What constant surveillance is doing to children and parents
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
I am not like you, from a long lost generation before the twisted pair gave way. summers from age 8 and beyond were days of unfettered freedom. I feel very fortunate
EDIT: Why is this thing not letting me post?
I feel like ideation around safety and its feeling depend on context, but there are some who never feel safe and some who (blissfully) can around walk freely without feeling endangered.
Even while they can point to no personal experience of violence or danger, some (men) insist they must be allowed concealed carry to assure safety.
This is not a gender issue. People have amygdala and it develops differently in each of us, shaped early and continuously by experience and by random chance
> I still regularly just go all damn day without picking up my phone, leave the house without it, and all that and just can’t imagine having to answer to anyone.
It’s impossible to say for sure, it I think I’d tell some to get concerned at a certain time if I hadn’t checked in. I still wouldn’t want people reaching out to me for every unscripted move I made.
Take a survey of women and let us know the results. I think you are profoundly underestimating the safety net phones are seen as by women, but would be fascinated to be proven wrong. Could segregate by age and location - but even elderly rural women raised 90% of their life without phones routinely cary them these days for medical assistance.
My immediate thought was "ok so you're a young white male in a safe location running short distances in good weather during daylight hours only". Because any variation from that set means more gear.
EDIT
Gender specific question about your post: What is it that appeals so much to young men about minimalism? I have never been able to explain it. Look at their first apartment. It is skin and bones. Look at a young woman's first apartment. There are all of these nice (but cheap) homely touches. Same for fashion.
Lazy in the sense that we only think of bare essentials for most things, especially something like jogging. We don’t want to create more work for ourselves by dirtying more clothes than necessary, accessorizing, etc. We also generally just care a lot less about fashion and how people perceive us. Probably because we hardly even get noticed compared to women. It’s not like people are gawking if we wear the wrong bra. Women are more self conscious and care more in general about how they’re perceived.
The apartment comes with bare walls. Inertia is bare walls.
My wife likes putting everything on display. Like if there’s any surface, her urge is to cover it with what I call knickknacks, trinkets, and probably a dozen pictures. For me, it’s all clutter. Collects dust, creating a chore. If there’s an open wall she wants to hang stuff on it. She likes a wall of 100 small pictures, I’d prefer 1 large framed art. To me her way makes me feel things are chaotic. My way makes her feel it’s clinical and uninviting. We’ve found a balance that works for both of us. I like to have things decorated it’s just I really value white space as a design element. But I think if I were to psychoanalyze it, it’s rooted in the same thing that makes women’s brains always running/worrying and not understanding what men mean when they say “nothing” when asked “what are you thinking about?”
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.
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.
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
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.
It is a very particular kind of person who gets addicted right away.
Of course, in a social context where consumption is expected, many more may reach the point where they keep consuming in order to stave off withdrawal.
Those were the literal words we used!
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.
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.
The simple proof is how impossible it is to even create a single playlist for children on YouTube. The brands actively create more and more official channels to offset parents who are saying to not show a channel in their feed anymore.
You have a great point about what other children do you or don't do. The Every Family is Different Angle is one that I like and also that people who know how to talk to each other will be more able to lead themselves and others compared to anyone who just listens and watches all the time.
There are so many dangers out there and really especially with AI now able to ramp up everything, those dangers are going to increase and there's going to be something needed because otherwise the entire world directly or indirectly is coming into the little screens and little brains unfiltered and unmanaged.
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)
That is not how that works.
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!
> 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.
And this week they both said how thankfull they had so few advertisements in their lives. Because we block with pi-hole and ublock origin, and showed them how online ads work and how to avoid them.
(Sidenote: If you have kids: talk to your teachers and schools and ask to setup firefox+ublock origin on their classroom computer. Or just install 'brave'. All teachers use youtube during classes. With ads. You will be lifted to instant hero status for blocking those.)
I wish more people would see the value it has in everyday life!
Thanks to the hundreds of people who didn't punch me in the face or ram me with their car today
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.
I never GPS tracked them even when they were younger. They got inexpensive 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.
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.
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.
But: they have phones. Since they were about 12. But with screentime, with us controlling the apps, without tiktok, behind a pi-hole and pivpn. With the initial agreement that we - the grown ups - were _always_ allowed to open their phone and look at any content.
For the past year or so the eldest doesn't have any screentime limitations anymore, but she still does not use insta or tiktok.
What we did was constantly explain our decisions. And showed them how boundaries were there for protection, not holding back. And if they showed us that they could handle lifting of a boundary we would lift a boundary.
Other parents in our neighbourhood just gave phones to their kids at age 11 and never set boundaries. Those kids now take pictures of girls in their classroom, and turn them into nudes. And send them around large groups on snapchat. Police was involved. But I look at the parents. Kids _need_ boundaries.
doubt that ppl care about you or your kids so much that they have feelings of hate towards you.
