That includes pedestrians. And despite the fact that number of cars has gone up up up[2].
Of course parents being more restrictive with their kids may well be one of the reasons why the number has gone down (there are many confounding factors).
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.
It touches on it a bunch of times, most of it falling under the umbrella of how constant surveillance does not teach kids how to be independent and capable of functioning on their own as an adult as well as they should be.
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.
You assume the parents have good intentions - not all do. You also assumes the state is protecting itself and not the innocent people they claim. Even if I agree, I think it's worth pointing out the biases.
My cousin still tracks her 23-year-old daughter's location - I thought that was bananas, but in this article there's a 29-year-old who's being tracked by her mother. WTF???
I've learned it's not that uncommon. Even letting friends track you. I remember a thread on X where people in NYC were posting their friend's real time location and saying things like 'I can always tell when she had a bad day' because her icon was at a particular juice bar. It does seem smart, especially for 20-somethings in major cities. But posting your friends location isn't terribly smart
It's a thing.
I, personally, don't think I've ever trusted anyone (parents included) enough to let them track me. I wouldn't feel safer. But maybe some people have good and healthy relationships with their parents (not that forcing your child to be tracked is healthy, but if your child chooses to have that safeguard...).
> 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.
There was also Google Latitude way before that. I remember how excited my friends were to watch other friends move about the city. It did come in handy one time when a friend left his phone behind at a corner store and didn't realize until later.
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.
If a friend is posting a person's location, they likely post other information about that person. The aggregate information could allow the assembly of a much more complete picture of a person than is possible by observing a person at a random juice bar.
For example: are they married? Do they live alone? Who are some of their friends? Where do they work? What do they do at work? Have they recently lost/found/experienced something interesting? These are the kinds of details that can enable social engineering in digital and physical spaces. It's likely easier to lure a person into a dangerous situation if you reference minute details from their personal life.
Sometimes the threat model is "has $10k in a bank account" or "is young & attractive" or "practices a religion I don't like" or "it's Tuesday."
It's data entrusted to that specific person with the social contract to not share that data (assuming no permission for sharing was given). I would argue the same way if someone posted my full address online for example, you're breaking the social contract by sharing data I entrusted you with.
Perhaps they didn't tell their friend about that one abusive ex or an affair their having. Additionally in this case it is telling people that when this person is in a certain location they are having a bad day, possibly opening them up to harassment a scam or manipulation.
There are a lot of people that will use that information to their advantage, even if it is just for trolling.
For me, if I found out about a post like this I would stop any contact with the person effective immediately after informing them of not appreciating the post.
I can't relate to this perspective (which seems very common and growing) that there is no intrinsic value to privacy. It's a nothing-to-hide-nothing-to-fear mentality. 'The New Openness' as Trevor Goodchild would say.
well in my particular example it's a juicebar she frequents when she's had a bad day. So, she probably lives or works in the neighborhood. And a detail I didn't share was that she was attractive (her icon on the map was her headshot). So someone could get it in their head to approach the person and know what she looks like, where she might be, and believe she needs cheering up
And it's NYC which has all sorts of people, many of which you may not want to be approached by.
If the juicebar gets tagged, then the people working there may start interacting with the friend in a way she may not appreciate.
Sending out life specifics, even if your not famous or have a stalker can be detrimental. And, it wasn't the friend's choice either. So, the original poster may loose a friend in exchange for likes on X.
The thing that never makes sense about this threat model is she lives or works in this neighborhood, which in NYC is many thousands of people. They see her, they can approach her, they can follow her back to her apartment if they chose. To get to said juice bar, she’s likely walked past a dozen mentally ill homeless people and maybe ridden the subway, where you’re confined to a metal tube underground with NYC’s most interesting for minutes at a time.
But none of that registers as a risk: instead it’s a hypothetical X user who is so struck by a headshot on a map that they travel across the city on the off chance she’s still at the juice bar? That’s like worrying about being struck by a meteorite, but paying no attention to the risk of getting hit by a car.
I'm younger than both of these people and WTF. I don't think I know anyone that is being tracked by their parents and I'm just wondering what kind of family dynamic causes this.
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.
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...?"
Is it okay to track phones if you pay the bill? Want to be independent, they buy your phone and pay the bill. Is it okay to track you if you are driving a vehicle titled in my name and insured by me? Yes!
