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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
Kids have always been a little difficult.
Technology may have made things worse, as the young tend to know more about tech than their parents do.
They know, for example, how to ignore mom and dad and do whatever they like.
Nick Herbert found this a touch frustrating.
Kids have a habit of simply not replying to texts. Not because they're bad kids, but, well, they're doing something more interesting on the phone -- like playing a game.
So, as CBS News reports, Herbert conceived ReplyASAP. This is an app (currently available only on Android) that forces your child to address your texts.
By annoying the living hell out of them.
[...] Herbert insists that ReplyASAP is meant to be used only in emergencies. This isn't about annoying your kids all the time, however tempting that might be.
Indeed, he told me that it's not about forcing your child to reply. Instead, he said: "It is simply a means of getting an important message to the child, even when they have their phone on silent, and for the parent to know they have seen it."
[Ed Note - Updated Google Play link to correct a typo]
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Monday August 28 2017, @07:56PM (34 children)
... as long as the kids get to use it on their parents, too.
Why? Are parents not allowed to make the rules-of-use for the phones they're providing to their kids?
I don't quite get the purpose of this submission. Why do we care about this app?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 28 2017, @08:14PM (13 children)
... when you, too, live under the same rules (as much as possible, I suppose).
Children aren't your possessions; they are other people, whom a parent is meant to guide into adulthood.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by edIII on Monday August 28 2017, @08:32PM (11 children)
Ohh, fucking bullshit. Sounds like a shill. You have no pubes right? ;)
That sounds great... and like somebody who isn't a parent. There is a reason why kids don't have rights, and are indeed, a parents possession till 18. Which really should be till like 22 or 23 given the state of our youth today and their respect for my lawn. No, it doesn't go both ways. Children don't get to spy on their parents and force them to read texts about how Becky's butt is like so huge while they are at work. For that matter, if a kid texted a parent at work they're likely to respond. Why? Parents are responsible, love their children, and are concerned for their safety (with few horrible exceptions).
I was a kid. Before cell phones and all the tracking technology existed. If my parents wanted me, they needed to bellow my name through the whole neighborhood and start phoning other parents to find me. Now these days you know perfectly well your kid is on their phone. So are all the adults. The addiction seemingly crosses all age and demographic barriers.
Those cellphones don't belong to the children either. Technically, under the law, they belong to the parents. So they every right to do whatever they want with it, put whatever tracking technology they want, etc. Yes, it sounds like totalitarianism, dictatorships, and horrible, horrible, oppression. A.K.A, childhood.
Are you going to say it isn't fair? Please say it isn't fair. Now that I'm adult, I can admit, I get a smile like the Grinch when I hear it :D
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 28 2017, @08:35PM
If parents are likely to respond, because they are responsible, then it shouldn't be a problem now should it?
Try again, Mr. Butthurt about Something.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by maxwell demon on Monday August 28 2017, @08:55PM (8 children)
Sorry to burst your bubble, but kids do have rights. [wikipedia.org] However the rights of a child are indeed different from those of an adult. But they exists, and everyone, including the parents, have to respect them.
Having said that, I do not think the app in question violates the children's rights. The parents do have a right to make their children listen to them; this includes reading their text messages. However depending on how the app works (I didn't RTFA), there might be issues with it being active while the kids are at school, in case the way it annoys the kids also causes disturbance of the teaching.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by edIII on Monday August 28 2017, @10:06PM (7 children)
Sorry to burst YOUR bubble, but kids don't have any rights when they try to exercise them. I remember all the times I said it wasn't fair and that I had rights. Amazingly, none of the adults around agreed. The threat to call child services is often just funny, and I've heard of children calling the cops on their parents because they honestly believed their parents stole the tablet, cellphone, computer from them. Cops didn't hand the child back the "toy". For that matter, the idea of such behavior 40-50 years ago would've shocked people.
The rights you cite, are basic human rights also afforded to adults. However, when a child's rights are violated, it is essentially the parent that is injured, or specifically the party with legal standing. Whether it is an adult, a legal guardian, or the state itself, somebody is taking responsibility for those rights. To make sure they are not violated, and are provided for. Yes, they have rights, but NO, they are not the ones to manage them, enforce them, defend them, etc.
However, we are not talking about these rights, but the right of a child to use technology without any interference (technological or otherwise). Yet the fact remains that the property doesn't even belong to the child. So we must be talking about their 1st Amendment rights? I didn't grow up in Quaker house, or some insanely strict father situation, but I was well aware that I didn't have any rights over my property. I got it taken away from me several times as punishment :)
I guess what we are really talking about is differing theories on how to raise children. It's understandable the idea that we should let them develop into their own persons, instead of just copies of their parents. However, that doesn't extend to letting the kid wander off with technology allowing the parent to interact with them, but the child refuses. I don't know about you, but in my childhood actively ignoring an adult talking to you was dangerous. I don't mean physically, but it was dangerous in that it could mess up my plans for the night quite easily.
