Google Software Lets You Track Your Kids
No more sneaking out to keg parties! In theory, at least.
With Wednesday's launch of Google Latitude, the company famous for its search engine enters the controversial world of "location-aware" mobile technology. It works like this: you download software to a mobile phone (yours or someone else's) and the phone broadcasts the user's location. This information can be tracked on a map, in real time, from a computer or another cell phone. Although, as Babble's Bret Singer points out, "that assumes you can use your child's cell phone better than they can. Which is probably not the case."
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Google Latitude offers users privacy controls, which allow them to protect their information, making it available only to certain people; it also permits users to go "offline" at any time. Latitude also has an "override" feature that lets users enter their location manually, which means that your kids can still say they're going to the library when they're really at that keg party.
Some things never change.
Call me old fashioned, but I don't see a need for this. One of our jobs as parents is to teach our kids to be responsible, which means letting them out of our sight every once in a while. And yes, kids will make bad choices (don't tell me you were always where you told your mom you would be when you were in high school) but if we don't give them the opportunity to make any choices, we don't teach them how to make the good ones.
So let's assume you're not using this as a safety device, but as a social networking tool -- again, I'm not sure I get it. I don't want to know where my friends are all the time, and my teen certainly doesn't need that distraction. Kids need to learn that it's okay to be alone sometimes; this type of technology emphasizes the exact opposite.
What do you think -- is this a huge step forward in technoparenting, or just another way to undermine kids' trust in adults? Do you want to know where your child (or spouse or sister or neighbor) is all the time? Or are you good with occasionally being out of touch?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
isisaquaria 2-05-2009 @ 6:50PM
IDK-all of our phones already had a chaperone device and GPS tracking--most new phones (last 3trs maybe before).
I would not need to use this to track my child, I trust her and know she is going to make mistakes and have to learn from them at some point---
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Geoff 2-07-2009 @ 2:38PM
I am almost 16 and think whoever wrote this article is correct. Kids need to make choices for themselves because if you don't let us make any choices then when we are grown up we still might because we never learned not to. It's an invasion of privacy also. It's like how the South Carolina police might charge michael phelps. Ohh boy he smoked pot, he did something wrong woopdi frickin do. Everyone does stupid crap and i could bet you take 10 police officers and at least 8 have smoked pot before or was drunk before 18 or 21 w/e the drinking age was. parents need to learn to trust there kids. Not totalt because kids will walk all over them but you can't keep us safe forever.
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sara 2-07-2009 @ 3:31PM
as a 17 year old, this is an absolute outrage. what is this world coming to
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marcia 2-07-2009 @ 6:42PM
....wouldn't this just make the kid not take their cell phone with them and so make it even harder for the parents to keep track of them?
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Tony Pham 2-08-2009 @ 6:29AM
This is a pretty decent idea, they do sell cell phones with tracking abilities right now but those phones suck and are too kiddie like. As for this program, to really make it effective, they need to remove the features such as changing where your at or disabling because then what's the point, that will just make the kid lie and hide the truth more, as for adults, If they know how to use the program, they can cheat and show that they were somewhere that they weren't That sort of makes it worse. So for the scandelous and mischevous people who want to get away with things, It's a good idea. For actual parents or trusting people, It is completely bad.
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ll 2-11-2009 @ 4:04AM
I am over the age of 18. My father is a very posessive, fairly well connected, and investigative individual.. he threatened to place a system similar to this in my car and went so far as to purchase it! Oh the silly thought :). I retaliated by informing him that I had already been hacking into his e-mail account for years and that I frequently accessed his personal cell phone's voicemail as well. When he persisted, I e-mailed him a picture (which i accessed via satellite) of a black car that was foreign to my father's driveway (to my prior knowledge) which I had noticed a few weeks earlier. He has two cars, neither of them are black. Anyway it's safe to say he's backed off, and it's kool aid to say that the majority of you could very well be underestimating your children.
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tiffanny. =] 2-11-2009 @ 5:15PM
im 13 and if any parent uses thiss that means that they dont believe in there child or trust them at all.
and thats sad.
and if they dont make the right choices thats okayy were teens were not always gunna make the rightt choicess but if u raised us right we will get out of it easy.
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