Crime-Fighting iPhone Apps Create a Culture of Fear
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There's a CNN article today about increasingly popular iPhone apps that track sex offenders and other convicts. The story starts off with Tracy Rodriguez, a mother in Houston, who uses her iPhone to get "information revealing the sex offenders who live within a 10-mile radius of where her children practice sports or watch movies." Apparently this mom feels that the app makes her make more informed choices, and she checks it several times daily. I thought this was just a punch line in the movie Knocked Up, not an actual trend.
Does this strike anyone else as absurd? It's good to be concerned about the health and well-being of your children, but restricting your movements, hour by hour, based on an exaggerated perceived threat, sounds like a personal prison. It also sounds like a terrible lesson for kids. These apps will teach them to be afraid all the time. What's more, there are the privacy issues implicit in this sort of thing, since,as the article points out, the public records the app is based on could be out of date or incorrect. But Rodriquez is not alone in her fear, as the Offender Locator app has been downloaded more than a million times.
Jessica Grose is the managing editor of Double X and the co-author of Love, Mom: Poignant, Goofy, Brilliant Messages from Home. Click here to follow her on Twitter.
Comments
a lot of business realized
By: malbein | Fri, 11/27/2009 - 11:15
a lot of business realized that there were a lot of opportunities to outsource iphone development services and create the application that can generate positive cash flow
Under inclusive
By: midwest-web-mistress | Thu, 10/01/2009 - 13:00
You know, not only is the list over-inclusive (teens who slept with their teen girlfriends) but it is under-inclusive. Just think of all the child molesters who have never been convicted!
Plus, you're more likely to be sexually abused by a relative or family friend than a stranger.
I think these lists give parents a false sense of security. Just because someone isn't on the list doesn't mean they are OK.
Sex Offender Lists
By: Xando | Wed, 09/30/2009 - 17:24
The Sex Offender Lists are essentially meaningless to a parent. Unless your child's Boy Scout troop leader or teacher appears on them, the sex offender lists contain almost no one that is any threat whatsoever to your child.
Re: Children not talking to strangers
By: WSLers | Wed, 09/30/2009 - 11:47
I read and hear this all the time, and always have the following thought: ok, fine, but that means children should never talk to the police because the police are strangers, right?
This is where we are
By: geml | Wed, 09/30/2009 - 11:31
As the mother of a now-teenager in the DC suburbs, I can tell you on good authority that many of the parents I know have either sent me or verbally keep me updated on the sex offender lists. I've lived in two different neighborhoods, and it's come up (multiple times) in both, so it's obviously part of the culture. Perhaps not as strongly as the novel LITTLE CHILDREN or this article would lead us to believe, but it's there.
But as long as parenting is all about being "better safe than sorry" that's where we are. Until parents start to realize that there is no perfect way to parent, that's where we are. Until parents realize that parenting isn't a competitive sport (and obviously you get points for checking the list) then this is where we are.
I agree, it's insane
By: Kit-Kat | Wed, 09/30/2009 - 11:08
Sex offender lists are notoriously over-inclusive; your kids aren't really at risk from the guy who slept with his underage girlfriend. You're really getting too much information and not enough at the same time. Plus, the quality of the information is suspect because the lists aren't always accurate.
What you should be teaching your kids is street smarts: not talking to or accepting gifts from strangers, never getting into a stranger's car or going into a stranger's house, trusting their instincts, what to do if they feel threatened, etc. Teaching them that the world is a terrifying place chock-full of awful people who want to hurt them, and that one should be a slave to one's fears and anxieties, is not productive in any way.