Risky teen behavior may not occur at home or school: but how to track?

Indiana University ^ | Unknown

[decimon]

INDIANAPOLIS – How can researchers track where teens go when not in or near home or school to see if this movement has an impact on health-related behavior such as smoking or sexual activity" The answer is through that ubiquitous teen accessory – the cell phone.

In a paper published in the April issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health researchers from Indiana University School of Medicine report on a pilot study which evaluated the feasibility of using global position system -enabled cell phones to track where 14- to 16-year-old girls spent their time.

“We didn’t know if the technology would work, if the kids would take the cell phones with them or would leave them at home. But they did carry the phones and the GPS data revealed that they were spending more time away from home, school and surrounding areas than anticipated. Learning that we were able to track their movement is important because previous studies which have looked at the effect of environment on teens have focused only on home, school and surrounding areas,” said Sarah Wiehe, M.D., M.P.H., an assistant professor of pediatrics at the IU School of Medicine and a Regenstrief Institute affiliated scientist.

“A person’s environment in some way influences or is at least associated with their health and health outcomes and in the case of adolescents their health behaviors. But we don’t have a great idea of why that association exists. What in the environment is contributing to behavior choices such as drug use" When tracked with GPS we know where the teens are and when they are there but we don’t know what they are doing. Now that we know that the technology works, that the girls took their phones with them, we need to learn the characteristics of the environments in which they find themselves,” she added.

This pilot study of the feasibility of GPS tracking to discern teen travel patterns was supported by the IU School of Medicine’s General Clinical Research Center’s Health Outcomes and Research Feasibility Fund. Based on the success of the initial project, the researchers have received funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to enroll 160 urban teenage girls in a study to track their movements in spring, summer, fall and winter (to account for seasonal variations). They hope to learn much more about how teenage girls interact with their many environments in ways that impact health.

“We are at the tip of the iceberg seeing where and how teens spend time. As a doctor charged with keeping kids healthy, I am hoping our studies will result in interventions, perhaps something as simple as text messages encouraging healthy behavior or something we haven’t even thought of yet, that will encourage good choices,” said Dr. Wiehe, who is a pediatrician with the Wishard Health System.

###

In addition to Dr. Wiehe, authors of the study are Shawn C. Hoch, M.S. and Jeffery S. Wilson, Ph.D. of the Department of Geography, School of Liberal Arts, Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis; Gilbert C. Liu, M.D., M.S. and Aaron E. Carroll, M.D., M.S. of the IU School of Medicine and the Regenstrief Institute; and J. Dennis Fortenberry, M.D., M.S. of the IU School of Medicine.

[decimon]

“We are at the tip of the iceberg seeing where and how teens spend time. As a doctor charged with keeping kids healthy, I am hoping our studies will result in interventions, perhaps something as simple as text messages encouraging healthy behavior or something we haven’t even thought of yet, that will encourage good choices,” said Dr. Wiehe...

Dr. Wiehe is surely well-intentioned but she's something of a creep.

[Sax]

Police Charge Teen In $24K In Damage To Soccer Field [OnStar GPS]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1990483/posts

[Resolute Conservative]

Let me paraphrase - Raise them right in the ways of the Lord and they shall not stray from that path.

I found it to work most of the time.

[Some Fat Guy in L.A.]

Yoy. I could save the good Dr. the trouble - I can tell you where my 14 year old daughter is at any given moment - because I actually parent and pay attention. And she doesn’t have a cell phone to track, so that wouldn’t work anyway.

[DBrow]

Just like putting a radio collar on a wild animal. Next we’ll dart them and take samples to check for dope and STDs. Good job for Scott Ritter, tracking 16 year old girls.

Text messages urging healthy behavior?

