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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: 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!