Would You Put a Tracking Device On Your Child?

Hugh Pickens writes "In 2007 businessman Russell Thornton lost his 3-year-old son at an amusement park. After a frantic 45-minute search, Thornton found the boy hiding in a play structure, but he was traumatized by the incident. It spurred him to build a device that would help other parents avoid that fate. Even though most statistics show that rates of violent crime against children have declined significantly over the last few decades, and that abductions are extremely rare, KJ Dell'Antonia writes that with the array of new gadgetry like Amber Alert and the Securus eZoom our children need never experience the fears that come with momentary separations, or the satisfaction of weathering them. 'You could argue that those of us who survived our childhoods of being occasionally lost, then found, are in the position of those who think car seats are overkill because they suffered no injury while bouncing around in the back of their uncle's pickup,' writes Dell'Antonia. 'Wouldn't a more powerful sense of security come from knowing your children were capable, and trusting in their ability to reach out for help at the moment when they realize they're not?'"

Comments

Re:What are parents so paranoid?

[QuantumRiff]

No, things are not more dangerous. Today, kids are statistically safer than they were in the 60's.. But, we now have 24-hour news that needs to fill time... Lookup the book "Free Range Kids".. You are 20 times more likely to kill your own child while driving, than to have a stranger take off with them. Yet parents still, every day, pile little junior into the SUV to drive 1 mile to school.. (placing a child in a car is the single worst thing you can ever do for their safety, apparently)

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children flat out says "stranger danger" is wrong, and very dangerous to teach kids: http://us.missingkids.com/missingkids/servlet/NewsEventServlet?LanguageCountry=en_US&PageId=2034