They are not little tiny adults. Do you have kids? I don't have kids, but just little relatives. They're fucking nuts, loud, dangerous, etc. We can't look at them as tiny people capable of adult judgement (although these days that bar has been lowered). They drive my cousins and siblings nuts :) Do I expect them to adequately provide for themselves and defend their rights? Hell no. I don't even trust young people to understand what their rights are today, much less the ideological arguments that go with it.
These are kids man. It's not a big deal or oppression for a parent to be able to BARGE on the phone line. That's an actual technical ability we have with phones and texting, that management likes to use. Why shouldn't parents be able to use the same Enterprise-y apps to deal with their children? When it was a single analog phone line in the house with shared line appearances inherently, it was incredibly easy for a parent to barge in on the line. FUck, I'm so old I can remember getting pissed off because my parents picked up the phone while I had a session going with a German BBS. Bee Beee Beee BOOOOOOO *crackle* *hiss* brings back some memories.
If we want to get biological, teenagers are clinically fucking insane. All those hormones and neural activity coupled with rather significant changes in their bodies, including secondary sexual characteristics, makes them pretty much a controlled insanity trying to make it to adulthood. Seriously, which would you be more concerned about? 30 adults in a park, or 5 teenagers just going through childhood? LOL, there is a reason why parents need to watch their kids.
To be really honest, I'm Eddie Haskell. The shit I got away with and tried to pull off? I can be honest as an adult and say that I needed to be watched as a kid. Boy, did I need to be watched :)
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 29 2017, @07:34AM (1 child)
So, you're basically claiming that children are chattel property of some other human.
You did bad things as a child, therefore all children must be treated as the slaves you claim them to be!
Either humans have rights (such as the right to life, which demands they are the sole owner of the body they inhabit) at ALL ages, or they have rights at NO age.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Tuesday August 29 2017, @07:53PM
Oh please. You're being hyperbolic with chattel property. As for me being bad as a child, I think you need to step back, look at children in general, and realize just what it is you are saying.
Children have human rights because they're human. What they don't have is the experience, wisdom, strength, physical size, etc., etc., etc. to live in an adult world without subsidization or adults specifically tasked to taking care of them. We call those people parents.
Slaves!???
BWAHAHAHAAAHAHAHAAAHAAHAAHAAHAHAHAAHAHAAHAHHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Life comes full circle. You've reminded me of myself at 11 years old loudly proclaiming to my parents my knowledge of rights, and slavery, and all of the sophisticated intellectual reasons WHY I WAS A SLAVE BECAUSE I HAD CHORES. Yes, I was a slave. How dare they dictate that it was my job to take out the trash, clean the dishes, or mow the lawn. Straight up fucking chattel slavery!! Emancipation Proclamation!! Emancipation Proclamation!! I'm not your slave because of Lincoln dad!!
LOL.
Keep telling my how kids are slaves then. I'm not going to lie. It makes me beam with this huge smile. I'm just one big huge slave master ;P
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 29 2017, @08:55AM
Pro tip: Before answering to a post, read it completely.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Tuesday August 29 2017, @05:04PM (2 children)
The US Supreme Court says you're wrong:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinker_v._Des_Moines_Independent_Community_School_District [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by edIII on Tuesday August 29 2017, @08:09PM (1 child)
No it didn't.
That was my whole point. A child has rights simply because every human being has them. However, as a species, we recognize that children simply don't have the ability to exists as adults, and that it's an unwise idea to expect that. I don't see what is controversial about it. It's not as if human being when born are fully matured, possess genetically transferred knowledge, skills, and memories, and can be responsible for their rights within hours of being born. A human being cannot even see correctly for months after being born IIRC.
As a result of this simple biological fact, like teenagers being controlled insanity (hormones, puberty, etc.), we don't recognize them as having rights on their own. Which, as you can see in bold, means that the fathers are acting with de facto power of attorney to represent the rights of their respective children. What if a father didn't want to? Now that would be a court case. A child initiating it against adults, and winning. I don't think that has ever happened outside of a few edge cases where some teenagers have been emancipated from their parents, and most of those cases had parental support. Has an orphaned child ever won emancipation? I dunno.
