Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mangpages/ / CC BY 2.0

Most parents are willing to go through extremes to protect and closely monitor their children. It’s perfectly understandable. As a parent myself, I want to ensure my child’s safety, no matter how deep or how far I have to go to do it, even if it means getting a payday loan. But how far will some parents go in terms of ‘closely monitoring’ their children? Will some invest in the new Little Buddy Child Tracker for a more intense scrutiny?

What is a Little Buddy Child Tracker?

The Little Buddy Child Tracker from the Best Buy house brand, Insignia,  is a GPS tracking device that allows parents to know where their children are and notifies them if their children takes off from where they’re suppose to be. In other words, it’s the perfect way to pose as an undercover detective and stalk your children. It’s almost like getting a payday loan with your payday loan lender closely monitoring your every spending. It sounds a bit creepy if you ask me.

Little Buddy Child Tracker – Is it a good investment?

Don’t get me wrong, the Little Buddy GPS seems like a pretty cool tracking device. I like the fact that you can easily find out where your child is using a smartphone or computer. However, there’s a huge problem I see with this.

First off, I just want to make sure you understand that children are not stupid. They’re a lot smarter than some people give them credit. They can figure out some of the craziest things you could ever imagine. So here’s the deal: how do you think your child will react upon discovering this tracking device hidden somewhere in their backpack? Will you lie to them or profess the truth that you’ve been secretly tracking their every move for the past several months?

Engadget, an award-winning multilingual technology weblog, brings out a very good point:

With a name like “Little Buddy Child Tracker,” you know this thing has to be awful, right? Insignia, Best Buy’s house brand, has just listed an incredibly invasive and humiliating new GPS tracker on its site, and rather than promoting it as just that, the marketing brains have decided it best to aim this at paranoid mums and dads who’ve done such a poor job raising their offspring that they can’t even trust ‘em to trek out on their own… Just make sure they don’t ever know that you were responsible for planting this thing on their person, else you can forget about junior footing those nursing home bills when the time comes.

I believe children should be raised in good faith and trust. Mutual trust in a family becomes evident when its members, particularly parents, make every effort to pave a clean path of respect and good communication within the household. When you constantly practice and teach your children good morals and the value of responsibility, you’re not only preparing them for their future; you’re building trust. Trust them like you want them to trust you. Be open and share your thoughts and feelings with your child. In return, they will do the same. In my opinion, using the Little Buddy Child Tracker will only prove the opposite in the long run. But hey, that’s just my opinion.

Let’s Talk Budget

Just to give you a heads up, you can get a Little Buddy Child Tracker device for $100. Keep in mind, however, that there likely may be a monthly subscription fee. So if you want to avoid the probable need of a payday loan, you might want to direct some of that ‘tracking’ attention towards your budget and, if necessary, make changes to your finances and analyze your priorities.

Little Buddy Child Tracker can send alerts to smartphones if children aren't where they are supposed to be. Image from Flickr.

The most recent child abduction case to go national was the sad story of Somer Thompson, a 7-year-old Florida girl who was missing for days before detectives found her body in a landfill. No doubt this case will convince many parents that the Little Buddy Child Tracker is a good investment.

The Little Buddy Child Tracker is just what it sounds like. It “combines global satellite positioning and cellular technology to signal the child’s whereabouts to a computer or smartphone,” says Sun-Times Media.  The benefits of this device are obvious, but this particular child tracker has an additional advantage: It’s a lot less expensive than previous devices of the same type.

How much does Little Buddy GPS cost?

Most GPS devices so far have retailed for $200 to $500. The Little Buddy Child Tracker is cheap by comparison; it retails at Best Buy for about $100. Granted, many families don’t have $100 per kid just lying around, but maybe grandma or another relative would be willing to put up a cash loan to help keep the kids safe.

Of course, there are a lot of arguments against the Little Buddy Child Tracker. Sun-Times Media reports that “the device immediately drew angry writeups from some techies, who called it a reason for children to run away from home.” And, of course, for children of a certain age, people are arguing that Little Buddy Child Tracker is an invasion of privacy.

Focusing on what’s important

I don’t think any of the arguments against Little Buddy Child Tracker can trump this: It might save a child’s life. Granted, it might not. Sure, abductors will find out about these GPS devices; they’ll check for them and ditch them if they really want to carry out an abduction. But what if they don’t? And there’s no arguing that it would eliminate the problem of a child getting lost.

I think all of the minor problems people have with Little Buddy Child Tracker are no match for a kid’s life. I am sure there are not any parents out there who don’t believe that even the minor possibility of saving their their child’s life is worth $100. Of course, I’m not a parent. Does anyone else out there have other arguments for why parents should not use Little Buddy Child Tracker?