I was reading a New York Times article this week about a new watch that parents can get for their children that comes equipped with a tracking device and panic button {the child can press the panic button and 5 predetermined phone numbers will be immediately dialed alerting the adults to the child’s location}. The article also highlighted a new smart phone app that can track children’s locations. For a fee, you can track your child from their bedroom all the way across 30 countries.
The article discussed a lot of the pros in regards to using technology to track our children, but only briefly touched on the cons. The pros are obviously that when you need to find your child in an emergency situation, you can. The cons are not quite as simple. The article mentioned that tracking devices could cause anxiety for children who are wearing them, giving them a false sense of endangerment {because odds of stranger abduction is relatively low}. But it only very briefly discussed the ethical dilemma of tracking our children’s every move.
Then I stumbled onto an NPR article that addressed the potential direction this kind of technology could take us. It reviewed a fictitious book, The Circle, set in the not-so-distant future where all people are tracked via technology. Crime is down, but privacy is gone. It raised the ethical question of tracking our children–or people in general. {As a sidenote, the NPR article did bring in an interesting point that using tracking devices for special needs children could actually be extremely helpful to parents.}
It left me thinking: We microchip our pets, we have GPS tracking devices on our phones, are the kids next, do you think everyone will be microchipped in the future? Would you be FOR or AGAINST it?
~Mavis
This post may contain affiliate links. These affiliate links help support this site. For more information, please see my disclosure policy. Thank you for supporting One Hundred Dollars a Month.
FREE
FREE
FREE
FREE
FREE
FREE
