Parents weren't GPS tracking their children in the 1990s.

To be fair, GPS tracking may actually make parents feel more comfortable allowing their kids to free roam.

If your parents know where you are with 3m accuracy it isn’t really free roaming.

In other words, being watched or tracked will definitely affect a kids behavior.

If a kid changes behavior because of a parent watching then that kid absolutely needs watching.

It's still free roaming because the kid is 100% in charge of where they will go. That's the part that matters, not that someone can tell where they are.

I think this applies to kids just as well as adults: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilling_effect

But what scares me more is how this trend has the potential to normalize surveillance in general. It's not uncommon to for people to treat their employer or the government as a surrogate parent. So why wouldn't kids raised in a digital surveillance family accept a digital surveillance state?

elf on the shelf is a frighteningly common indoctrination to a life of surveillance

I have the related theory that the whole Santa Clause and Easter Bunny lie thing makes children more likely to believe in conspiracy theories. If all adults, including the weatherman conspire to lie to me for no actual gain, why wouldn't politicians and media personalities conspire to lie to me about the earth being flat or climate change if there is profit or power to be had?

> If all adults, including the weatherman conspire to lie to me for no actual gain

Some adults enjoy playing pretend with kids, and some kids enjoy playing pretend with adults too. I would not characterize it as a no gain situation.

So the learning then is that adults might conspire to make me believe the world is round instead of flat for no reason other than fun?

You do realize there is nothing wrong with theorizing about conspiracies, kind of like theorizing about physics.

You are mixing up propgandists who run with theories as though they are proven fact on bad faith to push agendas without a shred of evidence.

Law enforcement engages in theorizing about conspiracies, intelligence agencies engage in theorizing about conspiracies, almost every country has laws making criminal conspiracy illegal. And there are plenty of conspiracies that turn out to be true, they also tend to be quite banal and human rather than sexy hollywood aliens, global gov conspiracies, etc.

Attacking theorizing with such a broad stroke is attacking critical thinking not disinformation. You can't decide what path of possible truth to persue without theorizing.

If anything santa and the easter bunny are gentle introductions for kids to learn how to tune their BS detection circuit.

Oh c'mon, that's absurd.

Most children learn to distinguish reality from fantasy between the ages of 7 and 10. Conspiracy theories are based on the idea that some sinister entity is hiding some truth about the world, and that only a select few are aware of it. People are not born with this level of cynicism, and if they eventually acquire it, it will be during adolescence or adulthood, once they're already able to distinguish fantasy from reality. This is an entirely separate thought process than the one involved in child fantasies.

While pretend play may not be as crucial to development as previously thought[1], it's still a healthy and fun part of growing up. It increases the familial bond, and gradually prepares children to a less magical world. Let them enjoy it while it lasts.

[1]: https://news.virginia.edu/content/pretend-play-may-not-be-cr...

I lifted an Elf on the Shelf box in a store, and it felt heavy for a stuffed toy. What's in there? Are those things WiFi enabled now?

Most of the one's I've seen also come with a book telling the story, that could easily be that heft.

If you just lifted the box, it might have the book included. Traditionally, they're sold together, though I've seen the book sold on its own.

that’ll be the societal debt.

You are wrong on so many levels for stating this as though many parents are adequate moral arbiters and not often irrational, unreasonable, or overprotective about what they think is okay for their kid to do. A child is not “100% in charge of where they will go” if they have to consider the consequences of or pay a price for doing innocuous things after returning home when they know they are being monitored.

Everybody, especially kids, deserves to have some alone time and actual agency.

Geez what? If a kid greater certain age does not change behaviour with parents watching please see a psychologist with it.

That sounds awfully close to "If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear"

It would more accurately be called unfree roaming.

Okay, so it's supervised roam. Who cares? It's much better than keeping your kids at home and only allowing them out on pre-arranged "play dates", which is the other major alternative.

In much of USA allowing free roam and not repenting and recanting the sin when CPS inevitably called and starts the inquisition will end with them in foster care with the same problems but now broken continuity of care.

GPS tracking does not brainwash kids...

Who said anything in this series of comments about "brainwashing"?

A lot of that cultural change in attitudes can be traced back to the Etan Patz kidnapping case in 1979. That case received widespread, prolonged media attention at the time which made many parents more fearful. He was one of the first missing children to be featured on milk cartons which made it impossible to ignore.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/etan-patz-case-verdict-pedro-he...

It seemed free roaming was still widely accepted in the 90s though? What changed since the 2000s?

The change happened gradually throughout the 90's. People born in the late 80's typically had free-roam experience, while those born in the miid-late 90's did not,

For me personally, the ability to look at the sex offender registry and realize there are 4 registered folks within a mile of my house.

It metastasized. It didn’t decrease. Now kids are barely allowed to go outside on their own

> I think that arc largely peaked in the 1980s and 1990s with stranger danger and the satanic panic nonsense. Helicopter parents and people calling social services on unattended kids was already a meme by the 90s.

It stopped being a meme because the expected level of parental supervision of children got much higher and it went from being perceived as a thing that only weird people to what is required of parents in most places.

Calling social services on unattended kids isn't something that makes the news as much simply because almost all parents agree that children should never be left unattended until they are old enough to have a driver's license now and there aren't any unattended children to have social services called on them

Yet if you attend to a child as anything but a stereotypical mom look you'll have the police called and men with guns roll up and scare your child and detain them because it's "suspicious" as happened to me as a racially mixed dad-family at the park with my kid. Accused of kidnapping and held for a good hour.

You literally cannot win.