The
new devices use GPS, Wi-Fi and other location-tracking technology and can be
linked to apps on a parent’s phone. One device, a watch coming from Filip Technologies later
this year, tracks a child’s location and lets him or her get voice calls from
up to five people authorized by their parents. (Children lift the watch to
their ear or mouth when communicating.)
The
watch also has a red panic button that children can push if, for example, they
suddenly become separated from their parents in a crowd. Then the watch starts
dialing each of the authorized people until one answers. AT&T will
be the network provider for the watch; its price has not yet been announced.
Sandra L. Calvert,
a professor of psychology and the director of the Children’s Digital Media
Center at Georgetown University, views the watches and related products as
extensions of the way parents now use smartphones to keep track of older
children.
“From
a child’s perspective, a parent is like an anchor,” she said. These devices
allow the child to move farther and farther away, yet the parent knows where
the child is. “If a child gets lost in a store and can push a little button,
their parents can find them,” she said. “It helps them to know they are in a
range that seems to be safe.”
But
the technology offered by the watches and similar products could be a mixed
blessing, said Lisa Damour, a
psychologist who focuses on parenting and directs theCenter for
Research on Girls at Laurel School in Shaker Heights, Ohio, and
contributes to Motherlode blog of
The New York Times.
“I
can understand how a parent might want to know if their child is having a
problem, but I don’t think it’s necessarily helpful for children to always be
able to turn to their parents when they are struggling,” she said. “We want
children to develop problem-solving skills and the capacity to manage stress”
as they practice drawing on their own resources, or those of teachers, friends
and others around them.
The
panic button might have an unintended effect that’s not in the best interest of
the child, she said. “It may reduce the parents’ anxiety to give their child a
panic button, but I can readily imagine that it increases the child’s anxiety,”
she said. “It sends a strong message that the child is at real risk of danger.
This goes against what we know statistically.”
In
reality, children are now safer from abduction by strangers than they’ve been
in decades, said Lisa M. Jones, a
research associate professor of psychology at the University of New
Hampshire’s Crimes Against Children Research Center.
“Abductions in the traditional sense of someone taken by someone else they
don’t know, with the intention of keeping or harming the child — that’s quite
rare,” she said. “The vast majority of children are victimized by people close
to them.”
But
even though such abductions are rare, she said, “obviously we are terrified by
them.”
Jonathan
Peachey, chief executive of Filip Technologies, said the watch
might well increase a child’s anxiety, “but I would question whether that’s a
bad thing.” With the watch, children have a sense that they can always talk to
their parents in threatening situations. “That’s a conversation, and a very
positive one for parents to have with their child,” he said.
Another
new tracking device, the tiny Trax,
also pairs with a smartphone app to allow parents to find their children,
particularly very young ones, said Tobias Stenberg, a co-founder of Wonder
Technology Solutions, a company in Stockholm that makes the device.
The
tracker is meant for those worrisome moments when parents trying to keep an eye
on a child playing in the garden, for example, suddenly discover that he or she
isn’t there. “Your first reaction is a bit of panic, but if you look at your
phone, you can see, ‘Oh, she’s returned to her room,’ ” Mr. Stenberg said.
The
Trax, to be available later this month, costs $249 and includes a subscription
for two years’ use in more than 30 countries, including the United States.
After that, the company will charge a small monthly fee. Parents can draw
boundaries on the screens of their smartphones, creating an electronic fence
within which their child can roam. But if the child crosses the digital fence,
the tracker alerts the parents, Mr. Stenberg said. And if the satellite signal
is lost inside a building, for example, the Trax uses motion and direction
sensors to determine the child’s position. (The device can also keep track of
dogs, he said.)
For
parents who opt for smartphones even for young children, many wireless
services, like AT&T’s FamilyMap, offer programs that track the phones of
family members, sending a text or email to parents telling them, for example,
when their child’s phone arrives home after school.
Lynn
Schofield Clark, an associate professor at the University of Denver
and author of“The Parent
App,” said parents who equip their young children with tracking
devices still have to try to balance the parental instinct to protect their
offspring with the need to nurture their sense of independence and
responsibility.
Children
can’t be protected by gadgets alone, she said — they also have to learn the
basics of being a responsible family member: “We still have to remind them
again and again that they have to let us know where they are and not wander
off.
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