Should Your Parents Be Able To Track You Down With Your Cell?
Your cell phone comes in handy when you need to call your friends, text your BFF- or even check your e-mail. But what if it could also serve as a tracking device? A group of researchers equipped 15 teen girls with GPS-ready phones and let them go their way. The idea was to track them for one week and monitor their travel patterns. The point of this study is to see whether the teen's whereabouts affect a teen's likelihood of smoking or sexual activities. The researchers won't fork over the info to the rents -- they only want to know what they're doing and have the option to intervene should they be involved in a dangerous situation. GPS-enabled cell phones "can help us better understand where adolescents spend their time and what they're doing," said Dr. Sarah E. Wiehe, the lead researcher on the study. And in the future, they plan to use cell phones as "diaries" to document the teen's day-to-day life. But what if they used the same technology and offered this service to the parents?
GPS was originally added to cell phones so 911 calls could be tracked. But these days it's not hard for parents to get their hands on a GPS tracking phone and track their kids while they're away from home. For example, Sprint offers this service. For $9.99 a month a parent can track any phone on the family plan and see the exact location (complete with an interactive map, marking the surrounding landmarks) via Internet on the phone.
Interviews
The Ten
Interviews
Guy Guide
