I actually think these apps are perfectly fine, I just think that you should have to request the location from the phone and then that request also alerts the kid.
I’ll paint a different picture for parents in this thread. Gen Z does not have adequate social spaces in which to exist. So when you say “hey I’m going to track you” it’s like oh cool, track me going where exactly? To basketball practice and back? Or to the mall so you can know which store I’m in?
Parents are gaining more and more control over their kids and I don’t think it’s good. They aren’t independent people. As a kid I hated having zero autonomy, it sucked. So all this is achieving is making kids feel like it’s less hassle to just stay at home and play video games.
Primarily it means these companies know where your kids are, and they are building a dB of locations and other info of the kid (likely including online activity via other ops on the phone, etc), starting tracking early.
Second, it’s a poor way to manage trust between parents and kids. I refuse to use it, and refuse to help anyone I know use it, and explain to them why.
If you don’t trust your kids, then work on resolving that issue. And before anyone says “I trust my kids but not other people”, well, you gonna go everywhere with them to protect them from other people, or teach them how to navigate life, and learn to develop their own independent judgement?
There are self-hostable tracking systems. One is in my queue to setup for family/friends. It’ll be configured so anyone in a circle can use it, but these people trust each other. We intend it for arrival/departure notifications more than anything.
In this thread: people not understanding sampling bias. Of course everyone here likes privacy, and had friends who think similarly. It’s a privacy themed community on a niche tech forum.
Article reads as propaganda. No way that zoomers are into this. This just sounds like justification for abusive parents to spy on their children. As a GenZ, I don’t recall having a single friend with this kind of arrangement with their parents, but then again I mostly hung around the more questionable crowd where you actually needed privacy. Would really hope we stop bickering among generations and actually fight for privacy together
While more on the parent side of the age gap of things now, I know at least five offspring personally who do this willingly. It is a nightmare to me, moreso the fact that it’s basically impossible or was the last time I looked to find ways to do it that are foss.
But the point is, probably more people do it than you expect. This place is a selection bias, most people genuinely give no rats ass about their privacy, and, to the shock of many, trust their parents and like the safety net.
There are certainly secure privacy focused approaches they retain the agency of both parties which could exist. It’s a very real niche.
For real, how are Millennials falling for the same headlines that were used to spread stupid assumptions about their own generation a decade ago, but this time about Gen Z?
Contrast to you, I hang out with a pretty straight laced crowd, and we also don’t “track each other on Snapchat” like the article or the top comment here is saying because that’s fucking weird.
What’s gonna be the Gen Z avocado toast headline, I wonder…
Media literacy classes should be compulsory and deal with all this crap. Its pretty irresponsible as a society that we leave so much to people to figure it all out or be so vulnerable to exploitation and scams. So damn preventable and beneficial when people can help self-curate out the bullshit but echo chambers are also always gonna echo chamber, so there’s that too
So I live with a member of Gen Z, and it must vary from group to group, but the kids I come into contact with are always able to see exactly where their friends are, including randoms they briefly interacted with on Snapchat once.
I agree that It’s fucking weird. Location sharing on an adhoc basis to coordinate meetups makes sense, but they seem to have this open and broadcasting literally all of the time.
I also get a lot of chuffing and “You’re being ridiculous” when I try to point out how fucking insane, unsafe and dystopian that is.
I dunno, I still have location sharing on 24/7 with my millennial buddies from 10-15 years ago when we were partying hard and it was annoying to keep texting or calling to find out which bar or club you were at or moved on to. Especially when you black out and stop responding.
Just because a headline was published doesn’t mean people agree with it. You can literally publish whatever the fuck you want as long as you don’t cross a threshold that your core reader base stops trusting the publication. Fluff pieces like this are primetime space for just going off on bullshit with minimal repurcussions.
Beyond that clickbait/ragebait are absolutely a thing, and so is manufactured consent style propaganda.
Life360 just needs to have this article published in enough places that it seems like a ton of people are saying it. Gets the ball rolling for the appearance of people sharing this opinion when the reality is that they just got a dozen news sites to reword their press packet.
Sorry, I should have specified “in this comment section”. You’re absolutely right about everything you said regarding the online news circlejerk when it comes to “perceptions”.
There’s just a lot of anti-gen Z comments in this thread that make it seem like we don’t care about privacy issues or tech literacy, when a lot of us do, or we’re JUST learning about the importance of this stuff because the first of our generation are finally gaining independence and footing in society.
So fly-on-the-wall refers to someone in the room who silently observes what is happening and said between whoever else is in the room—usually covertly so they are hidden and unnoticed.
So when I expressed the humorous wish to be there to watch your convo with the parents, I’m ironically ignoring the fact this entire thread is about spying and intrusive/unwanted surveillance.
I know it’s just some rag bait nonsense, but I know as a fact most teens would never want their parents to constantly know where they are and monitor them constantly.
I’m a gen zer and I would absolutely freak out. I’d rather not going out rather than being spied 24/7 by my parents. Seriously, this is the best way to kill trust between children and their parents. Now even the social relationship between parents and children has to be extremely toxic and anxiogenic as a basic minimum requirement
That cant be real—holy shit. Thats worse than picking on kids that dont have an iPhone™️ or any phone or don’t have “the blue bubbles” from using iMessage (which nobody should ever use honestly)
Fight the system, if someone laughs at you for having a green bubble, just counter by saying you are special and they are just normies like everyone else with blue bubble.
I go even further and say “if you want the real and sick blue bubbles, get Signal”.
Otherwise, enjoy getting spied on and having all your data handed over from Apple and also iMessage is dogshit. Half the time it doesnt even get delivered/received and you have to literally call or message the person through some real stable means of communication to troubleshoot
Imma not even get started on iMessage --> skeleton key/zero-day purpose (this is conjecture but I vehemently reject any argument to the contrary)
Yeah, those people are delusional, but that’s what you get when you raise kids in a world where having expensive shit is more important than teaching them frugality, money saving, and being nice to each other.
Blue bubbles go brrrr, doesn’t matter the kid doesn’t have attention span due to watching TikTok all day, or eating junk food cuz parents order fast food and have frozen pizza every day for dinner.
Burying bodies in my garden eating shitty food in order to sate my hunger for human flesh which usually makes me go on a killing spree to calm my cravings for blood less productive.
See the thing is I’m fine with it because I know my parents wouldn’t have spied on me 24/7. If they were helicopter parents and DID check where I was every hour of the day I wouldn’t be fine with it.
My parents have always been VERY restrictive about anything but computers (just because they don’t understand them). However, I asked them if they would do it and they told me that’s damn outrageous
There are more secure location sharing apps out there that are end to end encrypted. My family uses Zood location www.zood.xyz when we are out and about and needing to coordinate our locations. It is handy to use sometimes but it doesn’t do all the spy stuff the other apps do.
I self-host Hauk, although I could not polish all the bugs myself, it works pretty well.
We have location sharing on 24/7, it was consensual on both sides, and it is great when coordinating.
I am 27, tho, back in my teenager days there was no location tracking easily available, but I’d use it in a heartbeat. Better than getting asked if I am already on the way home or still at the party.
I mean, just carrying a cellphone with mobile reception is almost like a 24/7 GPS tracker although obv no parent is generally going to be able to (not should they be able to) like warrant or subpoena that shit from the network carriers/towers
Scariest visual novel i ever played was about kids having their privacy personally violated (that is, not generic analytic data, but someone knowing that kid specifically was doing so and so) and just not caring about it.
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