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Comment by makeitdouble | Hacker News Reader

> Once the kids realize their parents are tracking their location with the phone, the answer is easy: ditch the phone.

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.

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There are things parents will not want teens to do that teens will want to do. They will not want to feel pressure to even explain themselves after the fact.

That sounds orthogonal to device management to me. It will happen either way, and not having GPS tracking won't stop parents from catching their kids doing stuff they don't want them to (at least if it's a recurring thing)

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.

The point being made is that if you put tracking in, you are creating an incentive for the teen to get rid of the phone when doing things parents may not approve of. Even if parents find out anyway, the incentive is still there.

> most people just talk it out and find some convenient balance

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..

Really ? Kids in family plans will have their devices bound to an admin, and that admin has a lot of rights on their devices, purchases etc (that's the whole point)

I can't imagine every family setting up the admin features to be in psychological crisis.

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