Banning kids from social media seems to be the present-day equivalent of that and I commend you.
And recently they confessed that they sneakily watched once in a while. :-D
So they got the boundary. Found it to be unjust. Tested it. Crossed it. Got away with it. Grew from that. All without having to steal lipstick, smoke joints, or drink themselves into a coma.
Honestly: wife and I are awesome at parenting.
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.
We decided early on to treat them as inexperienced tiny teammembers. So many little tricks and nuances. Learned a lot from the book "How 2 Talk 2 Kids".
Like: don't refer to yourself as "Mommy" or "Daddy". Instead use "I": "I'm going to cook dinner now", not "Daddy's going to cook dinner now".
Or: don't tell them what to do, but point out the problem: "Oh, look, those shoes are now blocking my way to the kitchen. Could you help me out?"
(Use that last one at work too. ;-))
But yeah - tiny teammembers because we are a team. We are not against them. Therefor they don't need to fight us. Instead we fight alongside them. And they seem to realize that.
But I'll post back in this thread in 15 years and we'll see how it all turned out by then. ;-)
I talk to my kids like I talk to other people. "Go to the bathroom" is the notable example. By no means a pro and many flaws in my process.
Frankly, I think the best thing you teach them is not how to do or not do anything but instead the implications of thoughts and actions and what it means to handle and feel comfortable with their choices.
Mine are 8.5 and 4.5. They watch TV like plenty of kids. Rarely used iPads, and my older kid uses a laptop here and there. I will not let them use my phone casually.
But I don't think that them not using it is teaching them much about the phone. Instead it's about opportunity. Do something else! READ, draw, write, sketch, paint, run, craft, build, talk. I'm working on teaching my oldest how to be, well, bored.
Not talking about physical ailments, just tough personalities (mine)
I’d like to hear more, if you don’t mind, about your kids’ experience:
1. At what age did they start recognizing your rules benefited them (and start tanking you) 2. Was it a daily nonstop fight to keep telling them “no” to these things? 3. Did your kids feel sincerely ostracized and, if so, for how long?
Thanks!
Militant anti-technology parenting guarantees nothing.
Edit: as for tracking I only use findmy to time dinner from time to time (my oldest is driving)
FWIW, I let my boys spend a good chunk of hours on video games because I would be a hypocrite otherwise. But there comes a point when their behavior takes a turn for the worse (I mean after so much video game time) that I end up taking it away for awhile. All things in moderation and such.
> They have had phones since 6th grade and social media but their day-to-day use is more in group iMessage chats and meeting up with friends to play games.
I’m glad your kids turned out how you wanted them to, but I’d be careful jumping to conclusions.
'shielding' is a responsibility, but it is also a responsible act of parenting to require them - demand of them - to develop their own autonomous safety systems and awareness, independent of our controls or consultations 24/7.
> And now their kids are unmanageable
Why no TV? Only connect a DVD player to it and there wouldn't be anything on the TV that they couldn't get on laptop.
But movies sure are a lot nicer on a TV than on a laptop, especially if you have a decent sound system connected to the TV and DVD player too.
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.
Oh, the horror
In the "One Battle After Another" movie there was a (semi)funny subplot about this, except in the other direction, the parent wanted the kid to ditch the phone, and the kid had a secret one.
The general backup plan was to go to the nearest friends’ house.
I wish kids could go out like I used to but the world is just different and some of the failsafes I took for granted like payphones don't exist anymore
These are choices we make, we dont need to give in to what "everyone" does.
Mine's following her uncle's footsteps: he's BJJ black belt (and instructor) and she's into her 4th year of BJJ. She already dislocated another person's arm (another teenager who wanted to "see if BJJ works").
The goal is not to overpower a 25 y/old muscular man: but to win her just enough time to be able to ring an alarm/pass a distress call, grab her pepper spray in her purse, etc.
I trust her and she can do all the crazy shit teenagers do she wants to do: it's some of the others I don't trust.
I think people can understand the nuance and tradeoffs between your parents knowing your locations, Big Tech tracking you to profit off your data, and companies who's raison d'etre is to sell your data to law enforcement.
Surveillance is already normalized and mostly unavoidable, but I believe tolerance for abuse of the data is higher than you think.
I do agree that surveillance in the future will be advanced. I try to imagine what Meta and Google could do with all of our data from the past 20 years with all of the compute they are building.
Of course, with pervasive tracking being normalized, and the apps doing this being subject to law enforcement and the government, it kind of ends up as the same thing.
(Whether parents have access to this voluntary tracking, I don't know. My kid uses it with his friends, but I've never wanted to track him. Seems creepy and distrusting. Sure, he lies to me about some things, but I have a pretty good idea of what is and isn't a lie. Feel free to disbelieve me.)
