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Comment by Bhilai | Hacker News Reader

I have seen my friends use Life360 to track their kids and I was honestly surprised that they trust this company with real time location permissions. But I also understand the need for parents to keep a tab on their kids. So I ask this crowd are there any non-shady companies in this business? What methods are parents of HN using for tracking their kids? I realize people might have opinions on privacy of their kids and you are free to not "track" your kids but for some safety and assurance is also a big deal.

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> But I also understand the need for parents to keep a tab on their kids.

It's weird how quickly this has become normalized. Parent's weren't able to track their kids' location with this level of fidelity until fairly recently. Yet now this isn't just a convenience but a "need" that parents have.

This all points to looming acceptance of 24/7 location tracking in society. If you're used to having your every move tracked as a kid, why wouldn't you accept it as something the government "needs" to do when you're an adult? Eventually, everyone who remembers what it was like before you carried a GPS tracking system on you 24/7 is going to die of old age. What will the world look like then?

We're building a pretty grim future.

We are. We're building the world of 1984, except paying to do it.

There are some upcoming requirements that cars "monitor for impaired drivers" somehow - which seems likely to be adding proximity-based blood alcohol sensors... or something of the sort? Details are unclear, but the speculation I've seen based on current technology is that your (always connected, always online, always updating...) car will now monitor the air to see if you might, perhaps, be impaired (or someone in the car is, it's far from clear to me how these sensors would work if a passenger were plastered).

I'm really not sure what I'm going to do when my current vehicle fleet needs upgrading, because "always online, always connected" is an anti-feature to me. Maybe just keep rolling my current stuff as long as I can keep it rolling.

I keep hoping that the upcoming generations will figure out how "edgy" being not-always-online is, and discover they like it. But that's a long hope.

Don't need to monitor their every move. I'm a parent that uses life360. I have notifications setup to alert me when the kids reach school and when their school bus drops them off in front of our house. Those are two spots I have setup in life360 to raise an alert if and when they are reached by their devices. Anything beyond that I know something isn't normal.

But the question remains, why do you need to know where they are? Is it concern for their safety, is it concern that they are doing something you may not approve of?

I'm fairly old so my experience of tracking kids is limited but I am really intrigued as to why we are now so concerned about having 100% visibility of what our kids are doing.

The flip side of this questions is how often do kids who are being tracked in this way either have problems that the tracking helps resolve, or deliberately work around the tracking so that they can do something their parents may not approve of?

So I ask this crowd are there any non-shady companies in this business?

Probably not.

What methods are parents of HN using for tracking their kids?

Being friends with the other adults, especially parents, in the neighborhood/places they hang out at.

I'd be interested in this for some circumstances with the kids knowledge - and generally I'm interested in companies that are trying to do this without an alterior motive (see: Notabli for photo sharing).

That said, as a parent, I also know that the knee-jerk reaction to get this tracking technology is really more of a crutch for me since the whole gig is to make them more independent so they can live lives on their own.

The sweet spot for tracking is that it allows you to give them chances for autonomy potentially earlier than you might otherwise be comfortable with a greater margin of safety. The challenge as a parent is to turn it off after the first N number of times you grant them the autonomy.

Ask them where they are and randomly verify every now and again by either showing up yourself or calling someone else you trust who is where they say they are. You and I weren't subject to epidemics of child kidnapping and murder because our parents weren't able to plant beacons on us.

This is it! Don’t use Life360, random calls are the best way to check up.

My mom tracked me with Life360 until I was 19.

Please don’t. Your children (especially if they’re almost adults) don’t deserve their privacy invaded and their data farmed. It’s the definition of helicopter parenting and there’s workarounds for it (trust me, I know). Wherever they want to go, they’ll find a way to fool the system.

Trust your young adults, people!

Sorry to learn. Your generation has grown up knowing your every move is being tracked. No independence for you.

> So I ask this crowd are there any non-shady companies in this business

Apple so far hasn’t shown any movement towards collecting or selling location data from Find My…

Yes, Apple. Both the pros and cons are pretty well known now so I'm not going to repeat them.

We put an AirTag in our kid's backpack. That way we know when the bus left the school and when to go to the bus stop. Don't know what we'll do when our kid is more independently mobile...maybe an Apple Watch for real time communication over wifi.

You could give them a phone and ask them to call you when they get to the bus stop. Consequences of not calling you would be them getting board and having to wait for you to arrive.

Turns out businesses centered around tracking people are shady

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