“Call me when you arrive so I know you’re safe.” That’s what my concerned parents urged when I was a kid — their way of keeping tabs on me. That phrase presumed that the check-in would occur from a landline telephone at my destination. Wow, things are changing quickly with the arrival of mobile devices, particularly smartphones. I know, I have two toddlers who love Mommy’s Droid.
According to Nielsen, the share of smartphones as a proportion of overall device sales has increased to 29% for U.S. phone purchasers in the last six months, and adoption will increase so rapidly that by the end of 2011 there will be more smartphones in the U.S. than traditional “feature phones.”
As a result, parenting, kid tracking and check-ins will diversify into a wide array of mobile multimedia, interactivity, and location-based formats. These may include text messages, email, Twitter, Facebook or Foursquare — as well as new applications waiting to be invented. Kid tracking and check-ins already can be live and active, passive, public, private or secret.
For better or worse, the ubiquity of mobile technology is introducing new conveniences, expectations, responsibilities and challenges for parents and kids. On one hand, parents can track and check in on their kids more easily, in a variety of ways. On the other, reliance on smartphone services for check-ins demands that kids fully integrate these electronic devices into their lives. How natural or reliable is that?
While smartphones and interactive services are all the rage, their potential to become a tether is where I become a troubled parent. An electronic tether may result in a panoptic child-parent relationship, or one built on the assumption of constant surveillance. For all the potential benefits, an undercurrent of surveillance can erode the foundation of meaningful relationships: trust. It may also create paranoia and prevent growth and independence. Indeed, there is a balance to achieve, one which begins when kids adopt their first smartphone, and evolves throughout their maturity and relationship with their parents.
Of course, there are cases where surveillance may be appropriate, such as with very young or delinquent kids. In most cases, any need for surveillance should decrease over time, while the desire to lurk may remain constant. Either way, I’d like to err on the side of trust, letting my kids simply be kids. I want them to have the freedom to explore, discover their boundaries, enjoy privacy and grow — confidently untethered.
There are no norms or best practices in this area, and there probably won’t be for some time. But as a society, we need to start tackling these questions. In the age of smartphones, what do you think is the best way keep tabs on your kids? What other parenting challenges do smartphones introduce?
This also was my latest column in MediaPost, and inspired by a recent Cast Of Dads episode.
I think more interesting than the electronic tethering phenomenon is the physical tethering of children. You have probably seen it at the mall or in various urban areas, the parents who decide to leash their kids like a dog.
My brother got his first smart phone when he was in eighth grade and since then he has had minimal surveillance.
Tracking technology is becoming more and more available, but I still do have my reservations with it catching on in the mainstream sense. I think the market is being rather forced by developers who think they can capitalize on the idea of inducing fear or giving security to parents.
I think the whole idea of private tracking will only become widely successful if the companies that produce this technology are able to instill fear into parents. Maybe that is a marketing strategy they are already thinking about?
Ahhhhhh…you make a great point about the physical tethers, those leashes. You're right, you only see them in malls. What's the deal? I agree with you that developers are peddling fear and security. However, even without specific fear or security applications, I believe parents and parenting will surface utility of smartphones in context of fear and security. At the end of the day, it's new territory. Building trust is most important.
I think more interesting than the electronic tethering phenomenon is the physical tethering of children. You have probably seen it at the mall or in various urban areas, the parents who decide to leash their kids like a dog.
My brother got his first smart phone when he was in eighth grade and since then he has had minimal surveillance.
Tracking technology is becoming more and more available, but I still do have my reservations with it catching on in the mainstream sense. I think the market is being rather forced by developers who think they can capitalize on the idea of inducing fear or giving security to parents.
I think the whole idea of private tracking will only become widely successful if the companies that produce this technology are able to instill fear into parents. Maybe that is a marketing strategy they are already thinking about?
Ahhhhhh…you make a great point about the physical tethers, those leashes. You're right, you only see them in malls. What's the deal? I agree with you that developers are peddling fear and security. However, even without specific fear or security applications, I believe parents and parenting will surface utility of smartphones in context of fear and security. At the end of the day, it's new territory. Building trust is most important.