Anyone else remember when “helicopter parenting” was a bad thing? It’s wild how society went from, “That’s too overbearing, we need to give our kids space to grow independently” to “It’s okay to track the location of our young adult offspring” in the span of a generation.
Half of parents report tracking the location of their young adult child ages 18–25 […] with more than two-thirds of parents who track saying the feature is always on.
Ah yes, I’m a 25 year old “child”. What the fuck is wrong with parents in the US? Some of my classmates started being free to move unsupervised from ~12, myself from ~14 or so. You will find few 16 year olds who cannot go outside without their parents knowing the what, where or who. Any 18 year old lacking this autonomy I consider suffers a subtle form of abuse.
I think child is being used like offspring, not infantilizing. I might be wrong though.
Oh… It may be that, yes. Hopefully so. It still sounds weirdly worded to me, specially in the context of the article, but english is not my first language, so you might be right! ;)
Tracking them over 18?! What is wrong with these crazy controlling parents?! I would never think I have the right to do that with my kids at that age.
Let them live their lives and get one of your own you psychos.
I wonder if it has to do with the perception of danger (and reality in the US with the massive human trafficking). Along the lines of “if my child ever disappears without a trace, maybe tracking will be able to locate them or where they were heading”?
I don’t have children, but I would think that they would much prefer freedom with less curfews, less interrogation if they get home late, and a return to “just let your kids go out and play for the whole day” like was common 20+ years ago?
Maybe that would require trust that the parents wouldn’t track their every move though… Then again, normalizing mentally accepting having your location tracked all the time is very dangerous…
Nvm, I realized after I typed this that it is only really useful for pre-teens teenagers, not people over 18.
My in-laws brought up tracking to me and my husband. They were talking about how they have it for a lot of the family including their neices and nephews (all adults as well) and asked if my husband and I would like to be a part of it too. We shut that down really quick, they live on the other side of the country so all it would be used for would be to pry.
I think I may be in the minority here; my family uses phone tracking across the board, but I don’t think I’ve ever used it because I was worried, or to make sure someone is where they said they’d be. The vast majority of the time I check, which is infrequent, it’s to see how far away someone is and guess at travel time. Like, “let’s see how much game time I have before they pull up” or “do I have time to start a new episode?”
It is nice to know its there for an emergency though, I guess.
99% of parents need to stop trusting big tech to parent their child for them.
This is worse - this is about their adult children.
I mean I’m aware, but before they were adult children, they were children. the big tech aspect didnt change.
And 100% of the parents needs to stop using big tech. They’re parents and they can’t do dumb shit and not expect their kids to do the same thing as them.
Rules for thee but not for meeeeeeeee!
No one has ever given enough fucks about me to track me. So I’m fine j guess