I really have to laugh at the ACs saying I support chattel slavery. I swear I had that argument with my parents over chores, and it didn't work out well for me :)
What I think is missing, and I will spell it out, is that I myself don't have the ability (or desire) to arbitrarily abridge the human rights of a child. However, their parents do. That's the fundamental point. Parents exist to take care of their children, and administrate their rights until emancipated, or have reached adulthood as agreed upon society. You haven't provided proof that a child on his own can defend his rights. Especially against his parents.
If you could.... where the fuck were you around 40 years ago dude?! I could've used you calling me on a phone and giving me pointers in my legal fight against chores. Heck, today, you would be very popular amongst kids that have had their iphones taken away....
Finally, there are some rights that children have that cannot be abridged by their parents. In those cases, we call it child abuse and have ways of dealing with it in our legal system. Obviously, I've never promulgated child abuse... unless you think giving kids chores, responsibilities, and consequences is child abuse.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday August 30 2017, @12:22PM
I think a good way to put it would be that children do of course have rights; what they lack is only power of attorney. Plenty of adults are in the same situation, but we wouldn't normally say they don't have rights. And there's plenty of adults who can't functionally defend their rights even if they do -- those who can't afford to hire an attorney, for example. Children are actually in a much better position in that case...for example, children are legally required to attend school, and school officials are legally required to report suspected abuse, so the kids have more ability to protect their rights than a vast number of perfectly competent adults. The child also doesn't generally need a specific designated person to initiate legal action, they just need any adult. And in some ways children even have MORE rights than adults -- a child has a legally enforceable right to food, for example, while adults generally do not. So if you're going to say that children don't have rights, I think you also have to accept that the majority of adults in this country don't have rights either...
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Wednesday August 30 2017, @03:43AM
The fact that kids don't understand that their parents confiscating their phone is not the same as stealing and that calling the cops is absolutely the wrong way to handle that is precisely why kids don't have full adult rights.
It's the same reason psychiatric patients don't have the right to be handed knives by their caretakers.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Monday August 28 2017, @10:34PM
Becky's butt is like so huge while they are at work.
Damn, judging that reference your lawn must be AWESOME!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 29 2017, @06:46PM
Part of guiding a child into adulthood is teaching them that when someone else is providing your meals, your shelter, and your utilities, that entity gets to tell you what to do with those things, and otherwise lay down terms for whether or not those things will continue to be provided. That there's no such thing as a free lunch. Failure to teach these lessons has been shown to induce all manner of entitlement, leaving a child out of touch with reality. They get to make the rules for their own devices when they buy the phone and pay the bill for it, thereby reaping the reward of their labor (and incentivizing it in the first place).
I'm sure your boss wouldn't impose any limitations on the company laptop you were assigned that he wouldn't be prepared to follow on his own device, right?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 28 2017, @08:33PM (8 children)
"Rules for thee but not for me" is kind of a terrible concept to teach children.
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Monday August 28 2017, @08:57PM
It's how life works. A big, big part of life. If they don't learn it at home, they'll learn it at school. Or from the police. Can you imagine if Sheriff Joe had to follow rules? #ProTrump45
(Score: 2) by NewNic on Monday August 28 2017, @08:58PM (2 children)
Why? That's how society works, kids need to understand it.
lib·er·tar·i·an·ism ˌlibərˈterēənizəm/ noun: Magical thinking that useful idiots mistake for serious political theory
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 28 2017, @09:24PM (1 child)
Kids need to understand that the world is that way, and that it should not be that way.
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Tuesday August 29 2017, @05:05AM
I was told frequently, "You'll understand when you're older." Had I pried them for more information I would have simply disagreed with it and disregarded it because I was the center of the universe back then and my knowledge and wisdom were absolute.
Yeah, of course the line "You'll understand when you're older," was a fucking generic cop-out, but it turned out to be right. The shame is that sometimes it takes decades to realize exactly why, and they were wise enough to understand that arguing with me was only a waste of energy. And if you have to work and take care of rambunctious shitheads, energy is in short supply.
(Score: 3, Informative) by maxwell demon on Monday August 28 2017, @08:59PM (3 children)
So if the parents drink beer, they should let their ten-year old kid also drink beer? Or do you think they should stop drinking beer until their kid is old enough to drink, too?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 28 2017, @09:27PM (1 child)
Adults do not have such physical problems; they are abiding one single rule: Drink alcohol only after a certain age.
Alas, no such clear-cut, physical foundation exists for how a phone should be used.
Try again.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday August 29 2017, @02:37AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 28 2017, @09:40PM
Sure, if they want some, why not? Seriously.
You shouldn't let them get drunk, but there is nothing wrong with giving your 10 year old a drink if they want it (most kids tend not to).