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.
First, I responded to examples of 23 and 29 year olds. Second, I pay for my adult children's phones and don't track their locations, but I would if they asked me. They have lost phones and mentioned that they should at least setup find-my-phone and give access to someone. I would let them track me, but I'm still using a flip phone.
Vehicle insurance and owner liability is a whole different topic. I prefer to have them hold title and therefore liability, even if I were to give them the money to purchase and insure.
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.
As I responded below, I do pay but have never tracked. The point is if you want to be independent of a parent that does not respect your privacy, then pay for own cell plan.
I am old enough to remember the fall of the Berlin Wall. At the time people in the west were shocked at the level of surveillance that we found had been going on in East Germany.
Now we accept a greater level of surveillance as normal for ourselves.
It's not making them better prepared for it at all. Surveillance from parents is about providing safety for the child, if the child grows up confusing surveillance with a sense of safety that's the opposite of prepared.
Twenty years ago, the level of tracking we have today already would have seemed idiotic. But we've accepted it for convenience, not through choice but through the arms race of tech companies offering "free" services in exchange for convenience which in turn gives its users a temporary boost in their productivity.
I've come to the conclusion that it is primarily our instinct that drives this process and we cannot control it, except by refusing the tech altogether.
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.
> 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 expose it with the advent of technology.
But how long will the advantage of that exposure last when technology envelops us all and we have no recourse?
I find that violent and bad behavior is shifted to environments without surveillance with both children and parents. The verbal and physical abuse is not on camera and is amplified off camera. They know this, they just don't care.
Once the kids realize their parents are tracking their location with the phone, the answer is easy: ditch the phone.
So now they are out in the world, in potentially dangerous situations, without a way to call for help, lookup a map, get a ride, etc.
We were always clear with our kids: We're not tracking you, we trust you, and you can call us for help without getting in trouble.
You can tell them not to do stupid things all day, but life finds a way, and I want them fully equipped when it happens.
> now they are out in the world, in potentially dangerous situations, without a way to call for help, lookup a map, get a ride, etc.
Oh, the horror
So, back to the relationship we had with technology in the 90s? Perfect!
Kids now teens. We never had a tv. Only let them watch dvd on laptop. Never allowed them on tiktok. Never gave them surveillance watches (kiddyzoom). I also did not have whatsapp, or even carried my phone half of the time.
They hated us for it. Other parents called us crazy. “They should learn how to handle social media!” And now their kids are unmanageable and ours thank us for shielding them.
I did not go so far, but things were not as bad when mine were younger (the younger one is 18 now). We did not have a TV, and for a long time they had desktops, and they got phones are teenagers.
It has got crazy. I recently read an article by a journalist whose son had just started university who was watching his tracking app and worrying when he did not get out of bed on time. Not as old as the 29 year old in the article, but she said she could not concentrate on her work because she was worried he would missing things. There are Whatsapp groups for parents at some universities - apparently discussing your now adult child with a group of strangers is normal.
I asked my daughter (also at her first term at university right now) what she though of the idea of having a tracking app on her phone, and (as I expected) there was no way to tolerate this. I think children who have been tracked normalise this. IMO is stalking once they are adults.
I think the perception that kids (or adults!) need constant entertainment is also harmful.
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 cheap 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.
Are you sure it’s related though?
Maybe you did other things right too. Like listening to them. Spending time with them. Passing your genes. Who knows what else. Maybe you’re "just" great parents.
> They hated us for it. Other parents called us crazy. “They should learn how to handle social media!” And now their kids are unmanageable and ours thank us for shielding them.
Life's about boundaries, if you don't set them for your kids they won't grow properly and other people will have to explain them the rules (or they'll be parasites their whole life)
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
> if you set the boundaries on their behalf, they just learn dependence and not how to establish boundaries for themselves.
That is not how that works.
> They hated us for it. Other parents called us crazy.
When did this start? And what ages did they start to appreciate the shielding?
Mine are 7 and 10 now and we don't have any complaints... at least not yet. But I feel like parents around us are pretty aware of the dangers here. I'm not seeing their peers getting phones yet; maybe some smart watches. Definitely not social media. We had a principal mention "wait until 8th" at a back-to school meeting and receive enthusiastic applause.
I'm wondering if the culture is catching up, or if they're just a little too young and the pressure is still incoming.
