Most of us I expect, first found this site after yelling into the void, “Am I alone in thinking… the very ancient shouldn’t be isolated in nursing homes for their own safety… that masking children is malevolent” and so on. The gush of relief it wasn’t just me fearing that Whitty et al. were fouling everything up was immense. Alas that dread hollow of thinking differently from the majority has yet again engulfed me. And this time there seems to be no Toby Young or Peter Hitchens to calmly reassure I’m not alone.
Am I alone in thinking… it’s wrong that all children are now tracked?
See: silence. No intake of breath. No tutting. No muttering disapproval. No national debate. No phone in on LBC. No social media backlash led by J.K. Rowling. No podcasts with lovely Right-leaning mothers sounding the alarm. No reports by Big Brother Watch wittily entitled Big Mother Watch. Nothing.
All our children are tracked and no-one bats an eyelid.
It turns out everyone’s been doing it for years; I only noticed on Saturday. My 15 year-old son was at a party and the pick up was down some complicated farm track. I was the last parent owing to getting lost. On the way home I asked my son if any other parents were late. “No, they put a pin in where their child is.” Like some batty old Aunt I kept asking him how they knew where to go – I also had the address but the postcode didn’t correspond to the house. He sighed in exasperation, “They’re all tracked, so you see where the person is, put a pin in Google maps and drive.”
“Tracked? What do you mean? What for? The parents know where you are – they dropped you off? What? Tracked all the time? Why? How long has this been going on? But you’re all 16 – isn’t that creepy? Should I be tracking you and your brothers?”
“NO!” he finally said to shut me up, “I love being the only one who’s not tracked.”
On the fringes of the sceptic movement are those who worry about the implementation of a Chinese style social credit system, and even further away are those who suggest the next step in this top-down control will involve micro-chipping babies in the same way we do cats and dogs. As far as I can see this fresh vision of misery has already arrived: all children are tracked and have been for years, and it doesn’t concern anyone.
Perhaps I’ll be accused of neglect for not tracking my six-foot-two sons. What an odd thought. The eldest was in Sicily last week on a field trip. Imagine if I did track him and saw his little blob (I honestly have no idea what an avatar of a real-life person looks like on a tracking app) teetering on the edge of Mount Etna, or the sea, or in a bar. What would I do with that information: message him and tell him to get to safety quickly? Ignore or panic? All options seem pointless.
“But he might be dead,” suggests my husband helpfully.
“Well in that case he’ll be dead,” I snap, “And tracking him won’t help.”
“Or kidnapped then, or injured.”
“It hasn’t happened yet.”
“Michael Mosley,” my husband adds with due solemnity.
My questions are these: are children grateful for being tracked because it’s stopped them worrying about themselves dying, becoming injured or kidnapped? In which case, being tracked has solved millennia of panic, and we can all sing praises to the beneficent god of Life360 – though I’m not sure recent child mental health statistics back this up. Or am I alone in thinking that it is morally outrageous and socially damaging to track children. What about freedom? Adventure? Exploration? Independence? Growing up? Not tracking human beings?
Joanna Gray is a writer and confidence mentor.
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I haven’t got a problem with me tracking my kids on their way back and forth to school. I expect when they are old enough they will block me. I’m even tracked by it myself (as a quid pro quo with my kids). When the time comes for me to go on Sceptic Ninja missions I shall turn it off.
Parents didn’t do it in the past because they couldn’t. Not because they didn’t want to or didn’t think it was necessary.
It’s when opting out gets impossible that it gets problematic.
For example, I recently downloaded the Amazon Music app, which worked fine for a day but I can’t open it now without clicking ‘accept’ to Alexa being involved. There is no option to ‘not accept’. I’d rather not listen to it than have that spooky tech listen to me.
I totally disagree. What kind of childhood is it to know your parents can see where you are all the time? It’s a kind of nightmare knowing that entire generations of kids are appearing who are OK with this. WTF happened to the spirit of adventure?!
The kids won’t want to opt out. That’s a big problem, in my book.