(Score: 3, Informative) by unauthorized on Monday August 28 2017, @08:55PM (10 children)
Normally, a parent providing something to their kids would be presumed to be a gift, so no it would not be okay for them to suddenly start making rules. If you and your kids have a different understanding or if you set the rules beforehand, then I could see your point. Still, I would consider it infringement of their natural (NOT legal) right to self-determination to abuse their inability to take care of themselves considering the fact that you as their parent forced them into this state of existence by choosing to have kids. It should be every parent's responsibility to ensure their kids have the maximum degree of personal freedom it's reasonable to afford them. And yes, that includes not imposing your interpretation of what's an "important" message. If you cannot convince your kid to install this software and give you access to priority messages then you should respect their decision. You can do without paremanent instant communication access to your kids, just as everyone who raised kids before the 21st century did. Teaching your kids to be submissive to authority is orders of magnitude worse than your convenience.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday August 28 2017, @09:09PM (4 children)
As the giver, you can put a condition on a gift. This applies to any gift to anyone. The receiver is, of course, allowed to not accept the gift under those conditions. But accepting the gift while rejecting the condition is not an option.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by unauthorized on Monday August 28 2017, @09:34PM (3 children)
Incorrect, a gift is specifically giving something without expecting anything in return. If you put conditions on it, it's no longer a gift. Don't get me wrong, you can transfer ownership by setting conditions, but if and only if you clearly define them beforehand.
I did not mean to imply you can singlehandedly decide which parts of a deal apply to you.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday August 29 2017, @07:29AM (2 children)
Plus, of course there's the fact that when we're talking about a parental relationship, the parents are wards who can confiscate anything they see fit, if they think it's for the good of the child. It's not an equal relationship. Likewise teachers when /in loco parentis/.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by unauthorized on Tuesday August 29 2017, @08:29PM (1 child)
My definition is the well-established common English language definition of "gift". If your local laws disagree, that a problem with your laws and not with my usage of the word.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday August 30 2017, @10:20AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 28 2017, @09:42PM (1 child)
do you have any kids
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 28 2017, @10:23PM
Asking "Do you even kids, bro?" is such a waste of everybody's time. Why did you even think it was worthwhile to type that out?
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Tuesday August 29 2017, @05:33PM (2 children)
You're absolutely correct...as long as the child is the one paying their own cellphone bill. Which I don't think they can, unless it's a tracphone or something, since kids can't generally enter into contracts of any kind.
Even an adult has no right to demand unlimited usage of someone else's network infrastructure, so I'm not sure why a child would. Even when I was living in a dorm in college, you couldn't get online unless you had approved anti-virus software installed. If a 19 year old who's paying rent (or "housing fees" as they called it) can be forced to install software to get online, why can't a child?
(Score: 2) by unauthorized on Tuesday August 29 2017, @08:22PM (1 child)
No, you don't get to control someone's hardware just because you are bankrolling a service they use through that hardware. I suppose you can choose to exhort your child into compliance by threatening to end their service if you really wanted to. I can see why the children of such a parent wouldn't trust them enough to install this software on the parent's request.
I disagree, your dorm should not be forcing you to install software. One man's abuse of power does not justify another's abuse of power.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday August 30 2017, @12:43PM
Well, if I didn't want to install the software I could just opt to not use the internet. Perfectly reasonable policy. But as far as I know, nobody ever actually did that, because what would be the point?
Well yeah, when I was a kid I had numerous devices my parents had no control over or even awareness of, but they weren't good for anything other than playing music (Or DOOM if you didn't mind playing that on a one inch screen!). A cellphone is pretty useless without any form of network access, and there's no much reason to take it away from a kid at that point, they can't really cause any trouble with it. I also had a phone at one point that did have service that my parents weren't aware of...got it from a friend (their parents tested consumer electronics for a living so they had literally hundreds of devices and dozens of free service plans...they gave it to her, she gave it to me, they never even knew.) And certainly my parents would have had no right to touch THAT phone...but the phone they eventually gave me and the service plan for it was theirs to do what they wanted with, even after I went to college since they were still paying for it. Of course, those were also subsidized phones, and so ownership of the phone was itself part of the contract they were paying...and also the phones weren't really a gift, they were given with an understanding that I was to use them only for certain purposes and with certain rules in place. If you were to give the kid a fully paid phone as a Christmas gift I *would* probably think that's a bit different.
There's also the "my house, my electricity, my rules" argument. I mean my parents did once revoke my access to my own computer...which seems perfectly reasonable, considering they were housing and powering the thing. They'd have no right to take it away and sell it, because I bought it with my own money...but they can block me from using it while it's in their house, and they can certainly block me from using it on their network. Although the monitor was technically still theirs so they could have taken that too!