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.
Did you have landlines? I want my kid to just walk over to his friend's place whenever he wants, but while most parents are coming around to having kids without cellphones they all live in extremely un-walkable neighborhoods.
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.
Even without purpose-built things like TinCan, most "landlines" these days... aren't. My parents' house is wired for telephony, but the backhaul is 5G. A box in the house serves as the uplink between the 5G network and the "landline" phones throughout the house.
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.
When was the crossover point, when they stopped hating you for it and started thanking you? And what was the specific thank you about? Not wasting their time with tiktok junk, or helping protect their developing brains from addictive slop?
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!
Did you read what GP said?
> And now their kids are unmanageable and ours thank us for shielding them.
I'm not looking for thank-you's, I'm just looking to understand what GP meant when he said his kids thanked him.
> “They should learn how to handle social media!”
They should learn how to handle reality before being inundated with an endless overwhelming deluge of unreality, outright bullshit, and lies. Kudos to you for giving them that chance.
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."
In a world where heroin is normalized, it might be a good idea
A similar question as the European vs American approach to handling alcohol. In Europe (vast oversimplification incoming, big continent with lots of cultures and jurisdictions) it's normal to drink beer the first time by 14, in the presence of your parents, and are typically able to buy it freely at around 16. In the US (oversimplification incoming) you typically have your first experience with alcohol in secret, or binge-drinking once you are 21 and free from your parents. The European version typically results in more alcohol being consumed, but in healthier habits
One crux is that this only works if the parents are actually using alcohol/social media in a healthy way. A heroin addict can't teach their children how to responsibly use heroin
> In Europe (vast oversimplification incoming, big continent with lots of cultures and jurisdictions) it's normal to drink beer the first time by 14, in the presence of your parents, and are typically able to buy it freely at around 16.
You did disclaim about this, but my understanding is that most European countries no longer allow you to buy alcohol before you’re 18 (but with some major exceptions like Germany and Belgium). Culturally, you are however quite spot on.
I don't think alcohol is anywhere near as addictive, though. You might be right anyway.
You can't die from heroin withdrawal, no matter how much you might want to.
Addictiveness is a lot more than just how bad worst case withdrawal is.
> They hated us for it.
doubt that ppl care about you or your kids so much that they have feelings of hate towards you.
The kids hates us for it. Obviously.
I think they mean their kids hated them for it, initially
Back about 15 or so years ago, I heard from colleagues and even my sister about how they banned kids from the stupid that was readily available on television. Their kids would be forbidden, for instance, from watching Hannah Montana, or even the entire Disney Channel and/or Nickelodeon. When my nephew was little, Caillou was forbidden to him. I was impressed with these parents' gutsiness and willingness to take action to protect their kids from harmful slop.
Banning kids from social media seems to be the present-day equivalent of that and I commend you.
Minimizing screens has been shown to have a massive effect on children, positively.
At the same time children are exposed to things and if they don't know how to navigate it, it's critical.
I take small people through what the screens and computers are trying to do their brains and then ask them to watch their brain watching the thing that catches their interest.
It could be someone's smart watch, someone's phone, or a tv.
One time a small humanoid self reported to me that sugar makes them want to have more sugar, and some screens seem to do the same thing, but other screens don't make them feel bad.
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.
You literally need to give your kids a phone now. They need to login to school apps to complete their assignments and similar cases. Yours probably grew up in the interim time before these tools became mandatory.
Privacy is dead and it started in the cradle.
The thing is the parents normalizing this kind of intrusion of privacy think they are in the right while creating a very dangerous world. Even things like going through your kids rooms (yes even when they live at home) is a huge privacy violation.
No wonder the "but think of the kids" argument is so effective, we all grew up being propagandized by or own parents and environment.
Privacy feels like such an innate desire. Your mention of parents going through your room brought back a few negative emotions tied to a few memories, where my mom either came to me with something she found in my room, or walked into my room and went directly to where something was hidden and pulled it out (indicating that she had already been snooping in my room and found it). Thinking about it, I realized that's one of the reasons I started hiding things where my parents couldn't easily get to them, like in the rafters in the garage, or in various forts and hideouts I created in the neighborhood.
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?".
Interesting take!
Both of my parents grew up in very small houses with a lot of children, and my wife shared a room with her sister. I'd guess that the vast majority of humanity now, and certainly in the past, had very little individual privacy because there was no room!
