Would You Put a Tracking Device On Your Child? 610
Hugh Pickens writes "In 2007 businessman Russell Thornton lost his 3-year-old son at an amusement park. After a frantic 45-minute search, Thornton found the boy hiding in a play structure, but he was traumatized by the incident. It spurred him to build a device that would help other parents avoid that fate. Even though most statistics show that rates of violent crime against children have declined significantly over the last few decades, and that abductions are extremely rare, KJ Dell'Antonia writes that with the array of new gadgetry like Amber Alert and the Securus eZoom our children need never experience the fears that come with momentary separations, or the satisfaction of weathering them. 'You could argue that those of us who survived our childhoods of being occasionally lost, then found, are in the position of those who think car seats are overkill because they suffered no injury while bouncing around in the back of their uncle's pickup,' writes Dell'Antonia. 'Wouldn't a more powerful sense of security come from knowing your children were capable, and trusting in their ability to reach out for help at the moment when they realize they're not?'"
I have one on him (Score:2, Interesting)
Some separation is good (Score:5, Interesting)
Kids need to learn how to function without relying on parents, and if you do things right it will help dramatically when your kid is now 18 and headed to some faraway place for college. While 3 is probably a bit too young, by about 8 or 9 the child should be able to go places on their own. And a kid who is never ever lost when he's between 3 and 6 years old is a kid that is probably being watched too closely.
The secret is to do so in stages. For example, my folks wanted me to get used to traveling without their help: At 3, they were still taking me most everywhere. At 6, I was now responsible for walking to school with an older neighbor's kid. By the next year, I didn't have to stick with the neighbor's kid anymore. In theory, something really bad could have happened to me, but the only real challenge came from traffic, not crime.
Tagg (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't know if I'd put a tracker on my child. Maybe. but I do have a Tagg [tagg.com] tracker on my dog.
I get a text alert anytime she leaves the "home zone" (which ranges to about 1/2 block from my house). The dog hasn't escaped from the yard since I started using it, but it's good peace of mind just in case she does - I can track her down easily and even if I'm at work, I'll know immediately if she gets out.
There are definitely privacy concerns, for example, anyone that looks at our Tagg activity will know when we're on vacation and where we are, and can pretty easily guess what time we go to work and what time we come home.
The Tagg device itself works very well - it's about the size of an adult's watch and is small enough to snap on the dog's collar. The battery lasts for about 2 weeks because the home docking station emits an RF signal that tells the device when it's in the home zone, so it doesn't waste battery power trying to get a GPS lock or talk to the cell phone network while the dog is at home. Even when the dog leaves the home zone, it doesn't use the GPS unless you explicitly request that the device be tracked through the website or smartphone app. When you request tracking, within a few minutes the device reports its GPS location every few minutes. If the device becomes detached from the dog's collar, it will notify you and report its location. It uses Verizon's cell phone network, so only works within cell phone range.
my 2 cents (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Just buy them an iPhone with a strap (Score:4, Interesting)
My 2yo got an iPod touch ($300) and still has it 2.5 years later as his most prized possession. We have never had to tell him to keep track of it, he loves it that much. It's not for every kid though.
I have. (Score:5, Interesting)
Back in the olden days, when my kid was very small and most phones didn't have GPS, she carried one of those mountaineer walkie-talkies with GPS when we were on vacation. She had fun playing with it and it helped guarantee that we could find her when she got lost in a crowd. Later when she got better at identifying her position, she carried a smaller walkie-talkie strapped to her wrist. (The first day she wore it, she wandered off during a parade and got separated from us. She called and said she was by "the big lemon" -- a lemonaid cart a few blocks away.)
Later, she carried a smartphone with GPS turned on. I periodically looked her up in Latitude, called her when her position was not where I expected. I did this because she traveled a lot between 12 and 18, to tutors, night classes, and various school functions.
Now she's 18, has her own car, and the GPS in her Bionic is routinely turned off, because, apparently, it's no longer my business to know where she is. I have learned to accept this. She will turn on the GPS if she gets lost or has an equipment failure, and I can then pinpoint her position and send help or go myself.
