Stephanie Chin and her husband should tag themselves as well. The AirTags (two apiece, as with their child) can be hung from strings worn around their necks or on bands around their waists, under their clothing. Then, the adults could track each other and their child could track each of them.

People increasingly become pets in a surveillance state of covert militarism

Im still confused about how exactly Airtags work, how does the technology actually work?

Basically most mobile Apple devices are enrolled in a network and anytime that an iPhone is near an Airtag, that network relays the location. It is essentially automated crowdsourcing of the location of stuff.

It's a mesh network that relies on beaconing to devices with Bluetooth enabled or more preferably Apple devices that are UWB-capable (U1 chip) which in return gives more precise tag localization. You can track tags from your either phone or tablet; these so far aren't visible on iCloud page IIRC.

I've got one but it seems to be activating only when Apple devices are around

Similar devices exist around - Samsung for example has own line of such tags

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluetooth_Low_Energy_beacon

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AirTag