Recently overheard: “When I have children, I’m going to implant one of those microchips in them, like they put in dogs, so that I’ll be able to tell where they are at all times.” Since, technically, I wasn’t in the above conversation—I was eavesdropping—I couldn’t point out to the person speaking that those microchips are really only good for identifying your pet, not tracking it like a migrating caribou. Of course, even if I could’ve, I probably still wouldn’t have said anything; deep down I’m afraid that that particular technology might not be too far away. Think about it: they already have an app to turn on your phone’s GPS and find out where your phone has been; I know this because when we got Clementine her cellphone (yes, we finally caved), the man at the phone store was halfway through the process of enabling her phone with this particular feature (all for the low, low price of $4.95 a month) when we stopped him.
“But why?” he asked. “With this feature you’ll always be able to tell where she is.”
Thanks—but no thanks. There are lots of reasons I feel this way. The first one is this: isn’t the whole point of giving your child a cell phone (besides, of course, to put an end to the nagging) so that she can call you and tell you where she is? I mean, I know modern cellphones come with all sorts of bells and whistles these days: they take photos, shoot video, store music, even surf the web, but don’t they also still function as a telephone? (I had the same argument about paying five bucks a month for roadside assistance. “But what if you need a tire changed in the middle of the night?” Well, if for some reason I couldn’t change the tire myself—say, for instance, I didn’t want to get my princess clothes dirty—I would then simply call someone. On the phone.)
My second problem with this service is that it doesn’t really promise to tell me where my child is at all: it only promises to tell me where my child’s phone is, and these are often two very different things. (After nagging us for a cell phone for a solid year, Clementine now typically leaves it sitting on the kitchen counter. Right next to our home phone. Who knows—maybe she thinks the old phone is lonely.)
My third problem with the whole idea of tracking my daughter is that I really don’t think that I want to know where she’s been. I might think I do, but I don’t. I know this to be true because I was thirteen once myself, and I am completely, absolutely, 100% sure that my mom was much, much happier not knowing where I was most of the time. In fact, not knowing has probably added at least ten years to her life.
My fourth problem with tracking my children is that I think it gives a false sense of security to both parties. It’s like putting those little arm floaties on a kid who can’t swim: the parents think it’s okay to run inside the house for a minute, and the child thinks its okay to go out “just a little bit further, and further, and further.” When it comes to kids, there’s never an answer quite as good as vigilance. And sometimes, there’s no answer at all.
The truth is, when it comes to kids there’s only one kind of chip that can ever put your mind at ease, and that’s the “common sense” chip. Unfortunately, these chips are very tricky to install: they can’t just be inserted under the the skin, but instead have to be planted as seeds and allowed to flourish on their own.
And I just don’t think there’s an app for that.