I’m not concerned with tracking where my kids are with these, but tracking their shoes sounds kinda useful. Average daily conversation in my house:
"Where are you shoes?" "I don't know?" "You were just in the middle of putting them on!?!!" "Yeah but... I can't find them now." "How? You had them in your hands?!?" "That was, um, before I got distracted." "*sigh* Let's go try and find them."Are your kids smoking weed?
Nope, kids are just like this
ADHD is a hell of a drug
A lot of people don’t know this, but you can put your weed in there.
ah yes the old “hide your weed in the back of your PS2/under your Gamecube” method.
RIP expansion bays
I would rather not
Parents worry about their kids. All mammals I’ve ever heard of do this. So when you tell human parents that they can have a better chance of finding their kids if their kids are missing, injured, or abducted, that’s going to appeal.
I don’t believe it’s about sUrVeIlLaNcE at all.
Maybe good in a country that has barily any walking or cycling infrastructure, where every idiot has a gun and where all the biggest serial killers originate from. And where recently your kid can be kidnapped by unmarked unrecognizable fake police and sent to a concentration camp in El Salvador without any legal process.
But when you live in a first world country, your 8 year old should be able to go to school by bike on his own without issues what so ever, would never be kidnapped and would be brought home by a concerned neighbor when he falls and get injured. And would never get lost. You don’t need an air tag for that. I’ve even seen kids go to school on their own in Cambodia without issues. They have over 40 different deadly snakes including 6 types of cobras.
When you treat a kid as an irresponsible criminal and/or idiot, that’s what they will become.
The problem in this thread seems to be that children are seen as one homogenous group of people between ages 0 to 17. And you can either send you 5 year old to NYC without any technology by themselves, or check your 17 year old’s location 24/7. Forget about any kind of in between.
Like, of course I am “surveilling” my 3 year old, I am literally obligated to. I do this with my own eyes or leave them in the care of a capable person, although depending on the situation (relative, babysitter, daycare) it is still me who is liable when something happens.
I am happy to leave my 8 year old rumble around freely as long as they return home by a time that we agreed on. We can very well also agree on them calling if they won’t make it home by the agreed time, and if they don’t call or pick up their phone within an additional 30 minutes, I will check their location. This can be a known and agreed upon checking. And it is about mutual trust. I trust my kid at a certain age to be responsible and keep track of time, and be available by phone (unless otherwise agreed or if they don’t have a phone to begin with), as well as be where we agreed they would be, without checking. And I hope my kid will also trust me to keep up my side of the agreement. I won’t check unless it’s past return time and you are not picking up your phone.
This mutual trust is important in families. You deserve privacy, even if you are a kindergartener. This privacy will expand with age. This is like hiding your locked diary or leaving an open diary on your desk. You should not feel the need to hide it because I for sure won’t look at it. It is yours. Similarly, you can roam around freely even with an airtag. This thing is not for daily use.
Now, does my 17 year old need an airtag? To me they are basically an adult. Hell knows I had all the freedom in the world at that age. If they feel safer knowing I could check on them when they are on a night out, maybe we can keep a similar agreement as above. But otherwise it doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense to me.
Just because they can, doesn’t mean they should. Is there a significant net benefit, or is it just fear monetized?
be kid
find this in your shoe
get idea
catch seagull
tie airtag to its foot.
go see mom having a fit
The Simpsons already did it.
Kids have a distinct advantage in this ongoing consumer tech war between parents and kids.
I don’t use TikTok, but I’d be pretty surprised if this wasn’t already starting to trend there, along with ideas for where to put the airtags to fool parents.
Maybe just… talk to your kids?
Seems like an ok idea until you realise you could just give them a key chain, or put it in the small pocket in their trouser if you think they’ll lose it. That way you don’t have to buy into a whole ecosystem of shoes with a slot that fits an airtag.
Just give them a phone. Then at least they get something they want with it, instead of ugly shoes.
Young children should absolutely not have a phone, unless I suppose it’s completely locked down to chat apps and the tracking I suppose…
My little sister has a phone I set up for her. It has no internet browser, requires permission to download apps, no voicemail, blocks unknown callers, and turns off at 9pm with the exception of contacting family or emergency services.
Phones can be safe for kids if parent just put in the time to learn about parental safety systems and implement them.
More and more governments issue warning about the effects of screens on baby, toddler, and child brain development. The age the Netherlands puts forward now is 14 to have a smartphone, and no screens or very limited until 3 years of age.
How is it different than a TV screen? That was my brainrot when I was growing up.
They issue is less the screen than it is the lack of long-form entertainment. Kids paying attention to an hour and a half movie plot on the screen isn’t the same problem as scrolling through endless 30 second videos or accessing social media.
The TV is also bad, but smartphones are literally slot machines in the child’s pocket that keep giving them dopamine hits. It’s many times worse for the brain.
There are parental controls etc. But the nature of the device is addictive with its notifications and the likes.
