Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

These Shoes Let You Track Your Child's Location With Apple's AirTag

I like this idea - I have four kids and have experienced that heart-in-the-mouth moment when we're out shopping and I turn around and one of them is missing. It can happen really fast! And panic sets in as you're rushing around trying to find them in a busy place. And no, its nothing to do with bad parenting - it's just kids doing what kids do when they see something shiny and wander off... Being able to whip out my phone and see exactly where they are at that moment would have been invaluable.

My kids are grown adults now, but I'd have really appreciated something like this back in the day.

It's definitely the type of purchase I can see myself making when the grandkids come along, though! And if my kids object, I'll remind them what they put us through when they were young lol :D
 
  • Like
Reactions: artifex, drrich2, Student of Life and 1 other person
Perhaps the most dystopian aspect isn’t tracking the location of a 6-year-old — after all, a legal guardian is required to always know where the child is and can’t even leave them unattended for five minutes to grab a pack of cigarettes (I don't known in the U.S., where most commenters write from, but in Europe this could land you in court).

I see two others real issues:

  1. Some parents get used to these tools and don’t want to give them up, even as the child becomes a preteen and should start having some rights to privacy, or at least discussion and consent.
  2. These technologies can actually increase parental anxiety when something doesn’t work. I grew up without cell phones — you agreed in the morning where you'd be and when you'd be back, and the family wouldn’t see you until then. Since mobile phones became common, I’ve seen obsessive behavior. I once saw a mother call the police because she couldn’t reach her daughter for four hours. The police didn’t take her seriously — the phone was just out of battery.

And personally, at the mature age of 30, during a period when I had just moved to a foreign country — alone, not knowing anyone yet, and not speaking the language well — I voluntarily shared my location with my mother as a precaution. But then she started to panic at every little malfunction. For example, if the iPhone lost signal on the highway and left a static location pin for a while, she would call me to ask if I’d had an accident. Or if she didn’t see me home late at night, she’d worry something had happened. In the end, I decided to stop sharing my location — although by then she had gotten used to it and was almost offended.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Joosst and ebika
Enrico77 said:
Perhaps the most dystopian aspect isn’t tracking the location of a 6-year-old — after all, a legal guardian is required to always know where the child is and can’t even leave them unattended for five minutes to grab a pack of cigarettes (I don't known in the U.S., where most commenters write from, but in Europe this could land you in court).

I see two others real issues:

  1. Some parents get used to these tools and don’t want to give them up, even as the child becomes a preteen and should start having some rights to privacy, or at least discussion and consent.
  2. These technologies can actually increase parental anxiety when something doesn’t work. I grew up without cell phones — you agreed in the morning where you'd be and when you'd be back, and the family wouldn’t see you until then. Since mobile phones became common, I’ve seen obsessive behavior. I once saw a mother call the police because she couldn’t reach her daughter for four hours. The police didn’t take her seriously — the phone was just out of battery.

And personally, at the mature age of 30, during a period when I had just moved to a foreign country — alone, not knowing anyone yet, and not speaking the language well — I voluntarily shared my location with my mother as a precaution. But then she started to panic at every little malfunction. For example, if the iPhone lost signal on the highway and left a static location pin for a while, she would call me to ask if I’d had an accident. Or if she didn’t see me home late at night, she’d worry something had happened. In the end, I decided to stop sharing my location — although by then she had gotten used to it and was almost offended.
Click to expand...
You're advocating for thoughtful use and being responsible for not overusing. Under-supervised is not great, and over-supervised isn't great either. I can get behind that.
 
  • Like
Reactions: artifex and ignatius345
xalea said:
Whatever did parents do before shoe-implantable AirTags? It's a wonder generations have survived.
Click to expand...
Certainly it is a wonder I survived - I was allowed to grow up basically feral. No sarcasm intended.

Anyway, you'd think the placement of the AirTag would be in a place that wouldn’t be uncomfortable and would protect the AirTag from mechanical shock (e.g., the side or the tongue of the shoe).
 
Nice, but AirTag is not designed for actively tracking things. It preserves battery and not reporting its position that often.
What it's designed for is for precise tracking the things within bluetooth range or informing the owner about things left behind.
While it might be useful in a crowd I wouldn't rely on it when it comes to tracking a kiddo on the map. Even an Apple Watch with cellular isn't that "aggressive" when it comes to reporting its position (hawing a GPS related complication like weather helps tho).
Keep that in mind or use a 3rd party GPS tracker but then it'll require to be charged much more often.
 
Donkey Man said:
There’s absolutely no clear correlation between that downward trend and the use of such technology - none. Reasons for it could be completely different.
Click to expand...
I'm not sure about AirTags specifically, but I was talking about technology in general. Technology absolutely has a lot to do with the downward trend. Think about it, most people didn't have cellphones in the 1980s. If someone tried to kidnap you, all you could do is scream and hope someone will notice.

Of course, a 5 year old isn't going to have a phone. But they can use an AirTag.
 
Enrico77 said:
I’d also add that young children should never be left unsupervised even inside their own home. I visited a rehabilitation center for severe burn victims — one of them was a child who had been left alone for just 30 minutes (the father, divorced, had stayed outside the house to say goodbye to his new girlfriend in private — he is now on trial for this). He found a lighter and started playing with it. He’s alive by a miracle and had to undergo skin grafts. I understand that teenagers deserve a some degree of privacy, but this clearly doesn’t apply to 8-year-olds or younger.
Click to expand...
I have a 6 year old nephew, and I watch him like a hawk whenever he comes over. One time, we lost track of where he was in the house. He was hiding in another room, and he walked in with a big wooden baseball bat. He was fine, but you have to be careful.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Student of Life
And it will beep every now and then incl in the classroom due to the anti stalker feature.
 
i have a family member who clips on airtag on their 1.5 and 3 year old whenever we are in public. as a dad of two teens myself it's a total eyeroll. but i bet they'd be all over this.
 
