Technology is making teenagers' lives miserable

Crashed car
Monitoring your kids' every move might stop this happening but at what cost?

CES has barely begun and we're depressed already: the good people at Blackline GPS are showing off their Young Drivers Report Card, a GPS-based monitoring system that ensures you'll never have to trust your teenager again.

According to the blurb, you can "monitor average speed, amount of time driven, excessive speeding, curfews and more with the report card linked to a personalised key fob", and the system can "issue reports on driving history as well as monitor the location of your young drivers".

The angle is, of course, safety - although if your teenager is driving your Nissan Micra off a cliff while off his or her face on horse tranquilisers, we're not entirely sure what the GPS is going to do to stop it - but it's a sign of how tech is changing the balance between parents and teenagers.

When we were in our teens the deal was pretty simple. We were innocent until proven guilty, not because our parents were particularly tolerant people but because they weren't superheroes. They knew they couldn't stop us from doing dumb things or even things they didn't fully approve of, so they tried their best: they'd try and knock some sense into our thick heads, and they'd pick up the pieces when we ignored their advice and made a complete mess of things.

Everything is monitored

With today's tech, though, they can be superheroes. Parental controls are in everything. They're in your Sky box, in your games console. They're in Windows 7 and Snow Leopard. If they want to, your folks can even prevent you from doing anything vaguely interesting or useful on your iPhone in case you might see a word such as "tits". And now they're in your car.

Isn't that awful?

We suspect there are probably three kinds of parents: the ones who go parental control crazy, sticking GPS modules into anything that moves and programming the Xbox to make damned sure their little angel doesn't get to play Left 4 Dead one second before their eighteenth birthday; the ones who don't use parental controls or GPS at all, preferring to treat their kids like adults and hope they respond in kind; and the ones who don't do anything because they don't care.

There's not much hope for the kids of the latter group, but we're not convinced things are so great for the kids of the first group, either.

What does it say about your parents' belief in your abilities, about their trust in your judgement, that they feel the only way it's safe to let you outside is to tag you like a criminal?

Mark our words, it's going to backfire. If your message to your kids is that they can't be trusted, they'll live up to your low expectations. As soon as your kids realise they're being watched, they'll start messing with you.

The GPS will show the car parked outside something wholesome, such as a church or worthy youth group, while your pride and joy's dressed as Hitler, going sideways into an orphanage in a hot-wired police car.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Liked this? Then check out Young people don't care about their online image

Sign up for TechRadar's free Weird Week in Tech newsletter
Get the oddest tech stories of the week, plus the most popular news and reviews delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up at http://www.techradar.com/register

Follow TechRadar on Twitter

Carrie Marshall
Contributor

Writer, broadcaster, musician and kitchen gadget obsessive Carrie Marshall has been writing about tech since 1998, contributing sage advice and odd opinions to all kinds of magazines and websites as well as writing more than a dozen books. Her memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, is on sale now and her next book, about pop music, is out in 2025. She is the singer in Glaswegian rock band Unquiet Mind.

Latest in Tech
Josie and Matt laughing in front of the Google Pixel 9a
TechRadar Podcast: Is the Pixel 9a ugly? Has Apple ruined the smartwatch market? And is Samsung's One UI in trouble?
A Lego Pikachu tail next to a Pebble OS watch and a screenshot of Assassin's Creed Shadow
ICYMI: the week's 7 biggest tech stories from LG's excellent new OLED TV to our Assassin's Creed Shadow review
A triptych image of the Meridian Ellipse, LG C5 and Xiaomi 15.
5 amazing tech reviews of the week: LG's latest OLED TV is the best you can buy and Xiaomi's seriously powerful new phone
Beats Studio Pro Wireless Noise Cancelling Headphones in Black and Gold on yellow background with big savings text
The best Beats headphones you can buy drop to $169.99 at Best Buy's Tech Fest sale
Ray-Ban smart glasses with the Cpperni logo, an LED array, and a MacBook Air with M4 next to ecah other.
ICYMI: the week's 7 biggest tech stories from Twitter's massive outage to iRobot's impressive new Roombas
A triptych image featuring the Sennheiser HD 505, Apple iPad Air 11-inch (2025), and Apple MacBook Air 15-inch (M4).
5 unmissable tech reviews of the week: why the MacBook Air (M4) should be your next laptop and the best sounding OLED TV ever
Latest in News
EA Sports F1 25 promotional image featuring drivers Oscar Piastri, Carlos Sainz and Oliver Bearman.
F1 25 has been officially announced, with this year's entry marking a return for Braking Point and a 'significant overhaul' for My Team mode
Garmin clippd integration
Garmin's golf watches just got a big software integration upgrade to help you improve your game
Robert Downey Jr reveals himself as Doctor Doom to a delighted crowd at San Diego Comic-Con 2024
Marvel is currently making a major announcement about Avengers: Doomsday's cast on YouTube, and I think it's going to be a long-winded reveal
Samsung QN90F on yellow background
Samsung announces US prices for its 2025 mini-LED TV lineup, and it’s good and bad news
Nintendo Switch Lite
Forget the Nintendo Switch 2, the original Switch is getting one last hurrah in a surprise Nintendo Direct tomorrow
The Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge on display the January 22, 2025 Galaxy Unpacked event.
Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge colors seemingly revealed in new video, and there’s another sign of an imminent launch