Keeping kids on a short leash with Radar

There’s a fine line between monitoring your kids’ mobile phone experiences and monitoring their every breathing second. Yes, there is a need to regulate the use of these devices by “tweens” — 12 percent of 8- and 9-year-olds have phones, and that rate doubles for 10- and 11-year-olds. So, like they are with this age group’s online experiences, parents want to monitor their cell phone experience, too. But when does this monitoring cross the line. Radar, a service that allows parents to check in on their kids’ cell phone usage, hopes that you can take it pretty far. The idea behind the service is that short of recording a phone conversation, parents can know anything and everything relating to their child’s cell phone. If they got a call, the number is logged; if they get a text message, the content can be viewed by the parents. It even goes so far as to send an alert to parents if an unknown number calls or texts the child. This goes right to their computer or cell phone, so it’s a real-time service. The idea, as Radar puts it, isn’t to spy on kids, but rather alert parents to issues that the kid might not tell them. For example, one Radar customer noticed that an unknown number had been calling her son repeatedly. This prompted her to inquire, and she found out that it was an ex-boyfriend calling the number of his ex-girlfriend — or at least that’s what the kid said. This isn’t the only service of its kind, though the real-time alerts are unique. Disney Mobile is geared towards younger kids, and allows parents to track the location of the child through a built-in-phone GPS system. Verizon has the Chaperone service, which in addition to the GPS location allows parents to only allow calls to be made within certain geographic regions. The idea is great, but we’re not so sure about how well it will work in practice. We found this paragraph rather amusing:

For example, Lisa Brumfield got a text message last Saturday at 2 a.m. warning her that a stranger had just called Joshua, who was spending the night at a friend’s house. She asked him about it the following morning. “Every time I get an alert of an unusual phone call, I ask him about it. This turned out to be a wrong number,” she said.

How easy is it for the kid to say “wrong number”? He’s 15 years old and knows his parents have this service. “Wrong number” could mean late-night booty call or even an alcohol or marijuana delivery. Of course, the excuse won’t hold up indefinitely, and the parent could notice the same unknown number popping up repeatedly. But kids today definitely have the savvy to keep their parents off track. We think there is a a certain level of need for a service like this. However, we’re not sure if this is the correct manner in which to approach the issue. Kids need a certain level of freedom. Without it, they won’t be prepared for the next stage of life. Then again, we don’t have kids, and we didn’t have cell phones at that age, so maybe we’re overlooking something here. We do know, though, that if we were 15 and our parents had installed this software, we’d spend much of our energy figuring out a way around it. [CNet News]]]>