I use Find My friends on my iphone, I trust them enough they can know my location and I trust Apple enough to carry that data (I realize this is implying "nothing to hide", but I also consent to giving Apple my location). I get that it seem creepy, but its also a cool new technology if you can get over how creepy it seems. Not trying to sell you one, but give you another perspective.
I'm not a parent, but when I was teen my parents monitored me as much as they could. Personally, I think location tracking is less of an issue than parental surveillance of internet browsing. I do think if parents are going to track their kid's location, they should let their kid track the parents, too.
Right it's not even a question of new data-- a mountain of historical privacy leaks were benign because it was a needle in a haystack. In the future everyone will be electronically stalked by a fleet of AI private detectives. To limit the damage we must substantially restrict the collection and retention of personal information.
You mean exactly how every human existed every minute before <20 years ago?
Perfect.
My family spends a large majority of our time out of cell service - downhill and back country sking, canoeing, hiking, camping and everything else.
We love it, and plan to never give our daughter a phone (I don’t have one). Hopefully our town will ban them for kids anyway.
Or trust their parents. Discuss why and how they're tracked and the boundaries the parents will keep as well, and make do with it.
The article paints condescending and alarming portraits, but most people just talk it out and find some convenient balance.
People here seem to completely overlook that parents have been managing the whole life of their kid for more than a decade and teenagers are really bad at hiding things in general. Perhaps it's different if the parents are working three jobs and never talk to their kid, but I don't see that as a general case.
That is decidedly not the way I've seen most people handle the convenience/privacy tradeoffs we all face every hour of every day. So I'll put a question mark on that..
I can't imagine every family setting up the admin features to be in psychological crisis.
We're already seeing things like predictive policing, surveillance pricing, judges using AI to write rulings and parole-boards using AI to decide the fate of prisoners, extensive (and often illegal) background checks used by landlords and employers, careers being ended by people's ancient social media posts, and literal bombs being dropped based on AI's flawed assumptions.
AI is making it ever easier to trawl through the massive piles of data being collected and output results, which will randomly contain errors people will probably never be told about even when they're being used to make decisions that have major impacts on their lives.
It's become so normalized, even by their own parents, that kids growing up in this environment don't even question it. I wonder if we're raising generations of stunted adults who've been denied the opportunity to develop confidence and independence as children, training them to submit to constantly being monitored and recorded, and then throwing them to the wolves who are eager to use all that data to maximize their ability to take people's money, manipulate them more effectively, or pass judgement on them?
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.
> like in the rafters in the garage, or in various forts and 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.
It’s like accidentally ending up in the background of someone’s photo at a public park versus someone actively following and taking photos of you. Or sharing a room with a sibling versus that same sibling digging through a personal journal.
My parents parented a few hours a week; most of my childhood hours were spent in adult-free development - with peers or on my own. I ranged everywhere.
My kids ranged not at all. Instead they grew up under 24/7 adulting. They had little of the opportunity I had to grow ambition, problem solving skills and basic independence.
Adults traded their growth for car culture, trespassing culture and extreme beliefs about stranger risk that never reflected reality.
I spent 20x the time parenting that my parents did. We parents spent hours trying to manually recreate (via camps, events) the slivers of the childhood that we experienced organically. As good as these events were, they didn't come close to replacing what adults have taken away (daily adult-free, free ranging).
The end result, I have 5 adult sons and will probably never have grandchildren. Besides being economically impossible for a couple to support themselves on typical wages, parenting is immeasurably more complex and time consuming than what my parents experienced.
In short, parents give way more and kids get way less.
Growing up in the 2000s was the perfect balance of tech + IRL. I don't think I would enjoy being a kid in this day and age.
I think most people will say that about the 1980s and 1990s (and maybe 1970s) as well. Depending on when they grew up.
My age got on AIM during the transition to college, would have loved it in high school
Then facebook came to colleges right as I was finishing
Tinder came around after my dating days were over
But, I got to roam around town on my BMX and remember only having 3 tv channels as a kid. And I got to be an early adopter of so many things. So I think that’s a better mix. I love being bored and trying new IRL hobbies other than constantly losing time to a screen.
Awful practices that have always been done in some form, like lending rates shifting per "intangibles" all are re-enabled by tech like this. Predictive pricing and insurance premiums seem top of mind.
Now, think through: Mom and Dad got you your pulseox sock from Owlet for your 4 month old foot. If something irregular shows up in that data set, are your insurance premiums changing?
Or, think through: savings the kids via counter-encryption can lead to a lot of kids-savings in other ways. If your nanny cam shows anything but a baby on a blank crib, can your nanny cam call CPS on your for you exposing your kid to SIDS risk?
The fact we can't answer this should set off alarm bells on the future for our kids.
