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.
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.
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.
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. ;-)
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.)
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!
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.
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.
Banning kids from social media seems to be the present-day equivalent of that and I commend you.
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.
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.
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.
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
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...
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
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.
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 :/
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?
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...
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?
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.
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.
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.
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".
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.
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.
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.
It is going to be weird when the next generation of teenagers doesn’t rebel or break any rules at all
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.
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.
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.
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.“
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.
Any price? What about a portion of your child's development and autonomy?
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...
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.
And yet it is so endlessly frustrating what genuinely harmful, awful practices persist anyway.
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.
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.
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.
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...).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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?
> a psychologist who studies kids’ resilience
With that, comes the possibility that maybe this is some sub-section of parents in American, not all of them. Maybe middle-class and above, the people who can justify more subscriptions in their life with not much effect on their economy? Maybe some other segment(s) make more sense, just thinking out loud.
I'm not sure, but I'm guessing this is maybe not widespread among all types of parents in the US, since it isn't a "every parent in the world" thing at the very least.
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.
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.
Oh, the horror