I am guessing that the nay sayers to this app probably don't have young children. I have two sons (16 and 13) who are always out and about socialising with friends, or at sporting / musical activities. My older son gigs with his band late at nights, and let me tell you - as parents, my wife and I do not rest easy until we either pick him up or he gets dropped home.
Any app that lets us check on our kids' whereabouts quickly and effectively without taking them out of the zone (Have you ever tried to get a teenager to call to let you know "Hey everything is OK"??) is a blessing IMO.
An app like this would be restricted just between my wife and I, and our two boys. No more than that. No more is needed. We are an 'absolute trust' group and quite frankly, the idea that any of us would want to hide our locations from each other is simply not even a thing.
Do your teens (you're hardly a 'young child' at 16) share your enthusiasm for sharing location at all time with their parents? I know I was not at that age. Learning to be autonomous is part of growing up. Setting up a one-click call for help with location is one thing, wanting to know the whereabouts of your 16 years old son at all times is something else entirely, that has little to do with his actual safety.
Just to be clear, I don't want this as a 24/7 thing, but rather on those odd occasions where a higher level of alertness is required, i.e. when my older son finishes a band gig at midnight in the seedier part of town.
I think I have a pretty good trust relationship with my kids, but there have been times where they have been half an hour late home from school or a gig etc. and the worry button gets hit. In all occurrences, it has been simple things like missing a bus, or staying back to get help with teachers etc., but those are the sorts of things that I'd like to be able to check on quickly before resorting to calling/texting.
The ability to notice something is amiss, then do a quick spot check to see "Oh, its OK, he is still on school grounds" or "He's on the number 10 bus homeward bound" is reassuring.
EDIT: I just realised that I forgot to answer your actual question re: Are my kids OK with it (the monitoring).
Neither of them have pushed back much on this. In fact, last year I developed a small iPhone app purely for the family to use to achieve the sort of tracking this Google system does. My sons were actually quite helpful in helping me design and test it out. End of the day I abandoned the app because I just didn't have enough time to maintain it, and there were other third party apps coming out that did the same thing.
As mentioned above, we have a pretty good trust relationship with our kids. Its not as if we track their every movement, and we are quite flexible with them spending a lot of time out with their friends and other sporting/social activities. It is just on those outlying times where we feel the situation is not completely 100% rosy that we like the ability to do a quick 'ping' check.
If you're using iOS, have you seen Find my Friends? My group of friends and family all have each other set up on that app.
It definitely does seem potentially kinda creepy or weird initially, but if you do truly trust each other, it's actually really useful. e.g. You can passively see where someone is before nagging them to ask if they're going to get here soon, etc.
My daughter has iPhone 5S with Find my Friends activated. I find it rather buggy. It does not "stream" location so for example if she is on bus and I try to check she jumps off on the right stop it goes something like this: Now I can see she is 500M from her bus stop, Updating.... cannot locate.... updating... cannot locate... after few minutes... Doorbell rings, oh she is home now and app also show her location is home.
Not exactly pleasant experience as a parent.
Right, but that is simply the reality of not destroying the person's battery life. You can't continuously stream an accurate location to the web without using a lot of power - it has to be pull rather than push. This is also a bit better around privacy and data protection.
You can also configure the phone to send out its location just before its battery dies.
> Just to be clear, I don't want this as a 24/7 thing, but rather on those odd occasions where a higher level of alertness is required, i.e. when my older son finishes a band gig at midnight in the seedier part of town.
The disconnect here for me is that your hypothetical is hardly a new phenomena unique to our time. What would you have done in the 50s? 80s? 90s?
Let's put things in perspective here. The very fact that you can have real time updates on the metrics off the /device/ that is expected to be carried with your son means you have a direct channel of communication to your son's device. Worried? Give him a call. Problem solved.
Why? I always see such massive push back to technology in what would theoretically be a tech-adopting crowd.
Why would i, as a band playing Son, want to have to stop practicing or playing a set to call my family back in a timely manner? Couldn't some technology, perhaps a device in my pocket, allow my parents to know where i am, handle the burden?