Overarching tech surveillance is being normalised. Made to look like a benevolent parent. Whether this is occuring intentionally or not, or both, it doesn’t matter. It’s not OK.
And to kids it is normal, that is probably why they do it. Compliance training. They were the more compliant during Lockdowns with the most to lose.
“Parents didn’t do it in the past because they couldn’t.”
Are you sure?
I was born and raised in a village the population of which was a large tracking network. My parents would often know where I had been, with whom and what I had been doing before I got back home.
It takes a village to raise a child, now they’re too scared that the villagers are pedos. Though being taught not to speak to strangers worked in the 80s I recall.
That’s a really good point. Communities looked out for each other. On the other hand, this tracking technology, wholly designed and operated by an anonymous third party, is breeding exactly the wrong kind of “community”. The sort of community which makes people think they don’t need to look out for each other, as real neighbours.
“The tech does it for me! So much easier and much more dependable!”
I have no Alexa and don’t want one.
My niece just won a ‘young engineers’ competition. I asked what she’d done to win and my sister told me she’d invented/designed a piece of jewellery that doubled.as a panic button. Then she commented that it’s a shame the world was in such a state that this invention was judged to be a good idea.
I thought, but didn’t say, that it’s a shame my niece has been convinced that the world is such a scary and dangerous place that she felt the need to invent this…
You should have said that. Young women are subject to massive scare propaganda regarding men by ‘lesfemibians¹’. This goes to the point of a study in Germany recently coming up with the utterly bizarre result that ‘most women’ claimed they would feel less uncomfortable meeting a wild bear in the woods than a strange man. This is exclusively an (upper) middle-class phenomenon and has only a very scant connection to reality.
¹ To a degree. this is very likely just competion for “scarce resources”, ie, potential sex partners.
I might have said so, in 2019.
But my family and I are still figuring out how to put aside “the great COVID disagreement”
It’s dispiriting to have “no-go” conversation topics.
My brother loudly bemoaned the possibility that “the scum in Clacton” might vote in someone he hates. My sister joined in.
I asked for specific examples of Nigel’s racist nazi goose-stepping behaviour…
I got the guardian hit piece from an ex “school chum” from perhaps 45 years ago.
But press for a specific, current example of “racist nazi goose-stepping behaviour” and I get “there are too many examples to name, but I won’t give him undeserved head space by naming them”
So I said I disagreed with their views of this man/buffoon (take your pick, I see both sides). And rather than seek my perspective, that’s now another topic in the “agree to disagree” pile.
As I said, so dispiriting.
I don’t quite understand what that’s supposed to mean in the given context, ie, useless panic propaganda targetted at young women by selfishly interested older women.
Side remark: Check your prejudices every once in a while. What you refer to as goose-stepping is the way Prussian soldiers were supposed to walk during miltary parades and on public guard duty. The tradition was kept alive by the GDR until that came to an end in 1990 when the copycat-Americanism of West Germany took over completely. It has no particular relation to Nazis except that these make up a 12 year long period of hundreds of years of Prussian military traditions (but then, Nazis is – of course and as always – just an abusive term for Germans which gained more traction than Huns).
As Farage is unquestioningly English, accusing him of racist bearskin-cap empire behaviour would make more sense.
Ordinarily I would not ask but as you have posted about it publicly may I ask why you track your kids on their way to and from school?
I second your curiosity.
It’s not that close and she has to take public transport. She also has a health condition so we take comfort in knowing that she has got to school ok.
Fair enough. I hope that one day you may be able to worry less.
I don’t mind the down ticks, but I think you guys are overthinking this way too much.
Although I don’t like the tracking business, I didn’t downtick you. I worry about my now-adult kids often, far too much, and have had to discipline myself not to interrogate them in order to try and fix their lives. I’m not saying that you are micromanaging your offspring, but from personal experience, one has to try and let go. Best wishes for your daughter’s future wellbeing, anyway.
I don’t think we’re overthinking it – it’s a relevant optic which connects to a lot of what’s going on in the world, I think.
