At what point does GPS tracking become intrusive?
As a primary school child, I was given a Walkman. The younger members of the readership may not remember that it was a portable cassette player. On my bedside table, the Walkman joined the alarm clock, the radio and the torch. And believe it or not, I dreamed that a single device could do everything. In my mind, the device was simply much bigger than today's smartphone - of course, after all, you can't fit a cassette into a device the size of today's mobile phones.
Today we are ready. Smartphones support us in many different tasks. Many apps simplify our lives massively. Navigation apps guide us precisely to our destination. I've also bought the ticket there with my little helper, and by the time I get there I'm watching Netflix, listening to music and/or checking my emails, WhatsApp and Instagram. I'm constantly connected to everyone and everything. For some time now, you've also been able to track each other so that you know where your family members are.
Problematic localisation services
Admittedly, I occasionally check where my wife and children are. Whenever I come home and realise that, contrary to all expectations, I'm alone, I check where the other family members are. Tracking helps me because although my wife has certainly told me where she is going and what the children's programme is, I have forgotten again. After all, the tracking app helps me reliably ...
Unfortunately, tracking services are also misused. I would like to focus less on a lack of trust in a partnership and more on parents' lack of trust in their children. This gives me more food for thought - especially from a professional perspective. Because these are not rumours! It really is true that parents track their children's smartwatches, sew GPS trackers into their clothes or track their phones.
Children who are supervised by their parents do not develop sufficient self-efficacy.
A nursery school teacher recently told me that a mother had called her excitedly because her child had left a zone she had previously set, known as geofencing. And indeed, the nursery school teacher had taken the children to a small wood near the nursery school.
In another case, which was reported to me by a teacher, two first-graders had a fight at school. One child was crying and called his mum on his smartwatch. The mum then wanted to speak to the teacher straight away to make sure everything was OK. The concern for the child is very understandable, but in this case it took on an unhealthy dimension - for those responsible at the school as well as for the parents.
Don't get everything out of the way
Such smart devices permeate our lives. However, the two examples above show excesses that are clearly harmful. Children very quickly realise that their parents are monitoring them. As a result, they do not develop sufficient self-efficacy.
This means that the child can hardly build up positive expectations in the face of challenges and difficulties. The children have little confidence in themselves. Small challenges become insurmountable obstacles. This happens because the parents take responsibility for their own actions away from them.
I don't believe in banning digital devices in schools. Political initiatives to this effect will not bring about any improvement.
However, pupils learn best when they find themselves in a situation of slight overload. If they are less challenged, they do not have to move out of their comfort zone; if they are more challenged, they soon find themselves in the overload or even anxiety zone. It is one of the school's tasks to create settings for children and young people that create precisely this slight overload - a challenging task.
Constructive approaches are required
Even if only a small minority of parents are constantly monitoring their children, this phenomenon is on the rise and a cause for concern. It is time for the consequences of this behaviour to be widely explained. I am not in favour of cantonal bans on smartwatches and smartphones in schools. Such political initiatives do nothing to improve the situation. They are pure election campaign propaganda.
The sensationalist headlines in the media about digital devices and what schools are doing about them are also not a constructive approach to improving the situation. Most schools in Switzerland have rules in the sense of rules on the use of digital devices. They have laid these down in school regulations or in concepts relating to digital education.
How families handle devices is very important and probably more decisive. According to the latest findings, children up to the age of three should be kept away from televisions, smartphones and tablets. From the age of three, it is okay for children to watch a bedtime story on the TV, for example. However, how we parents behave and how we act as role models is crucial.
Practising with the family
During the last summer holidays, my wife and I went on holiday to a remote location with our youngest daughter. We had originally agreed that we would go digital detoxing during these nine days. As soon as we made the arrangements, we made a reservation that this would not apply to the trip, as we had the boarding passes for the flight on our mobile phones and then had to navigate to our destination. We soon made further restrictions, as we also wanted to take photos of our stay and communicate with our two sons, who were somewhere else entirely.
So our resolutions melted away. Nevertheless, we managed to put our smartphones down more often to read or talk to each other. The most interesting conversation revolved around the fact that using our mobile phones and the distraction that comes with it prevents boredom. That really got me thinking.
As a family, we will think about how we can limit our own use of electronic devices so that boredom can return to our everyday lives and give us moments in which we can reflect on our everyday lives, our lives and our dreams.