Why is my mother knowing where i am such an invasion of privacy? Mind you, i'm 30 now, but i don't care if my wife knows where i am 24/7. Hell, i want her to. I'd also like to know where she is. We've got nothing to hide from eachother, so why should the 1950s method of calling eachother periodically to ping our locations be used? Why is 1950s your metric for success here?
I want technology to make my life less of a hassle. By all means, make it secure, i'm not arguing anything different. But i'd like to move beyond 1950 please.
I would really like to think that this technology we surround ourselves today would make things much easier to stay in touch, no? When I was a kid playing in bands etc. in the 80's, I had to actually put myself in MORE danger sometimes by walking down a street to a public phone to call my parent or arrange a lift after gigs. I am glad my son doesn't have to do that.
"Giving him a call" is all fine, except if they are mid set or are tearing down while another band plays - stages can be loud places, and not the best things for talking on a phone, or even texting when they are busy moving gear. A quick check to see "Oh, he is still at the venue" or "He appears to be at the band's storage lockup right now" is enough for me to know that it is pretty much ops normal.
There is no question technology can improve things. The problem is not the tech, it's society and actors in society. Google and alike are willynilly becoming institutions and "pushback" is not against tech in the least (cell phones are tech, right?).
Actually, that doesn't solve the problem that Trusted Contacts solves for location requests, which is specifically providing most-current-known location to a trusted party when the subject is unable to respond (and which does not rely on having a current channel to the device, though the more recent the central server had such a channel, the more current the response can be.)
I think we as parents sometimes should take a step back from our feelings and I think this is a prime example. Just because you feel a certain way (and pay for their phone) doesn't make it alright to push such an invading service onto your children. You feeling uneasy when your teenage child is out and about is your problem, not theirs, so you deal with it.
I was okay with this analogy until the politicians vs. citizens part. Maybe you should reconsider how bonkers your children : 18-yr old independent children :: citizens : politicians sounds
It's a pretty good analogy for the United Kingdom, at least, with the recently passed Snoopers Charter which gives unlimited access to a large number of government agency to the browsing information for all citizens, with the exception of politicians.
Why do you even put money in the equation? Raising kids is not about paying for stuff. Nor is paying for stuff what defines your relationship with them. Whether you're paying for stuff or not has little to do with how you're trying to raise them as responsible, trustworthy individuals.
If you don't put children in situations to experiment and earn your trust, they will never learn.
And yes parents worry, that's normal. If you lose sleep over your kid being out having fun with friends, it's perfectly ok. It's feature of raising kids, not a bug.
I didn't mind when I was 16 because my mother was pragmatic. She didn't want to control me or my whereabouts and was only concerned with my safety. She also made it clear that I could always count on her for a ride no matter the hour without any fear of anger, annoyance or retribution. She cared only for my safety and well being and she trusted me. That trust weighed heavy on my decision making process.
Would that work on all kids? I doubt it. But we can't project our own experiences onto other parents and kids. It can seem bizarre to those that grew up with a rebellious streak or controlling parents but it's possible to have really good and trusting relationships with your parents.
Honest question: when you didn't want your parents knowing where you were - did you make good choices?
The truth for me;
If I had listened to my parents, I would not be as cool. But If I had listened, I would be healthier and getting older - I realize health is happiness.
Friends and I would frequently sneak out of school during lunch breaks etc. This was during day time in a very large, safe city, (with ample access to public transportation, police officers, etc) and gave our teenage brains the freedom and independence that school so eagerly took away from us.
If my parents had received a push notification the moment I left school, my teenage years would have been utterly miserable, instead of just mostly miserable.
To be honest, I hope my kids do the same when they're that age. I'd absolutely yell at them if I found out because that's how it's supposed to be (and that's how they get better at not being caught), but deep inside I'll be glad they did. It's part of growing up.
That being said, I understand why Americans and their car-centric, gun heavy cities wouldn't agree with this, except maybe in a city like NYC. Which is why I won't be raising my kids in the US. I expect the public infrastructure of where I live to guarantee my kid's safety, and not to have to rely on helicopter parenting to give me peace of mind.
> This was during day time in a very large, safe city, (with ample access to public transportation, police officers, etc)
Knowing your kids location isn't something you always need, but when you do, you need it badly. Anything can happen in a 'large, safe city' - such as being run over. Parents knowing where you are when you don't turn up at home at the agreed time is OK with me.