Being a techie incompetent I am none the wiser. I haven’t a clue. An explanation would be appreciated.
In our family we all have iPhones. There is a feature called ‘Find My’ which allows you to locate family members (defined in another app, you can’t just add random’s) via their device. It’s helpful because if I go out for a run in the hills my wife would be able to use the app to locate me should anything happen (such as a twisted ankle, or a broken leg). I guess the argument is to what degree should parents let their kids ‘just be kids’ without needing to know their exact location constantly.
Thanks. I don’t use an iPhone.
Never mind I am not expecting to track someone.
Android have similar apps
You don’t need to stay on your phone every second ‘tracking’ the person. It’s there for when you need it… Broken leg, finding each other in a large crowd etc!
Yes, it’s soooo conveeeenient! What’s not to like?!
What’s wrong with everyone wearing a watch and agreeing to meet at a certain time in a certain place?
And I don’t mean a smart watch.
You’re not alone, Joanna. Let them play. Let them fuck up. Let them learn. They need to learn they’re in charge of their own destinies. They also need to know how to get in touch with me, and that I will always help them. But only if they ask me for help, whereupon I shall be asking where they are, and they will tell me.
Stay sane. We’re on the right side of this. Much love.
You can still let them fuck up but when they call and say help me, you can help them quickly or not, that’s your choice as a parent!
How will tracking them 24/7 help me help them when they’re for example an hour’s drive away?
Knowing that I can track them 24/7 would drive me and them nuts.
They need to learn resourcefulness. Travel affords great experience in this respect.
It’s optional, no one is forcing you to participate. Our family of 4 all have shared our locations, not for snooping as it’s done openly, but it is very helpful and useful.
It all sounds very creepy to me. I don’t want to know precisely where any member of the family is at anyone time and I don’t want them to know all my movements and which shops/pubs etc I have called at. I have a friend whose spouse can tell whereabouts by location tracking, sounds very controlling to me and potentially abusive.
Did you miss the first line of my comment?
It’s optional! It’s a decision our family have made openly, not in secret. They see me and I see them.
I’m not forcing anyone to use it unlike the masks fiasco. If you like vanilla ice cream get it or don’t get it!
Downtickers- really! Is the heat getting to you, at least make an effort to contribute and share your thoughts.
Exactly, Paul44310. Too much information.
This wasn’t a thing when our kids were minors but I don’t think we’d have done this. It’s not appealing.
Wonderful article by Joanna Gray, and very funny!
But seriously, as for Michael Mosley, how many female doctors who had witnessed their husband’s “transient global amnesia” from coldwater swimming only a few years ago would allow their husband, who had just gone coldwater swimming, said he felt “ill”, then said he was going to hike a few miles across the baking rock landscape in a heatwave without his phone… to do that alone, or at all? She and the other couple should have hauled him into the boat by main force, and roared full throttle back to their hotel.
On another serious note about tracking phones, I was appalled to read the news item today about a 4-year-old Scottish boy who was found crying alone at a Scottish Deer Park after his school trip had left without him. There were 3 teachers looking after only 9 children, and somehow one teacher couldn’t count above 2, so they just asked the little ones if everybody was there, the kids shouted “Yes!”, and off they drove.
Boy, 4, left behind at Scottish Deer Centre after nursery trip – BBC News
See the photo of the little lad, and remember that’s the age Richard Branson was when his mother drove him miles out into the countryside, forced him out of the car, told him to find his own way back, and drove away.
As an eleven year old some 64 years ago, a group of us would have our mums make us fish paste sandwiches which we`d stuff into a makeshift rucksack along with a bag of crisps and a bottle of home-made ‘spanish water’ (liquorish infused tap water). Then four or five of us would meet up and walk a few road miles before traipsing over hill and dale through the countryside until we got to Pendle Hill, stopping on the way to gawp at a main attraction; ‘Jack Moore’s monkey’ (a scabby pet chimp housed outdoors) along the way, We’d walk around 16 miles during the day, all off grid, returning home just before dark around 10pm. That was in the days before paedophiles had been invented I guess,
Different world back then. I miss it,
“But what if you had slipped?!”
