In Finland apparently parents can track their children's geographic location without the child's consent, using the cell phone signal from Junior's cell phone, says Braced For Impact.
This is pretty strange. It'll be here soon enough. My opinions about the impact of this technology on kids is pretty straightforward; I think it's bad for kids, eliminating for kids some of the free space where they get to make decisions about which way to walk home from school, how long to dawdle, which of the choices they make about exploring the world to share with their families or their friends and which to keep to themselves. I'm more interested in what it will mean, socially and culturally, for parents. Suddenly there is a dilemma where none existed before. Now that a parent is faced with the technological ability to know where her kid is at all times, is she a bad mom if she doesn't monitor? Is she a bad mom if she does? (And what about the parents who don't get their kids a cell phone at all???) There are going to be people with strong opinions on both sides, child psychologists opining about it, parenting magazines chiming in. Good grief. I better hurry up and have a baby before my own upbringing becomes any more outdated and irrelevant to the world parents will need to navigate.
We have had a discussion regarding this kind of kids-tracking by mobile-phone in Germany I think 3 years ago - it's a very difficult thing, 'cause privacy is partly not existing anymore for the kids - only if they are turning off their phones (which makes it not as useful as it should be in the other case) - it sounded and still sounds like "Big Brother is watching you" - generations of partents have survived without it, I personally think this kind of service is contrary just putting away the needed atttention of parents from the kids, 'cause they think like "we would have got an email if they left the zone..." - that's my point of view & in Germany it never became popular (if even it started out, I don't remember if they launched it at all or just have given up on it). Greetings from Germany, Dave.
(please excuse my bad english, it's just foreign to me but I try to write best understandable)
Posted by: Dave | January 22, 2004 at 04:10 PM