Individually targeted and psychologically-optimized content.
Those happen to be the things a child should not be exposed to
Learn to use the tools to protect your kids. iPhones and Android can absolutely be locked down for children. Or just get an apple watch or flip phone. All better than a fucking airtag.
My kids got an apple watch, locked down during school hours, etc.
Better for what purpose? If you’re on holiday in a busy, foreign city, an AirTag for location tracking is much cheaper than this other options.
AirTags rely on being able to piggyback off of other iPhones to report their location. They are not a self-contained device, merely an appliance. If you give your kid a smartwatch with cellular or a full-fledged phone, you can track where they are but also they have the ability to contact you/be contacted if need be. Sure, there are drawbacks to such choices, but that is what being well-informed as a parent is all about.
Wait. Parents now put airtags in kids their weed compartment?
When the kids find the “hidden” compartments immediately and swap their tags around.
Parent: “Why does Billy keep going to his friend’s house in the other county?”
“It says his left shoe is supposed to be here, but all I see is his right shoe! How is this possible!?”
showing my age but when I was a kid during the summer or on weekends I’d be out of the house all day and just where ever in my town. My parents didn’t care as long as I was either home for dinner or by the time the street lights came on. and if I wasn’t home for dinner I had to find a phone and call not because my parents would be worried but so they either wouldn’t have to cook as much or set out a plate for me.
It’s 10 pm, do you know where your kids are?
Glad you’re still alive!
“Can”? Were they physically unable to before?
It is likely more that they are designed to have AirTags with special compartments.
As if kids won’t suss that out in two heartbeats.
Depends on their age. I have young kids and love in the inner city. These would be handy but you’d need it in every shoe or it’s pointless.
I mean, nice that you have kids. But why are you bringing your mistress who lives downtown into this? :D
The peak of evolved kids shoes are those with wheels on the heels (“Heelys”)
Bonus points if they had the hard plastic instep so you could grind with them like Soaps.
I swear these are apple guerrilla marketing articles. Air tags in the shoe is so stupidly expensive for the task.
Imo it’s not that it’s expensive, it’s that the kid is going to get an alert that there’s an AirTag following them, and they’re gonna be like “wtf”. Just share your find my location via phone.
Ehgh these days that’s not terrible
If you need to spy on your kids to keep tabs on them, you’re a shitty parent. You should be able to discuss enabling Find My (assuming they have an iPhone) on their phone and why that’s required (by you) openly.
Too many inept people have children. That’s a large part of why society is in such decline.
Too many inept people have children.
The USA is forcing women to have kids.
Truer words have never been spoken
Yes, now more than ever. But inept people had children who they raised to be thoughtless party-followers rather than free-thinkers and that’s why Roe v Wade was overturned.
Hey asshole, special needs kids are big and strong and smart enough to get themselves out in the world and need ways to get to them to keep them safe. There are plenty of reasonable reasons for tracking tech for your kid that aren’t helicopter parenting.
You don’t need to be a helicopter parent to explain to your kids that you want to be able to find them if needed. And you don’t need to monitor them just because that feature is enabled. A reasonable parent can require the feature be enabled and only use it when there’s cause.
I maintain that if you need to hide your tracker from your child, you suck as a parent. And if your kid has special needs that make this untenable, that’s obviously different from what I originally said broadly about most parents.
Hey asshole
What an unnecessary and disproportionately rude response to what they’re saying.
special needs kids
Special needs is not something every person out there considers daily along with its ramifications for you to be attacking whoever forgets when it’s not part of their lives when it only affects a small fraction of school-aged children. Even I forget, despite growing up with a non-verbal autistic kid, and even then he wasn’t running around getting in trouble for me to even consider this scenario.
I agree that it was rude and unnecessary, but I don’t agree that it was disproportional. Saying that anyone who finds it a worthwhile utility to be able to find their kid with a geotracker is a shitty parent is an asshole thing to do; it’s shitty, you might say. I mean, I don’t assume that anyone who leaves their kids at the park unattended is negligent. They might just have a kid who’s capable and responsible enough for that kind of privilege. But many kids aren’t that capable or responsible and need to have a parent around at all times. One isn’t necessarily a better or worse parent for it, they just have kids at different levels for ANY NUMBER of reasons. Maybe their kid is adopted, came from a history of trauma, has a history of elopement, is on the spectrum, or any other type of potentially “invisible” disability that might mean they appear to most as a “normal” kid, but actually needs some extra attention, focus, or restriction. I think calling someone an asshole for making a blanket statement about a pretty mundane and typical tool being used is appropriate. They were being ableist at worst, and just kind of ignorant at best.
I am sure most people are considering doing this have elementary aged children. A $20 tag feels like a better option than a $1000 phone. I’d prefer putting it on a backpack than in a shoe though.
All parents spy on their children. That doesn’t make you a shitty parent. What you do with that info and how you handle it does.