You’ll know something’s up when you find their ‘burner’ phones.
Should it not be an individual parental decision?
Or as a family, views made in the open, like thinking learning humans.
I was quite pleased that my parents didn’t know where I was. Not that I was usually anywhere nefarious, but the thought of exploring, and knowing my parents could always ask, “What were you doing in Bury Fields after school?” would be stultifying.
Six months ago, my hairdresser was talking about her teenage grandchildren carrying trackers. She said, “At least they know where they are.”
I replied, “Why is that a good thing?” It’s certainly not good education in trust.
Off-T
Off-G with a disturbing article showing how the Davos Deviants are starting to use climate change as a means to drive people in to their smart cities – pack and stack Gulags. And what a surprise the insurance companies are in on the scam.
Australia and New Zealand are the test centres.
https://off-guardian.org/2024/06/26/exposed-how-climate-racketeers-aim-to-force-us-into-smart-gulags/
I totally agree with you Joanna.
We have two children, aged 20 and 18, who have never been tracked. However, we have friends with children of similar ages to ours that have tracked them since they had mobiles (around age 11), and still track them. They even encouraged us to do the same.
I think it’s totally out of order and shows a complete lack of trust. Whenever our children go somewhere such as on holiday/abroad, they phone/text/WhatsApp/Instagram message periodically just so we know they’re having a good time and are still alive.
When I think back to my childhood and teenage years, I know what I would’ve thought and said if someone tried to track me, so parents should think about that before they come up with excuses for Big Mother Watch.
We mothers have enough to do without having to be a 24/7 policeman. In the article on nudging elsewhere on this site the phrase “fear inflation” is used. Everyone needs to understand risk and relative risk vs. absolute risk. Going running and spraining an ankle and then Big Mother or Big Wife has to come and find you and bring you home. Enough!
.
. Can’t everyone grow up and take responsibility for themselves and refuse to be constantly stressed and fearful and phone addicted? What happens when there is intermittent electricity and your battery is dead? Not so convenient then.
Incidentally Wordle etc. is clearly to get you on to the phone asap of a morning and then you stay on it all day from my observations.
I was free in the 1980s….One of my neighbours’ mom was a bit more controlling so when we were out all day, only he got in trouble. Time travel me to the 1920s and I’ll fit in fine.
I don’t even agree with tracking pets. Obviously I understand the benefits and I would never want anyone to feel unnecessary anxiety because they didn’t know the whereabouts of their pet but you have to consider these things in a broader context. To put it simply, the rules are different if you live in a predatory system. And even if your system is staffed by philosopher kings you have to consider that the next lot might be a bit different. It is unfortunate that we have to think in this way but the alternative is the black iron prison that they are trying to construct.
Globalist grooming for future total control. Just give the worried parents these ‘handy apps’ to get the kids nice ‘n’ used to it and the whole thing looks after itself..
I think our culture is slowly and steadily edging towards a state of zero tolerance of uncertainty, let alone practically no tolerance of risk. It is part of the human condition that we will readily latch onto technology like this, unaware of where it might lead in the future, simply because of this addiction to certainty and assuredness. These days it is becoming harder and harder for for parents to acknowledge that at some point their children have to be weaned off total dependence, and they will have to tolerate the lack of knowing where their almost adult-age teenager is at every moment of every day.
But larger issues are at stake: Like state-backed agencies knowing the whereabouts of us adults at all times and limiting movement on the pretence of reducing crime. All new cars being sold with pre-fitted tracking devices that clock the mileage and routes taken, all dressed up as a benevolent initiative to reduce emissions and manage traffic. All the same technology, of course, just re-purposed for a new and more intrusive agenda.
Very well put.