My other question is: are you a parent yet? When you become a parent, your brain gets rewired, you start worrying about things you never worried about before.
Ahhh here's the thing though, in such a case you don't really need their location right that second. There's nothing you can do. They will be taken to a hospital and will be taken care of. Of course you would love to be there for you children the second they are in pain, just like when they fell on their face when they just started walking, but you don't need to. As a parent you have to accept that from when your kids get into their teenage years they will start to become independent, they will have experiences (good or bad) without you and they will be just fine. Or they won't be fine. But you certainly couldn't have prevented them getting run over, getting robbed, abducted or raped by having constant access to their location.
>you start worrying about things you never worried about before.
And you always will worry, trust me. Even when your kids turn 30, you still worry. You have to try to look at this objectively instead of with your feelings, people start being independent and there's nothing you can do about it. You will have to learn to let them go. What's next, do you want body function trackers installed so you can check their heart rate to see if they're still alive or their glucose level to see if they have already had their lunch yet?
Anecdote about independence nearing 30: I went home to see my mom for Thanksgiving. Ended up staying a week longer than intended after getting the flu, at her suggestion - and I wasn't fit to complain. Few days later and feeling better, instead of a return train she insists on driving me back home (3 hours one way). Like, mom you're awesome and I love you but honestly - NOPE - to the point of a full first-middle-last name dressing down that I was her child goddammit and that was the end of it.
My point to GP here is this: growing into adulthood is a give and take in both directions. You have to give your newly emerging mini-adults enough space to fail, recover, adapt, and learn - and yes, potentially get injured too, as horrible as that mere chance might seem.
If you don't do this, you're interfering with their chance to learn resiliency and self-reliance.
And anecdotally, they'll maybe be less likely to willingly stick around as adults and allow you to indulge your parental worries, once in a while.
> To be honest, I hope my kids do the same when they're that age. I'd absolutely yell at them if I found out because that's how it's supposed to be (and that's how they get better at not being caught), but deep inside I'll be glad they did. It's part of growing up.
Uh I think your reward function is broken.
Why punish them if they're being safe and doing something you actually want them to do? Why not communicate with them to figure out the rationalization behind the rule and enforce the right thing?
I'm afraid I don't really understand why inconsistent logic means knowing your kids location is bad.
> If my parents had received a push notification the moment I left school, my teenage years would have been utterly miserable, instead of just mostly miserable.
Incidentally you can just leave your phone at home, or turn it off.
Highly depends on what you mean by bad choices. I couldn't name one "bad" decision I made then that has a negative impact on me today.
I did wander and skatboard in a lot of locations that were closed off, or we were not supposed to be, which isn't something your parents would usually want. Doing that I made a lot of great connections with people I wouldn't have met in my otherwise pretty sheltered life.
I think it's more important that such a system could easily destroy a lot of good experiences for the children and less important that it prevents bad ones (which can also be valuable experiences).
Honest question: Looking back now, do you feel like those restrictions were overzealous? Or were the restrictions valid, and simply nothing bad happened the times you broke them?
The places I had in mind while writing this were mostly old abandoned properties that were closed off due to insurance reasons. The owners usually don't mind the activity in itself but once they knew we were there, they had to send us away (again, insurance legalities). They worst thing that could have happened would be that they call the police and the police would report it to our parents.
I don't think my parents ever took note of it, but if they would have known, where I was I guess they would have been a lot more strict about it. And that would be understandable, because who wants to get a call from the police?
So no, nothing "bad" would have happened, just a bit of hassle.
Thanks. Just to explain where I'm coming from, I'm trying to mentally tie this discussion to the ones that happen around children being independent in public. This discussion is interesting, because people seem to be framing themselves as if they were the child, where in the other discussions I usually see framing based on being the parent.
I think it's easy for people who grow up cool to underestimate how important that social experience is, and how damaging it can be to not have. I feel like I've spent much of my social time in my 20s making up for the stuff I didn't learn in high school, and it's a lot harder to go through the experimentation stage when your peer group has already long since passed it.