It seems like a modern luxury in western suburban living. Nice if if you can get it, I suppose.
There was a time when I liked having intricate data about things because it was interesting for me to learn about my own world. That rosy-eyed picture was polluted by surveillance capitalism, and it's gotten to the point where I'd often rather write things down on paper or in a markdown or yaml doc rather than use an tracker app, just because I know that my own hand-written data isn't one profile in a global data set used to squeeze value out of me.
Also, after reading the free part of the article, I propose the word "pramopticon".
Same, early 2000s I remember dreaming about having some wristband or something that would read all the "data" from my body and automatically know what's wrong and so on, even dreaming of being able to have "automatic journals" created from dreams and what not, my imagination was the limits, collect all the data, create miracles!
Then Snowden happened, and Cambridge Analytica, and Event X and everything else. Now I'm the same, all "family data" lives on harddrives that are physically in my home, I prefer paper notes over anything on my computer, for my journal at least, and my perspective is basically that secrets are impossible over the internet. If you want something secret, it cannot go through internet pipes even once.
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.
the biggest companies in the world are the bad actors, and they're in bed with the scummiest US government in history.
it is, indeed, "not impossible", but I could also win a Nobel prize or sleep with Sidney Sweeney -- not impossible, but probably never gonna happen.
Pramopticon
Nice
I'll be stealing said term myself since it's perfect. Depressingly so, but still perfect!
Some of that baby phase and younger kid stuff in the article sounds pretty insane.
My daughter is a teenager and I appreciate being able to look at her phone's location when I pick her up from a place. I don't tend to monitor her phone use, occasionally I will check it out but the "deal" I have with her makes sure she understands she is an individual and I respect her individuality. I have a few apps blocked.
I have two short essays on surveillance:
Review 001: THE POWER OF THE POWERLESS https://www.metanoia-research.com/review-001-the-power-of-th...
Essay 001: ON WHAT THE PANOPTICON CANNOT SEE https://www.metanoia-research.com/essay-001-on-what-the-pano...
Black Mirror - Arkangel
https://black-mirror.fandom.com/wiki/Arkangel
Modern marketing just preys on parental guilt. If you don't buy a $300 sensor or track your kid's location every second, they subtly make you feel like an irresponsible parent.
It's actually sad for kids. In childhood being able to stay out a bit longer, solve sudden problems without calling mom, or just sit alone taught you how to cope with the world. But if someone monitors a child all the way to their college dorm door, it's unclear how they're supposed to develop personal autonomy at all
Many decades ago - there was barely a dangerous / dumb thing you could do roaming my neighbourhood that the network of mothers wouldn't relay back by the time you got home.
yeah and that filter is the point - only the truly dangerous stuff would make it back to your mom, but nothing else.
You knew at all times you were being watched
I'm being seen by everyone else when I walk around the street, but there is friction to the information, it's not being collected, transferred, or cross-referenced unless it meets certain thresholds that involve many people signing off on it as notable or unusual.
There's a big difference between all your neighbors running purely on-premises camera setups versus all of them running individual nodes of a giant panopticon.
> being able to stay out a bit longer, solve sudden problems without calling mom, or just sit alone
none of these are prevented when you have an airtag in your pocket
my hesitation is from knowing these _dont_ work: by the time airtag shows where someone actually is that isnt a 500m circle, you can see them with your analog eyes :/
> 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.
> 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.
if it involved asking a business (car service in my case) to let you use their phone, or already having a quarter and using a payphone to call mom... thats an airtag :)
> a child might get accustomed to this "saving" being automatic
i dont fear a perfectly functioning society; im an adult and am also used to 911/999/etc being available. some people watch Demolition Man and get the wrong idea...
It is not an airtag. The payphone doesn't use a network of snitches to say where you are at all times. It is really bad to instill the idea that you are never private, it makes our surveillance situation worse and more accepted. Which i am sure hackernews and the EFF have plenty of articles to show why normal people need privacy.
> having a quarter and using a payphone to call mom
I had enough coins for 2 phone calls in a sealed envelope in my school bag for emergencies - probably still in the bottom of my bag wherever it may be.