You can buy soles for shoes that have this insert as well. They come in all kinds of sizes. The big issue is that the foot and sole block the signals and so the AirTags are kinda fallible.

Also I still haven't figured out how the whole "AirTag following you" notifications turn off because that defeats the whole purpose of this use case.
 
t0rqx said:
Is this about Apple or shoes?
Click to expand...
The AirTag is an Apple product...

I was previously thinking about tracking my toddler with a smart watch but now I'm considering this...

But I don't think it'll work for her, because she owns ~10 pairs of shoes and she's constantly switching between them throughout the day.
 
  • Like
Reactions: drrich2
Ugh... Too much surveillance and inducing of potential worry. Not worth the headache. Is it a wonder when people keep asking things like: is it true that back in your day kids were just allowed to roam everywhere?

There really is a benefit to not being tethered and not having the ability to know. There is freedom in knowing that you cannot control everything, nor do you have to control things that you could develop a system to control. There is benefit to just live and be.
 
Joosst said:
Absolutely dystopian and crazy. Kids deserve to go places without being monitored.
Click to expand...
I agree, but I don't really think the point of this is to know where you're kids are going...it's to know where your kids are if something unforeseen happens. Human trafficking is a very real and scary thing.
 
Joosst said:
Kids deserve to go places without being monitored.
Click to expand...
No, as minors under the legal authority and responsibility of parents, they literally do not. Particularly the age range these target.
.wojtek said:
only in dystopian minds of absolute bunkers murcians, where kids can't even simply walk to school all play in the yard all by themselves... "land of the free" ammairight?
Click to expand...
America varies widely, but to address the portrayal you've given:

1.) Most of us live in areas where we need cars to get around. It's a 10 minute drive to my kid's school. Walking is impractical for many, and we don't have the public transportation network many in Europe have (though with an often less dense population, less walkability buys us larger homes and yards; there are pro.s and con.s).

2.) Many kids 'can' play in the yard alone, but don't want to. Like mine. Indoors it's air conditioned, there's the Internet, video gaming, video-conferencing with buddies, etc... And not everyone lives close to their friends.

So yes, a lot of kids spend a lot of time indoors or on arranged 'playdates,' but that's not always due to a paranoid 'helicopter' parent hovering over them.
Astuces iOS said:
Is the kid a cat or a dog now?
Click to expand...
That would be easier. You can spay or neuter your pet, and it's extremely low risk to go mess with illegal drugs. I have a kid, cat and 4 dogs, and the kid is more worrisome to deal with than the other 5 combined. Granted, she doesn't shed as much...
Enrico77 said:
For example, my daughter often takes off her watch (because she likes it but sometimes it bothers her wrist and she forgets it somewhere), and sometimes she puts on and takes off necklaces.
Click to expand...
Good point for kids who mostly wear one pair of shoes; the Apple Watch is often taken off to charge if nothing else!
Enrico77 said:
Some parents get used to these tools and don’t want to give them up, even as the child becomes a preteen and should start having some rights to privacy, or at least discussion and consent.
Click to expand...
The 'rights to privacy' thing you mention, and 'consent' is interesting, and probably goes beyond the scope of this thread. I'm old enough to've watched American culture shift. Preteens are minors; they can't legally enter binding contracts, for the most part can't consent to medical care, and remain the responsibility of their parents. Despite all that, I get the impression some people (not saying you) believe they have the right to sneak around behind their parents' backs, fornicate (with risks of pregnancy and STDs) and engage in illegal drug use, hang out with 'the wrong crowd' (an opening line to many a tale of tragedy), etc...

I get that parental supervision can be paranoid and over-controlling, and there are limits to what one can do.

Ironically, in light of concerns expressed in some posts, the way to monitor older kids is not with an Apple AirTag in their shoe, it's with the iPhone in their pocket. An older kid can strategically leave her shoe at a friends while she sneaks off to see some boy, but leaving her iPhone behind? She certainly could, but some people are tightly bound to them (I joke it's my wife's 3rd kidney).

It's also worth noting having your position known isn't a one way thing. Yes, I can track my kid by her watch or phone, but she can track me and her mother the same basic ways. It's handy when I want to know if her Church group is nearly back from a trip and ready for pickup, etc... We don't keep up with each other because of a 'surveillance state,' but because it's handy to know where we all are.
 
  • Like
  • Haha
Reactions: Astuces iOS and russell_314
routine_analyst said:
When I was young, my parents opened the front door and we ran outside. We heard them in the distance yell "be back by dark" and that was the last we heard of them. Today parents track every movement of their children. Poor little Timmy.
Click to expand...
I feel this. I could not even begin to count the number of times my parents had no real clue of my or my borther's location for hours at a time after I turned around 9 years old. Most days we were always within about the same 1/2 mile radius, but our little late-70s build housing tract and the surrounding hills were full of so much for a kid in the early 90's to stay occupied.
 
  • Like
Reactions: VulchR and ignatius345
Joosst said:
Absolutely dystopian and crazy. Kids deserve to go places without being monitored.
Click to expand...
My toddler barely knows his last time and likes to run off. We do our best, but I think it’s a great use-case for us.

We haven’t lost him yet, but it does give some peace of mind. After he’s old enough to know his address and phone number, it won’t be as much of a concern.
 
  • Like
Reactions: russell_314
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back