Trend: Teen-tracking resources

New mobile features and gadgets let parents know where their children are, how they drive and what they do.

Trend Description:
Devices such as Alltrack USA’s DriveRight Car Chip allow parents to monitor their children while driving. The Car Chip records driving speeds, hard accelerations and the location of the car. It also allows parents to interact. The Alltrack is probably the most advanced monitoring device, but other companies are starting to develop tracking features for their customers. Mobile phone service providers seem to be especially interested in attracting parents with chaperone features, which allow monitoring the whereabouts of their kids, who they call, and when they make phone calls. Parents can also lock their kid’s cell phone for certain numbers, days or hours of the day.

Cases:

Alltrack USA
Alltrack USA allows real time GPS tracking via internet or telephone. Parents receive notifications via cell phone, e-mail, PDA or pager when children arrive at school, at home or when they speed. With a click on the mouse or a telephone parents can also remotely control some car features, such as unlock the doors, disable the starter, honk the horn or turn on a light on the dashboard, telling their children to come home now. Most remote control features can be easily installed in any car and contain just two wires! Some more complicated features, like unlocking the doors, can be installed by any shop that installs car alarms.

Verizon Wireless Chaperone and Sprint Family Locator
With the Verizon Wireless Chaperone parents can locate the phones of any family member, either from their handset or their PC. Parents also get notified when the family phone’s user leaves the “Child Zone”, a designated user-defined geographic area, such as school, home, or soccer practice. The Verizon website also provides parents with videos and information to teach their children why it is important to stay in touch. The Access to the Chaperone with Child zone costs $19.99 per month. Sprint has a similar feature with the Family locator which costs $9.99 per month.

Disney Mobile Family Center
With Disney’s Mobile Family Center, parents can designate the days and the time of the day kids can use their phones. Parents can also set a list of restricted numbers and set an allowance for the number of minutes the kids are allowed to use. Of course parents also receive notifications when limits are reached. With the family locator, parents can track their kids cell phones via GPS. Disney Mobile Family Center is included in Disney’s mobile phone service.

MapQuest Find Me
MapQuest’s Find Me is not especially designed for parents, but works as well as the other family locators. For $3.99 a month users of selected Sprint, Nextel and Boost phones can use their cell’s GPS to find points of interest, get directions and find other Find Me users.

Trend Impact:
Parents worry. They want to know where their kids are, what they are doing, when they come home. With the new tracking and monitoring devices they might have to worry less. As teenage drivers have the highest crash risk, the car-monitoring device definitely hits a nerve. But we will probably see more features in the future, starting with Disney’s family center, which allows parents to lock their kid’s phone for certain numbers or hours of the day. The question is how much this all will really help if the parents could not develop a trustworthy partnership with their kids in the first place. Therefore Verizon’s parenting and communication tips and videos might be a resource which is as helpful as a GPS locator.

Links
Alltrack USA

Verizon Wireless Chaperone

Sprint Family Locator

Disney Mobile Family Center

MapQuest Find Me

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