[okso]

Does anyone else feel uneasy about the idea of children having to curb their behavior because they know they're being constantly monitored by their parents?

This product concerns me not only due to corporate advertising surveillance but also parental spying.

[pavel_lishin]

Flip that around.

My child has more freedom now, because I can let her walk further from home, unsupervised, to see if a friend can play - because she can immediately text me and let me know she's staying at the friend's house for the next few hours. She no longer has to wait for me to be ready to walk with her.

She can text me if she wants to be picked up from aftercare early. Or if she wants to stay later. Or if she wants to make plans for afterwards with a friend.

I don't mean to dismiss your concerns, they're valid. But this question also varies hugely with age. It would feel very odd tracking every step of my child's life if they were 16; it's different if they're 8.

[pohuing]

I simply called using the landline back in the day, but I grew up in a small village in Germany where roaming the fields unsupervised was the norm.

[gpm]

You're talking about giving the kid the ability to send messages to their parents - I don't think anyone thinks that's a bad thing.

The person you're responding to is talking about the location "sharing" feature, where the watch constantly reports the kids location to their parents without the kid doing anything.

[bitshiftfaced]

From skimming the page, it looks like it mainly just lets you know their location. Were there other more invasive features than that? Parents keeping tabs on where their kids are and who they're with is associated with positive outcomes like reduced drug use risks.

[michaelt]

When I was young (several decades ago now, admittedly) parents couldn't track our locations. We largely turned out fine.

To me, someone who wants to track their kid's location 24/7 in real time sounds rather anxious - unless their kid has a history of drug abuse.

[exitb]

I suspect that parents might be more permissive if they have access to location and means of communication.

[quaintdev]

And then when they finally break free they don't have any feedback mechanism that they had since childhood. This can go both ways. They might turn out to be model citizen or your worst nightmare.

People raised children for 1000s of years without any technology. I bet we can do that too.

[guilhas]

I don't disagree, but we didn't had a choice and now we have. How much guilt is a parent going to have in, the unlikely situation, that something unfortunate happens and that it could have been prevented by this device?

[philomath_mn]

Possibly -- but we're looking at a smartwatch to give our 7 y.o. _more_ freedom. If he has a way to call home and we can check on his location, I'm much more likely to set him loose in the neighborhood.

Something for us to think about, though.

[throwaway2037]

    > People raised children for 1000s of years without any technology. I bet we can do that too.

I love these comments. So, no vaccines for you and your kids, right?