It’s the rare parent who hasn’t experienced the chill of fear after losing a
child momentarily. Turn your back on them for a moment at the ice-cream stand,
the park or the shopping mall, and they wander off, leaving the parent to
imagine the worst.
But three new technologies may make that anxiety a thing of the past. Taking a
new twist on Global Positioning System, radio and mobile phone technologies,
several companies are marketing sophisticated devices to help parents keep
track of their children. But missing children experts worry that such
technology may create a false sense of security, encouraging parents to ignore
commonsense child-safety precautions.
In June, one such company, Wherify Wireless in Redwood Shores, Calif., will
release a mobile-phone-like device roughly the size of a small wallet that
includes a miniature GPS, which can be tracked remotely by a third party. The
device, named Wherifone, also has five preset dial buttons that allow the
carrier to call specified numbers for help or assistance.
Every year thousands of children go missing for varying lengths of time.
According to the National Crime Information Center's Missing/Unidentified
Person File Report for 2001, the latest year for which statistics are
available, in approximately 750,000 cases (or 2,000 per day) the disappearance
of a child was serious enough that a parent called the police, the police took
a report and the police filed that report with the center.
Japan, long the leader in consumer technologies, is also ahead of the curve on
child security systems. In November 2004, Japanese security systems and
services company Secom and school bag manufacturer Kyowa teamed up to produce
a school bag that contains a GPS terminal that parents can track via the
Internet or by calling a hot line. In April of this year, Secom released a
school uniform outfitted with the same GPS tracking system, in conjunction
with Japanese school uniform manufacturer Ogo-Sangyo Co.
Wherify spokesman John Cunningham does not believe this technology will
prevent all missing cases, but it will help parents keep better tabs on their
children. “What we like to say is that we offer parents piece of mind,” he
said. The product is aimed at parents with pre-teenage children who might buy
them a mobile phone purely for safety purposes. The Wherifone, however, offers
parents the ability to track their kid’s precise location.
Cunningham expects the phone to retail at $150 plus a $20 monthly service fee,
which pays for a certain number of calls and searches each month. It will
initially be available at Wal-Mart stores in Florida, Texas and California.
Using the system is simple. Parents may call their child on the Wherifone
handset like an ordinary phone, but they may also pinpoint their children’s
location by logging onto the GPS system through the Internet or by calling a
hot line. In less than a minute they can locate their children to within 50
feet, although buildings and coverings may obscure readings and make them less
accurate, Cunningham said.
That pinpoint accuracy may be a major factor in determining the success of
technologies like the Wherifone.
“Although the market is potentially significant, this technology is still in
its early stages,” said Clem Driscoll, an analyst who specializes in wireless
location technology. “Before it is widely used, manufacturers will have to
show that it works well, is reliable and easy to use.” Driscoll said he
expected to see many more such products in the next few years.
Also new to the market is a service that allows parents to track their
children’s location through a regular mobile phone. For $19.99 a month plus
normal service fees, Teen Arrive Alive in Bradenton, Fla., monitors customers
not through GPS, but by triangulating the position of the user’s cell phone in
relation to relay towers. Currently, the product is only available in
conjunction with Nextel phones, but by the end of the year other carriers are
expected to join the fray.
SafeTzone Technologies Corp. has pioneered a different approach to child
security. Instead of offering tools to individual parents, SafeTzone outfits
theme parks, malls and ski resorts with radio frequency identification (RFID)
systems that allow groups to keep track of individual members. Guests wear
small waterproof wristbands fitted with radio transmitters that allow family
members to locate one another within a specified area using a map kiosk. The
company has outfitted six locations and has orders for 13 more systems in the
next 18 months. It is negotiating with several cruise ships and sports arenas,
according to Regan Kelly, vice president at SafeTzone.
Such systems may provide a useful tool, says Georgia Hilgeman-Hammond,
director of Vanished Children’s’ Alliance, the oldest missing children's
organization in the United States.
But she worries that parents may be lured into a false sense of complacency.
“No technology can substitute for commonsense and, of course, parental
supervision,” Hilgeman-Hammond said.
E-mail: jl2525@columbia.edu