[phalangion]

I love how every time a parent posts that they use a phone so they know where their kids are, it turns into the same argument about "surveillance." I have kids who are <10 years old, and a phone or watch that lets me know where they are makes me much more comfortable allowing them to roam our neighborhood. I can always get in touch with them and call them home from whoever's home they are playing in.

And then the argument becomes "when I was young, we didn't have phones, and we still found our way home." Which to me feels a bit like "I never wore a bike helmet, and I was fine." Not entirely the same argument, but along the same lines. Sometimes new technology helps us do things better than it was done in the past. Back in the day, we couldn't keep touch with our spouses throughout the day at work or especially while traveling. Now we can, and in my opinion, that's largely an improvement over what we had in the past.

Sure, some parents use it poorly to track and interrogate their kids about their location 24/7. But just because I track my kids does not mean I am spying on them or "getting them used to a surveillance state" like some arguments I have seen here.

[ghaff]

I do get the pushback against the sentiment that some comments seem to have suggesting that the existence of smartphones creates some moral imperative to track kids under the age of 18 24/7 and make them always reachable. On the other hand, I pretty much agree with you. Just because some technology didn't exist when I was growing up doesn't mean I'm not being a little reckless if I leave my cell phone at home when I go off in the woods by myself.

As someone else wrote, a smartwatch may be a reasonable compromise.