Regarding having the satisfaction of getting un-lost yourself, there is truth to that. At six or seven, she was quite proud of the fact that she was able to identify her position (the big lemon) well enough for us to reconnect with her. (That may not be the best example.) She liked knowing where *I* was (I keep gps on all the time) through Latitude, and enjoyed using this knowledge to find me. More recently, she called me, said she was lost trying to drive to a friend's house, was very frustrated, and wanted me to go get her. As it was 11:00 PM on a work night, I was reluctant to do this, as she had gas and wasn't in danger. She figured it out on her own and was quite proud of herself afterwards. (The solution, by the way, was quite clever: The problem was a hiccup in Google Maps, which steered her to the wrong place when she entered a certain address. She tried an address close to her goal, and that worked well enough to find her goal.)
So yeah, I recognized very early on that my daughter doesn't have the instinct to cling to a parent, and as a result, we were early adopters of technological solutions, upgrading as new solutions became available. These days it's hard to find a phone that *doesn't* have GPS. Parenthetically, I'm all for giving a kid a cell phone (one of the cheap ones) at an early age. For her to be able to contact me in emergencies trumps other considerations.
No thanks... (Score:4, Interesting)
No thanks. I think I'll stick with teaching my kids to find a specific location we both know and stay there until I find them. Or, better yet, teach them not to wander off. Better still I'll not ignore my kids while we're in a busy public place where they can easily wander off in the first place.
I know, it only takes a second, and I've "lost" a kid (not my own) for the longest 5 minutes of my life, but it's still better than using technology to track everything. There's already enough invasion of my and my children's "privacy" as it is.
Nothing new here. (Score:5, Interesting)
I used to work for the company (Zoombak) Securus acquired. During testing of our device (originally, designed for medium/large dogs), I had my son (who has ADHD) wear our device while on a Scout trip to the middle of a large National park. The device communicated via SMS over T-Mobile's network. It worked well and I knew his location throughout the entire trip.
When the economy turned, people began using the devices not for tracking their pets, but other people (usually, spouses, girlfriends, etc) without their knowledge. (We used to laugh at some of the names users gave their devices). Some used the device to stalk and kill their intended victims. That's the down-side to their use.
The primary difference I see in their new device is the one feature we wanted to see added to ours - that is a button to send an alert. They also improved the ability to obtain a location even when a GPS signal could not be obtained. Given the recent events where kids have been abducted and killed - the moment that somebody realized there was a problem, their location could be ascertained. Hypothetically, if the girls had these devices, they might still be alive today.
If you have been to a large amusement part and lost sight of your child, being able to pull out your smartphone and find your kid is a blessing.
It's good to see they are getting some good press on this.
What are parents so paranoid? (Score:5, Interesting)
I was actually talking to my Mom the other day...laughing about when I was about 2-3yrs..I wandered off from her, and got lost in the dept store...and they had to call over the intercom for her to get me.
She said I never would wander off after that, and if I acted bad, she would tell me she was leaving..and I'd cry and promise to act right..etc.
But, not long after that, I'd guess when I was about 1st grade...when we'd go to the mall, she'd leave me in the toy section or the book section and I'd be happy there till she was done. A couple years later, she'd let me wander the mall to look at the book stores, etc......
I can't believe things are that much more dangerous now, are there? I often wonder, instead of more 'craziees' out there...if it is just more sensationally reported due to needing to fill up 24/7 news?
Re:Low tech solution (Score:4, Interesting)
If your three year old can outrun you, you're already in big trouble.
You haven't spent time around many toddlers, I take it?
With 3 year olds, it's not how fast they run, but their magical ability to disa-fucking-ppear the second you take your eyes off them.
Seriously. Anyone who has spent time around toddlers can attest to this.
Re:What are parents so paranoid? (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been doing much the same with my son, who's now 13. From when he was three or so, we'd play 'if you were lost, what would you do' games in stores and shopping streets (in a shop, ask somebody at the till for help; in the street, go into a store); and I had him learn my mobile phone number; and we'd happily leave him to read books and magazines while we did our shopping. He timed out a few times and asked a shop assistant to call us on the intercom and we'd reassure him he'd done the right thing. The aim was to get him thinking 'oh bother, I'm lost /again/'.
When he was eight he moved to Denmark with his mum and they'd get a train each day - but his school was at an earlier stop than her office so he'd get off and walk the last half-mile or so on his own. A few weeks after he arrived there (and speaking no Danish), he got an earlier train back and she wasn't on it. So he got off at the right stop, went to a tourist bureau where he'd been before, and had them phone me in England on my mobile number. He was eight, and on his own in a foreign city - but not, technically, lost. Since then I've not really been too bothered about his finding his way about.
He's now back in England and quite happy to take trains and buses on his own which, of course, is how it should be.