Phones find kids with GPS
Forget about Big Brother. What about Big Mother?
Sprint introduced a global positioning system service called Family Locator that allows parents to use a mobile phone to track their cell-phone toting children while out and about. Now, harried mothers and fathers can be on their way to work or on an assignment and still know that their child made it to school or soccer practice on time … (Original Article Here
Seems like articles about tracking children with GPS are like bananas, they come in bunches. This service, by Sprint, is a very nice compromise, to my mind, between doing nothing at all (out of fear of acceptance of parental responsibility) and being overly protective/reactive.
First, the system is cheap. Ten bucks a month to track up to four phones.
Second, it doesn’t track in secret … each locate request sent to the phone is made known to the phone user. Not only does this answer some of the questions about “secret spying” but there is a very practical value. Sometimes a child is not really going wild but just needs a little reminder that Mom or Dad is thinking about them … and that they have to think too. “Oops, got to go, the parental unit is lurking.”
It’s no secret that I am a big supporter of this technology, I’m in the business. When my children were young I would have paid more than ten dollars a month for this service. I’m going to do another post today or tomorrow specifically on the privacy issue. I can tell you right now that I don’t believe there is a privacy issue. At least until 18 years of age, children do not have a guarantee of privacy. The are under the control of the parents and the parents … not their school, not the police, not some public do-good agency are responsible for their children’s safety. The Constitution does not grant the right of privacy, especially when that right of privacy is perverted by young minds into the right to do mischief and endanger themselves without parent’s knowledge. If you have small children now … better start teaching that the family is a little like a military unit … Father and Mother are the commanders and the troops will be under supervision.
I hope those of you interested in this issue read the article on the Sprint service read it all. Unlike some reports on similar services this one is quite forthright and honest. These GPS-enabled cell phones are not like the nonsense you see on TV … they won’t tell you when your daughter is in her boyfriend’s bedroom. If the phone is inside the accuracy (under good conditions) is on the order of 100 meters (the newspapers always say yards for us Metric-ignorant Americans). It will tell you that your son is at the football field but I won’t show you his 80 yard punt return on screen. If yuour main concern is monitoring your teen’s driving bahavior (and this is certainly the most critical point in terms of safety, you need an in-car unit like this).
Parental involvement is the real key, technology can be an adjunct to that responsibility, but it can not substitute for it.