> that’s an airtag
How so? Mom has no way to know where you are until you initiate the call. Isn’t a big part of the developmental point to have kids recognize they’re lost on their own and then ask for help from a friendly stranger? What’s the ‘no airtag’ scenario you imagine?
> if it involved asking a business (car service in my case) to let you use their phone, or already having a quarter and using a payphone to call mom... thats an airtag :)
No. An airtag works for your mom no matter if you want it or not, some payphone on the street places the agency about calling help into your hands.
already a thing.... look at the problem solving skills of some of the fresh grads
> 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).
Yes, it normalises surveillance.
> It instills a Panopticum-like philosophy in said kids since their very early ages
Santa Claus has been around since before airtags; you dont need technology to make kids fearful of invisible retribution, just a clever song ("he sees you when youre sleeping, he knows when youre awake")
that only works for very vey very young kids.
I dont get your point
We’ve strip-mined every cultural superstition and monster for the entertainment industry, but those superstitions and monsters often existed - even in the minds of adults - to warn against certain behaviors, actions or locations.
And only on christmas day. They dont think long term, no getting christmas gifts is not a treat in november - it is infinetely far for a small kid.
Santa Claus for the very young; an omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent God for everyone else.
We have at least a several thousand year history of instilling a 'Panopticum[sic][1]-like psychology' in enormous swaths of society. More of the same.
1. please tell me this is a typo
If that was so people who were more religious would be more accepting of surveillance and I do not think that is the case.
God is also perfectly good, outside time, unlikely to question your actions, and completely forgiving. Rather different from being watched by human beings.
I do not think belief divine omniscience by itself had much impact on people's behaviour.
It's true that the idea of 'someone is watching you' is very old and a well-tested method of social control. The religious angle may be why so many people are receptive to mass surveillance today. But not everyone is religious, and those that are rarely live with a true, 24/7 feeling of dread and fear that someone is actually watching. The fear of consequences is very distant, and there is often forgiveness for small infractions. That fear becomes very different when you can put a face and a name to the people watching you, and you know they can affect your life in very real and immediate ways. This is the preconditioning that starts with childhood surveillance.
I've spoken to many of the deconverted who where genuinely afraid of committing real and mental sins as a direct condition of omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence. Have you not met someone like this?
It's not "everyone" else though is it. Especially not in the recent decades where this surveillance has become a real thing.
What does that have to do with the subject of discussion: instilling a Panopticum[sic]-like philosophy in said kids since their very early ages?
Soon we'll all be watched over by machines of loving grace.
Most kids have an important developmental moment where they realize Santa isn’t real
Yeah, but then there's religion with an all-viewing God or gods. And years of these ideas repeated never really goes away. After all, what if there really IS a God, or Vishnu, or Allah, and a Hell, etc.! The very idea is enough to drive a kid to Pascal's wager.
There’s many people who don’t believe in either Santa or god. Only about half of younger people believe in hell in the US.
Unfortunately, even those who escape such beliefs now have to face the reality of surveillance not by gods, but by men, many of whom don’t have your best interest in mind.
> 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.
Presumably, when this generation comes of age they will largely answer this question with "sure, I don't see the problem", which many will consider a big win.
AirTag showed a mom her kid was in a lake, she made a big scene, frantically calling 911. Kid was not in the lake.
Most marketing for most things preys on guilt, fear, and avarice - negative emotions are uncomfortable, and you first create the negative emotion in the target's mind, and then sell them the solution, to alleive their discomfort.
I was a kid who wandered. Sometimes through bear infested forests at night. Sometimes through abandoned factories with collapsing roofs. Sometimes to the homes of people my parents strongly disapproved of.
I lived. So did pretty much everyone else. I had a few significant fuck-ups. I learned from them, and didn't repeat them. In my childhood, I knew one kid who died from misadventure - grain silo - and many who died from disease - meningitis, cancer, sepsis. Perhaps parents should keep their children in protective plastic bubbles, if they're going to be consistent about it.
My kid - no tracking, and autonomy that I see makes other parents writhe with discomfort, as they're like "she'll be stolen! Her kidneys!", and I'm going "you guys don't understand statistics, and your kids are going to live with you until you die, and lead stunted lives".
Black mirror.
"If you don't buy a $300 sensor or track your kid's location every second, they subtly make you feel like an irresponsible parent."