Yes, and I suspect the same is true a lot of the time for a lot of people, because parents are still people, after all--just as prone to make bad decisions, to have biases and prejudices, to not really know their own children.
I think I would be fine with it if I knew it was only for emergencies, and I can trust my parents not to use it otherwise (and I would be notified if they did).
> only for emergencies ... and I would be notified if they did
From the article:
"And if your trusted contacts are really worried about you, they can request to see your location. If everything’s fine, you can deny the request. But if you’re unable to respond within a reasonable timeframe, your location is shared automatically and your loved ones can determine the best way to help you out."
From a later example on that page this "reasonable timeframe" seems to be 5 minutes.
We have a very strong suspicion our 16 year old is dealing drugs. He disappears for days at a time with no money and returns completely off his face. Being able to see where he is is not really about being popular with him.
With regard to the naysayers, most of this functionality is built into iOS and has been for years. Few of the fears that people have expressed about Google Trusted Contacts have come true with the iOS incarnation of it. Depending on your situation, it can be a very useful feature - especially if you have kids.
Your cell network provider knows your location and so does your smartphone OS' vendor.
The only change that comes with this tool is that through it you can also share this information with a third party that you appoint (and with a seemingly reasonable protocol: third party requests your location, you get 5 minutes to decline the request. no action on your part -> location is sent under the assumption that you have a problem and can't react).
I used to be a son out skateboarding with a parent subsidized cellphone that was, on many occations, not answered. I can now understand the worry I cause my parents 'you were gone for 12 hours skateboarding and didn't think to check yr phone once! You have a phone for one reason and that's so we can reach you.'
Parents will worry when they don't know where their kids are - and it's normal to worry. Despite (inspite?) of our paranoid tendencies, IMO parents have a right to know where their kids are.
> IMO parents have a right to know where their kids are
don't kids have a right to not let their parents know?
If I decide as a teenager to go and have sex with my boyfriend, shouldn't I be free to keep that from my parents?
What if my parents disapprove of him, cause he's from a "bad part of town"?
Parents worry, and that is normal, and they should teach kids how to make it manageable (i.e. ping via SMS, "call me when the show is over" or whatever), but 24/7 control is a different thing.
> don't kids have a right to not let their parents know?
Quite frankly: no. As a kid, you aren't mature enough or developed enough to be trusted to make reasonable decisions. That is why you have a guardian and that is why you get some leeway in court. It is also why you tend to not be allowed to consent to many things.
You can keep your banging your boyfriend from your parents (but they probably know. Kids aren't that smart. ESPECIALLY when crotches are involved), but they should, if they wish, know where you are. Because they are responsible for you and are responsible for dealing with your screw-ups. If that means humping in a car or at a friend's place while their parents are out of town: Welcome to being a teenager.
Being a kid is about screwing up. A LOT. Being a parent is about being the safety net for those screw-ups. And that involves being able to find your dumbass kid when they do what kids do.
As for abuse: The parents who want to know where you are 24/7 already can. Just install an app to do it or use Find my iPhone/Android. If anything, this is less invasive as the child can decline to share location and just call to say "I'm alright".
If kids don't screw up because they are under constant control, what would give you assurance they will not once that constant control gets turned off?
Also I don't honestly understand: what threats are you actually protecting your kids from by having them under constant location surveillance?
Do you guys fear your kids are at constant risk of being kidnapped every time they go out?
I used to worry that my little brother would have some accident while driving drunk or stoned, I worry about friends and relatives being molested or physically assaulted, but knowing where they are would hardly give me any solace.
Again, the strawman is that parents will watch every five seconds all day long. Yes, some will, but they already have
Again, if anything, this gives MORE leeway. My sister pings her kid's location. They have five minutes to approve or decline and call her. That handles the problem of kids who don't realize that obnoxious ringtone is theirs.
And the google page on this already gave the use case. Someone goes somewhere (in this case, hiking) and later misses an appointment. You ping them and get an idea of where they were and can act from there.