Before you tell me this is far off: if you did standard pre-natal testing, in the last 12 months, you didn't mind which vendor was actually processing your standard tests, your kid's genetic data was auto-included in the dataset for an opt-out only Israeli genetics research company (thinking of one company and one kid I know of). I'm sure this was totally benign.
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.
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.
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.
IMHO the key question is: what do you with that fear? If you let it rule you, there is a high risk of becoming such a controlling and overprotective parent that the child never gets the real-world experience that they need in order to survive.
I have seen many real-life cases of parents who were way too overprotective, out of a motivation of love and concern. But it really hurt the children because while they were kept safe, they hadn't developed a lot of street smarts. By the time they then ended up in college, they were a ripe target for predators.
Timeless problem faced by probably every halfway decent parent that ever lived.
Also, after reading the free part of the article, I propose the word "pramopticon".
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.
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.
Nice
I think there will be a nice time window before all hardware is released with some sort of DRM, and while losses from people who reject the surveillance (similar to AdBlock) are small enough, where you will be able to hack this hardware to run for yourself only.
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
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 :/
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.
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...
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.
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?
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.
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).
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")
I dont get your point
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
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.
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.
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?
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".
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.
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.
I asked a few good fathers that I know about this trend: Universally, they agreed that it mostly appealed to their wives. And yes, they thought a lot of it was "too much". One gets daily reports (handwritten!) from the daycare about their kid with specific details about what they ate, toilet visits, nap time, play time, etc.
I'll never forget a tense phone call I had with my mother. She was upset that I wasn't responding faster to her WhatsApp text messages. I was flabbergasted. I asked her: What did you do 10 years ago when you didn't have a mobile phone? There was a long pause, then a sigh from her. Plus, I lived many timezones away from her, and I worked a very demanding job, where it is not uncommon to be away from my mobile phone for hours at a time.
Everybody needs to chill the fuck out about raising children. When did it become socially acceptable to get a text message about the cookie your kid just ate at daycare? It is ridiculous.
> In 2024, the U.S. surgeon general issued a public-health advisory about the mental health of parents, echoing a similar advisory about youth mental health three years earlier. In a national survey in which 18 percent of teens reported anxiety, so did 18 percent of parents. For all the recent concern about a crisis in teen mental health, parents are clearly struggling too.
My philosophy (as someone who is not a parent) is that the real problem is engagement.
Social media cannot replace parental engagement. What people tell each other is that it can, only that it does so in a negative way. That's not true. Social media cannot replace parental engagement. The only void it can fill is time.
Parents who invade the privacy of their children incidentally engage with them. That engagement alone is the cause of their success, even though they attribute that success to the boundaries and standards they set.
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 don't relate to the lack of agency here. These aren't even socially visible products, it's just stuff she decided to buy.
It is going to be weird when the next generation of teenagers doesn’t rebel or break any rules at all
Some episodes seem just a bit too much. And then, just like that, rumours of David Cameron fucking a pig come to light.
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.
It's very different.
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.
Datum vs Data, again.
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.
You're not helping them if when they go off to college they don't know how to be a cautious pedestrian.
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
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.
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.
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.“
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.
Regulation and technical improvements can do a lot for road safety
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Killed_on_British_Roads_1...
Any price? What about a portion of your child's development and autonomy?
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.
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.
In both cases occurance rates should be low.
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.
To what point though? Overprotective upbringings could delay development or produce adults lacking development in critical areas.
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.
And yet it is so endlessly frustrating what genuinely harmful, awful practices persist anyway.
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 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.
Both your points and mine can be true at the same time.
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...
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.
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...).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
So from this I sound like I would cheat on my taxes?
My parents were these types of people. It's bullying. A grown adult with a degree and full-time job justifying this behavior is ridiculous. Where does a kid with a part-time minimum wage job and undeveloped brain get the money to afford a fully independent life? They simply can't and the adult saying that knows it. It's a way to feel good about exerting power.
If a person is so perturbed at the idea of providing something to their child while simultaneously not having full surveillance into its use, they should've worn a condom. People like this make stupid decisions, have a kid as a result, and then make it the kid's problem that they exist in this world.
Unfortunately, some parents don't understand the idea of respecting boundaries of their child. It is _their_ child after all. An object to do with what they wish.
I do see that you yourself do not do this thankfully. But that logic is still incredibly flawed and perverse in my opinion.
My comment is regarding the 23 and 29 yo examples in the parent comment. If you as a 29 yo consent to your mom tracking you in order to get a free phone, then that is your choice. Can't you just disable tracking or buy your own phone?
I clearly was not referring to 'a kid with a part-time minimum wage job.'
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.
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.
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.
But how long will the advantage of that exposure last when technology envelops us all and we have no recourse?
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.
Would you mail your child's location & schedule to anonymous strangers? You are making the world much more dangerous by doing this, by many orders of magnitude.