It's not just marketing - the laws are getting more and more restrictive too. Not having some tracking on your kid starts to be used against people in court cases (criminal or civil). The think of tha children crowd has the ear of law enforcement and prosecutors.
It's another mode of "anxiety farming". Under the "exploiting human psychology for profit" series.
Childhood surveillance may become a very lucrative proving ground for new tech. The usual outrage about privacy doesn't apply here because of a combination of a very helicopter parenting-friendly society and a common understanding the even older children have zero latitude in making any choices for themselves and are owned by their parents and institutions, who can at any point choose to force them into any new schemes.
I think the next direction these surveillance companies are going to head into is even more invasive aggregation and processing. Instead of just giving parents a basic rundown of what's happening now, have phones record every spoken word and then mine it for sentiment analysis to reveal hidden thoughts and opinions. Schools could deploy software onto all students that tracks everything they say to each other on school property, which then could be used to build social graphs, identify misbehavior, rank social cohesion and obedience to understand which groups are good and bad influences - with all this data immediately provided to teachers and parents so they can take action. Once this is normalized, it will come for us all, just a bit more covertly.
Funny euphemism for child voyeurism.
https://archive.is/opw0i
https://wallhop.io/https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026...
I think the problem here is what are you supposed to do with very low probability really bad events. I.e. your kid being kidnapped or similar. The probability of this extremely low, but it is unimaginatively bad. Therefore any small thing you do that will reduce the chance of this happening may seem reasonable. It is not clear to me how to think about this rationally.
Part of the way to think about it is that you simply can't control such events. We never could and we never will. Trying to do so is a losing game for temporary psychological comfort only. I think the key is that the "small things" that you do are unlikely to actually reduce the probability in practice.
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.
> Kid gets off the school bus at the wrong stop: found in minutes.
if they have a phone they can call for help. before mobile phones they used payphones.
> Kid is riding bike, falls and knocked out:
Unless its somewhere very lonely, someone sees the kid, calls emergency services, who contact the parent. I do not know how this works in the US where you pay for ambulances though.
It's the same. Ambulance gets billed to insurance, if they don't have insurance then it's written off (actually just everyone else pays more).
That is true.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilling_effect
It is going to be weird when the next generation of teenagers doesn’t rebel or break any rules at all
I doubt it’s so easy. More likely they’ll overtly break rules and violate norms with no sense of shame or embarrassment, like…(the future is now, just not evenly distributed)
doesnt really seem to be the case youth crime is down dramatically, like 80% compared to the 90s
But think of the children! Wait oh shi...
Have we reached this Black Mirror dystopia yet?
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5709250/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yef_HfQoBd8
Being accused of hurting children is a social death sentence. Parents don't want to be accused. Politicians don't want to be accused. Nobody ever does.
So parents keep their children indoors for fear of being arrested from them crossing the street on their own. Politicians are unable to renege on "child safety" laws because the populace will believe they are harming children and vote them out.
But these things work the way they do because of the social consequences embedded in our culture, caused by the perceived harm to children from inaction. People want to avoid accusations of being complicit in harming children by supporting politician X or failing to do Y, as that has legitimate societal consequences when taken far enough, so there little incentive to diverge from this narrative.
Some of that might be true, but I can assure you, people _really do_ want to prevent harm to their children. Most of the people I know who are using this stuff do it completely voluntarily, not because of how they will be seen, but because they genuinely want to increase safety for their child.
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.
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 do actually care about my safety and health, and will take reasonable measures for a chance to preserve it; and that same feeling extends to my children.
> 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.“
Strange, I wear the belt because I believe it may save me some day over my lifetime. I have very little concern for it happening this particular day. Or at least I used to. Its just SOP now.
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.
That's not an adequate comparison. A ticket is simple. Child services (in the US) is very powerful and complex. I would easily choose to risk my life and a ticket over risking child endangerment or neglect charges and possibly even having them sent to a foster home.
In both cases occurance rates should be low.
I agree, but i was replying to a comment that made the comparison.
My other point is that it is also happening in the UK where a lot of people do the same without the same fear of child services, so i think its a cultural change that is common to both countries.
> 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.
> Better road safety - that starts with _you_, car owners! -
Regulation and technical improvements can do a lot for road safety
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Killed_on_British_Roads_1...
"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.
Absolutely.
I think the problem is that parental instincts are protective, and it takes a conscious effort to let go. Its easier if you understand enough maths to weigh up the risks rationally.
