Some of the newer generations of Americans are relying increasingly on cell phone apps on their own cells phones that let their parents track their locations.
Gen Z respondents to a recent survey from Life360 said they share their location when they drive, when they go on dates, and when they attend concerts and other large gatherings. Many keep location sharing on at all times.
As Julie Jargon points out in her article, though,
[T]racking may be creating a false safety net for both parents and teens. Knowing where kids are doesn’t necessarily keep them safe when disaster strikes.
The problem is larger, yet. Michele Borba, an educational psychologist—and spokeswoman for Life360:
These kids have been helicoptered, snowplowed, and bubble-wrapped[.]
Indeed. And those kids have no clue how to take care of themselves. Their parents will come bail them out. The kids are transferring more than a small measure of responsibility for their own safety to their parents, and that transfer might—might—make them safer in the near-term, but it leaves them less safe in the mid- and longer-term, especially when they no longer have their parents to rely on because they’ve left their cozy nest.
The problem goes even beyond that once they’ve left their nest. The mindset they’re learning is that someone else always is looking out for them. That someone else, ultimately, is Government, and they no longer are independent actors; they’re wards of the State.