[jakear]

Not a parent, but a recent kid, and I’d hate my parents having that kind of control over me. Though I guess I’d just turn off the phone. Which then makes me even more unreachable than if the tracking had never been instituted in the first place.

[jefftk]

A lot of these tools depend a lot on the age of the kid and how they're used.

I have five year old, and they're nearly to the point where they could go the the park by themself if they had some sort of device where (a) we could tell where they were and (b) they could easily contact us plus (c) it was socially acceptable to do this. This would be using tracking to allow our kid more freedom, since the alternatives are (1) go to the park on our schedule and under full supervision and (2) stay home.

As kids get older we would want to pull back that kind of supervision, so that by the time they're 12 or so we can get their location with something active and visible to them, and by the time they're 15 or so we can just call or text them.

The technology can be used in a lot of ways, and whether it makes kids more or less free depends on parenting and culture.

[hombre_fatal]

Running away from school is pretty serious. When I was a kid, I'd expect some serious repercussions from my father if I did such a thing. The phone just made the consequences arrive sooner, but it's not the root of the issue. And the commenter didn't give us nearly enough information to judge them, so let's not.

[vonseel]

It doesn’t sound like anyone is judging here. And I agree, I would hate being tracked on my phone. I don’t share my location permanently with anyone. That just seems odd for adults to do. I was a kid before all of this was possible, but I’ve seen the tracking relatives have on their kids and it abhors me.

[cromwellian]

If you have a kid who is being monitored for depression and in therapy, it is a totally different story, and the monitoring is completely transparent, my son is not unaware of it, in fact, he specifically has an agreement not to disable location permissions for that app.