I am reminded of the poem, “On Children”, by Kahlil Gibran…
Your children are not your children
They are the sons and daughters of life’s longing for itself
They come through you but not from you
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you
You may give them your love but not your thoughts
For they have their own thoughts
You may house their bodies but not their souls
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow
Which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams
You may strive to be like them
But seek not to make them like you
For life goes not backward, nor tarries with yesterday
You are the bows from which your children
As living arrows are sent forth
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite
And he bends you with his might
That his arrows may go swift and far
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness
For even as he loves the arrow that flies
So he loves also the bow that is stable
Beautiful and true words
“I think our culture is slowly and steadily edging towards a state of zero tolerance of uncertainty, let alone practically no tolerance of risk.”
Sad but true and this enabled the “Covid” scam.
The only way back to freedom from this level of submission is some sort of shock or spasm: one could liken it to electroconvulsive therapy for Western civilisation. Perhaps the decay itself contains within it the seeds of the shock. It is certainly looking that way now. Decaying babies in possession of weapons that could wipe out humanity and a political class that seems to tick every box on the ‘Am I A Psychopath?’ checklist. Wreckless, infantile, superficial, venal and without any sense of humanity. Perhaps we will have an opportunity to reject them in time.
Everyone who’s carrying a smart phone is tracked all the time. Or rather, the phone can be tracked all the time. That’s an unavoidable side effect of the way these devices work. Hence, either don’t carry one or accept that you’re broadcasting your location all the time.
Sure. But that’s not quite what this article is about, is it?
The article is about making this available to users as a feature instead of just to companies making software for smartphones and whoever can get access to their data. Parents tracking their children is IMHO a lot less creepy than Apple and Google tracking them which happens anyway.
There is no need to carry one of those phones. Do you really need to be connected to the internet when you are in the suparmarket or pub? Of course not in fact it has a detrimental effect on social environments. If you need to go out with a phohe like if you’re caring for someone and need to be on call then just get a cheap and simple flip phone and only switch it on when you need to. If you can’t overcome this simple addiction then you deserve what is coming to you.
But… but… how else will they swipe the thingy code to pay for the groceries? Or log in at the pub where they have to pay by phone? Or park the car when they take away the coin meters?
It is a matter of self-respect as well given what these phones are actually used for. You are basically identifying yourself as another ignorant sap whose activities will ultimately feed into the growing mind of the control system. You did your bit. Perhaps one day the AI voice will speak in your voice long after human individuality had been removed. This thing that they are trying to create isn’t a paraonoid delusion or a gratuituous composite. Every other goal at the moment is subordinate to this one. This is the most important thing to understand. It is hard to state because it is the spirit of the age and the imperative of our age is to avoid this entrapment.
This time between 2020 and 2040 was seeded by schools that knew where we would be at this point. There is one underlying teaching that must be understood and that is that the realm of the spirit exists even though it was forbidden previously. This is a whole new syntax and language and a whole new tempo of life and understanding. They kept their secrets for millennia but felt that in our time they need to be shared widely in order to fend off the energy of the adversary. I would say to anyone who knows this teaching this is the right time to let it out completely. This is the meaning of the Grail or as Elliot said, an old man in a dry season waiting for rain.
If people all over the world genuinely understood what is at stake. This force affects everyone and has gone through several evolutionary stages that are above humanity and so it has the ability to easily push us down the wrong path. It is hard to fight this force in a world driven by economics but it must be fought. No economic power can endure if truth and beauty and the moment are trodden down. It is the job of the advocates of beauty in this time to speak to the situaton.
I bet you will carry on with your smartphone tomorrow just because it is easy. Not even difficult to give up and yet the universe doesn’t like decisions based on ease. It shows essentially a lack of vitality. Just carry on without snapping yourself out of it and see where it gets you.
I don’t track my kids because I don’t have any. I do track other people’s kids though…
…well not so much ‘track’, more follow…
(I’m joking, in case it’s not clear)
Okay downvoter, you’re free to speak your mind. My transgression was…?
Or was your thumb just itching?
George Orwell missed this one
If kids object to being tracked, they could dump the smartphone, maybe being tracked is a quid pro quo for the parent buying the phone and data contract.
This becomes normalised when society no longer accepts risk and blurs the distinction between the group and the individual. It starts with peanuts on a plane and ends with a social credit system.