It's so wild to me as a millennial who grew up with a single mom who worked all day to see the obsession with child surveillance/protection that permeates society today. When I was a kid, 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. In the wintery months I was regularly gone for all daylight hours, and yeah she knew where I was, in theory, but I wasn't wearing a GPS, and her up-to-date information on my place of being was strictly down to my communicating that info.
And this situation was not unique to me, my friends all had basically the same thing going on with minor differences. And like, I dunno maybe this is a reach, but these were the foundations that IMO made me a responsible human, who is able to move and function in the world autonomously, and it seems like newer generations of kiddos are really struggling with that in particular. Perhaps these are connected?
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
"Being accused of hurting children is a social death sentence."
And yet it is so endlessly frustrating what genuinely harmful, awful practices persist anyway.
The parents I talk to, and myself, keep kids inside so they do not get mowed down by a distracted driver in a huge vehicle.
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.
That "nobody" is restricted to your very tiny experience. Worldwide, cars kill kids, a lot.
Datum vs Data, again.
I don't know about worldwide, but in Germany[1] the number of children injured or killed in traffic has been on a downward slope for about 40 years. That includes pedestrians. And despite the fact that number of cars has gone up up up[2].
Of course parents being more restrictive with their kids may well be one of the reasons why the number has gone down (there are many confounding factors).
[1] and, at first glance, most of Europe https://www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Gesellschaft-Umwelt/Verkeh... (pages 53 onwards among others)
[2] +40% more cars, in absolute terms, than in 1990!! Crazy.
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.
> Being accused of hurting children is a social death sentence.
Not really. Dog owners hurt children all the time, we have zero problems blaming 3 years old for "provoking" an adult!
They were scared and acted in self defense!
Child deserved to go to hospital! Hopefully it learned valuable lesson to respect dog owners and treat them better!
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.
Exactly! Cars are not save around children! We should not take cars into schools, shopping malls, parks, playgrounds!
the article doesn't actually state what it is doing to children?
It touches on it a bunch of times, most of it falling under the umbrella of how constant surveillance does not teach kids how to be independent and capable of functioning on their own as an adult as well as they should be.
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.
preparing them for the workplace and the surveillance they will face
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.
You assume the parents have good intentions - not all do. You also assumes the state is protecting itself and not the innocent people they claim. Even if I agree, I think it's worth pointing out the biases.
My cousin still tracks her 23-year-old daughter's location - I thought that was bananas, but in this article there's a 29-year-old who's being tracked by her mother. WTF???
I've learned it's not that uncommon. Even letting friends track you. I remember a thread on X where people in NYC were posting their friend's real time location and saying things like 'I can always tell when she had a bad day' because her icon was at a particular juice bar. It does seem smart, especially for 20-somethings in major cities. But posting your friends location isn't terribly smart
It's a thing.
I, personally, don't think I've ever trusted anyone (parents included) enough to let them track me. I wouldn't feel safer. But maybe some people have good and healthy relationships with their parents (not that forcing your child to be tracked is healthy, but if your child chooses to have that safeguard...).
> 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.
There was also Google Latitude way before that. I remember how excited my friends were to watch other friends move about the city. It did come in handy one time when a friend left his phone behind at a corner store and didn't realize until later.
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.
If a friend is posting a person's location, they likely post other information about that person. The aggregate information could allow the assembly of a much more complete picture of a person than is possible by observing a person at a random juice bar.
For example: are they married? Do they live alone? Who are some of their friends? Where do they work? What do they do at work? Have they recently lost/found/experienced something interesting? These are the kinds of details that can enable social engineering in digital and physical spaces. It's likely easier to lure a person into a dangerous situation if you reference minute details from their personal life.
Sometimes the threat model is "has $10k in a bank account" or "is young & attractive" or "practices a religion I don't like" or "it's Tuesday."
It's not their data to share.
It's data entrusted to that specific person with the social contract to not share that data (assuming no permission for sharing was given). I would argue the same way if someone posted my full address online for example, you're breaking the social contract by sharing data I entrusted you with.
Perhaps they didn't tell their friend about that one abusive ex or an affair their having. Additionally in this case it is telling people that when this person is in a certain location they are having a bad day, possibly opening them up to harassment a scam or manipulation.