Going back to the My Sister example: The kid doesn't respond and she gets a location. It is her kid's friend Jane's place. My sister is now relieved because she trusts her kid and Jane to not get into too much trouble (outside of MAYBE needing a Plan B pill...). Or she gets the location and it is the intersection of Drug Street and Rape Alley. My sister is now pissed and kind of terrified and actively calls the kid while looking for her car keys to go deal with this. Or the kid declines, calls her, and says "Hey mom. I'm fine. Oh, that loud car and gunfire in the background? We are totally playing Call of Duty. I'll talk to you later". At this point, depending on the parent, they decide how to act. I know from experience that my sister would probably IM her husband or me and start complaining and we would try to calm her down and remind her that her kid isn't a complete dumbass and knows they can count on her. Whereas I know our mother would be insisting on picking us up from wherever we may be.
But again, this strawman of the abusive parent is just a load of bull hockey. They already have ways to be abusive parents.
thanks for the reply, but I never talked about abusive parents. I don't think parents are abusive if they want to check their kids position, i think it's normal.
And I don't expect anyone to be checking the phone every 5 seconds, either, the _possibility_ of checking it at any time is what conditions my behaviour.
And with the world we live in: Understanding that someone is always watching IS a good thing to teach. Teach your kids that anything they do online can have repercussions. And if they are doing something where they absolutely would be screwed if they were caught: Should they be doing it?
As a kid that means not hanging out with Billy the Pothead. As an adult that may be something (more) illegal. Learn early.
It is normal to worry, and I've done this as a kid too. But I've learned a lot about responsibility and communication through this, more than if my parents just had a bug placed on me 24/7. I've learned that you earn trust, that it's a continuous work in progress.
What makes you think Google did not already have access to this information? They don't even obfuscate the fact because for the last several years, you could see your location history[1] as reported by your device.
Maybe you let YOUR device report back with location information. Maybe you never leave home without your phone.
Maybe you attach an authentic identity to YOUR phone.
Maybe some multinational corporation has insight into all of YOUR habits.
With luck, I've substantially limited the attack surface of my information, not by trusting the oh-so-helpful, feel-good, animated, haptic touch-screen toggles sprinkled here and there, but rather by NOT implicitly trusting any of the devices released in the past ten years to do anything my way, ever. Even when rooted.
Hence why I mentioned 'any of us'. I realise that a lot of family units have different dynamics, rules and outlook on life and each will do what suits them I guess, but I like to think, that for the time being at least, our family has an open and pretty good trust thing going on that means location awareness amongst ourselves is for the greater good.
> my wife and I do not rest easy until we either pick him up or he gets dropped home.
That fears are completely normal. Been able to track your kids not so much. Please, think twice before using a technology that you don't know which long term psychological effects can have on your children.
> Have you ever tried to get a teenager to call to let you know "Hey everything is OK"??)
When I was a child I could lie to my parents on where I was. I didn't dit it, but I have a choice. That's part of growing up. You will steal away that responsibility from them. Maybe it is not a problem, but you don't know.
It is extremely tempting to use this technologies, maybe kids right activists should lobby for laws that forbid them.
I'm not surprised that such a feature is being bashed by HN. I love it, though.
I'm a little wary of Google implementing this feature, but alas, all i really care about is that my wife and i can see each other. Especially since she takes the bus quite frequently. Likewise she often has no idea where i am in my commute, and i don't like to text her while driving.
I understand peoples concerns, but i think they need to take a step back for a second and look at the UX. The UX/Value prop is clearly there - some of us want to see where others are (assuming it's consensual of course), and that is a very valuable feature. So with that said, what needs to be done to settle the HN concerns i wonder?
The feature is useful, and highly desired for some of us. I'd love for my wife to be able to find me 24/7. Beyond that, i have no qualms about what needs to be done to quell HN concerns - just find a way to get me my feature.
The question is if a teen would be willing to sacrifice privacy for a free phone and service. If the teen isn't paying for the phone or service then they are the product.
Any app that lets us check on our kids' whereabouts quickly and effectively without taking them out of the zone (Have you ever tried to get a teenager to call to let you know "Hey everything is OK"??) is a blessing IMO.
An app like this would be restricted just between my wife and I, and our two boys. No more than that. No more is needed. We are an 'absolute trust' group and quite frankly, the idea that any of us would want to hide our locations from each other is simply not even a thing.