There are a lot of people that will use that information to their advantage, even if it is just for trolling.
For me, if I found out about a post like this I would stop any contact with the person effective immediately after informing them of not appreciating the post.
I can't relate to this perspective (which seems very common and growing) that there is no intrinsic value to privacy. It's a nothing-to-hide-nothing-to-fear mentality. 'The New Openness' as Trevor Goodchild would say.
well in my particular example it's a juicebar she frequents when she's had a bad day. So, she probably lives or works in the neighborhood. And a detail I didn't share was that she was attractive (her icon on the map was her headshot). So someone could get it in their head to approach the person and know what she looks like, where she might be, and believe she needs cheering up
And it's NYC which has all sorts of people, many of which you may not want to be approached by.
If the juicebar gets tagged, then the people working there may start interacting with the friend in a way she may not appreciate.
Sending out life specifics, even if your not famous or have a stalker can be detrimental. And, it wasn't the friend's choice either. So, the original poster may loose a friend in exchange for likes on X.
The thing that never makes sense about this threat model is she lives or works in this neighborhood, which in NYC is many thousands of people. They see her, they can approach her, they can follow her back to her apartment if they chose. To get to said juice bar, she’s likely walked past a dozen mentally ill homeless people and maybe ridden the subway, where you’re confined to a metal tube underground with NYC’s most interesting for minutes at a time.
But none of that registers as a risk: instead it’s a hypothetical X user who is so struck by a headshot on a map that they travel across the city on the off chance she’s still at the juice bar? That’s like worrying about being struck by a meteorite, but paying no attention to the risk of getting hit by a car.
I'm younger than both of these people and WTF. I don't think I know anyone that is being tracked by their parents and I'm just wondering what kind of family dynamic causes this.
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.
I track the location of my parents and in-laws. They have told me they feel better knowing that my partner and I can see where they are.
Shrug. My mom (70s) and I (40s) share location tracking. I think we’re as “developed” as we’re going to get. It’s just convenient.
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...?"
Is it okay to track phones if you pay the bill? Want to be independent, they buy your phone and pay the bill. Is it okay to track you if you are driving a vehicle titled in my name and insured by me? Yes!
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.
First, I responded to examples of 23 and 29 year olds. Second, I pay for my adult children's phones and don't track their locations, but I would if they asked me. They have lost phones and mentioned that they should at least setup find-my-phone and give access to someone. I would let them track me, but I'm still using a flip phone.
Vehicle insurance and owner liability is a whole different topic. I prefer to have them hold title and therefore liability, even if I were to give them the money to purchase and insure.
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.
As I responded below, I do pay but have never tracked. The point is if you want to be independent of a parent that does not respect your privacy, then pay for own cell plan.
this "weird control issue" is SOP for like any organization, anywhere.
if you have a corporate cell phone it's telling on you. they pay for it, they have the right to track and read anything your doing on it.
You sound like a parent that would charge their kids rent and not claim it on your taxes.
Companies in this space have just become predatory and it's time to slap them with fines and regulations.
My larger concern is that this constant surveillance is actually making children better prepared for the world they will have to live in as adults.
I find the the constant surveillance of our online, and increasingly of our offline, lives infuriating and push back when I can.
Twenty years from now perhaps it will all be accepted as perfectly normal, and I'll be an old man yelling at clouds.
There has already been a huge cultural shift.
I am old enough to remember the fall of the Berlin Wall. At the time people in the west were shocked at the level of surveillance that we found had been going on in East Germany.
Now we accept a greater level of surveillance as normal for ourselves.
It's not making them better prepared for it at all. Surveillance from parents is about providing safety for the child, if the child grows up confusing surveillance with a sense of safety that's the opposite of prepared.
Twenty years ago, the level of tracking we have today already would have seemed idiotic. But we've accepted it for convenience, not through choice but through the arms race of tech companies offering "free" services in exchange for convenience which in turn gives its users a temporary boost in their productivity.
I've come to the conclusion that it is primarily our instinct that drives this process and we cannot control it, except by refusing the tech altogether.
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.
> 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 expose it with the advent of technology.
But how long will the advantage of that exposure last when technology envelops us all and we have no recourse?
I find that violent and bad behavior is shifted to environments without surveillance with both children and parents. The verbal and physical abuse is not on camera and is amplified off camera. They know this, they just don't care.