The instructress had called them to attention again. ’And now let’s see
which of us can touch our toes!’ she said enthusiastically. ’Right over from the
hips, please, comrades. One-two! One-two! ...’
Winston loathed this exercise, which sent shooting pains all the way from
his heels to his buttocks and often ended by bringing on another coughing fit.
The half-pleasant quality went out of his meditations. The past, he reflected,
had not merely been altered, it had been actually destroyed. For how could
you establish even the most obvious fact when there existed no record outside
your own memory? He tried to remember in what year he had first heard
mention of Big Brother. He thought it must have been at some time in the
sixties, but it was impossible to be certain. In the Party histories, of course,
Big Brother figured as the leader and guardian of the Revolution since its very
earliest days. His exploits had been gradually pushed backwards in time until already they extended into the fabulous world of the forties and the thirties,
when the capitalists in their strange cylindrical hats still rode through the streets
of London in great gleaming motor-cars or horse carriages with glass sides.
There was no knowing how much of this legend was true and how much invented.
Winston could not even remember at what date the Party itself had come into
existence. He did not believe he had ever heard the word Ingsoc before 1960,
but it was possible that in its Oldspeak form-’English Socialism’, that is to say
— it had been current earlier. Everything melted into mist. Sometimes, indeed,
you could put your finger on a definite lie. It was not true, for example, as was
claimed in the Party history books, that the Party had invented aeroplanes.
He remembered aeroplanes since his earliest childhood. But you could prove
nothing. There was never any evidence. Just once in his whole life he had held
in his hands unmistakable documentary proof of the falsification of an historical
fact. And on that occasion
’Smith!’ screamed the shrewish voice from the telescreen. ’6079 Smith W.!
Yes, you! Bend lower, please! You can do better than that. You’re not trying.
Lower, please! That’s better, comrade. Now stand at ease, the whole squad,
and watch me.’

[MrB]

Oh, but that takes time away from a “fulfilling career” and “American Idol”.

Better to have society raise the kids so that I have more free time to be irresponsible and indulge myself.

[longtermmemmory]

Disney (yes that disney) ALREADY has a Child GPS tracking phone service. You buy the disney branded phone and one of the available services is a mapping of where the phone goes.

Of course there are a HOST of GPS tracking bracelets for children.

http://www.directionsmag.com/companies/Extremtrac_GPS/products/GPS%5DGPRS_bracelet_tracking_watch/ GPS/GPRS bracelet tracking watch

Overview

The ET1000 is a GPS / GPRS bracelet tracking device, A smallest GPS tracking device which can be carried on wrist, it is an elegant design for child, climbing, skiing, outdoor adventure, elderly care, patients who need urgent helps, it can also be used for pet tracking, asset and equipment tracking. Advantages: 1. Report GPS position to the web server, together with time, speed, alert message, etc. 2. Support to work with web software by GPRS or with stand alone PC software by SMS communication. 3. Special red button for emergent help report. 4. Voice monitoring, users can dial in to listen the surrounding voice status around the unit. Dial out buttons. 5. Self-contained (built-in antenna and battery, weigh 85g), easy to carry. 6. Low consumption, a long standby of 3-15 days (depend on working mode). 7. Geofence: Send geofence alert report when the unit is in or out of pre-defined geofencing area. 8. Record and report the last location when the unit is without signal. 9. Covert alert; Able to communicate with a fixed number. 10. Auto-start the sleeping mode when the unit has no movement for a certain period. 11. Power and signal indicator. Parameters: 1. GPS chip: SIRF III 2. Channel: 20 3. Sensitivity: -159dBm 4. Precision: 5m 5. Acquisition time: Cold: 35s / Hot: 1s / Repetition: 0.1s 6. Charger: Car Charger: Input-12V, output-5V; Wall Charger: Input-110 to 220V, output-5V 7. Chargeable / Changeable 3.7v 1200mAh Li battery.






Many of these are used by neurotic mothers in child custody cases after the judge denies supervised visitation because the mother thinks “he is going to steal MY child”.

First time I saw this concept was in the courthouse on some tiny kids wrist and it looked like a medical device. The other lawyers and I were wondering what was wrong with the child until the balif stationed outside the chambers let us know it was part of a nasty divorce in the neihboring judges chambers.

[mtbopfuyn]

Any parent worth their salt knows where, with whom, and what their kids are doing.

[Hegemony Cricket]

Exactly right.

[DieHard the Hunter]

> Any parent worth their salt knows where, with whom, and what their kids are doing.

Yup.

And any kid with half an imagination would find many creative ways to thwart Mom and Dad spying on them via their cellphone.

Want to know where your kids are and what they are doing? If you raise them right you can always talk to them, and they will always tell you. And sometimes they will even be proactive about it.

[decimon]

Where do you folk see this going? Parental control? As in the Orwell reference, to state control and most likely through the schools?

[devane617]

...not all the time, though...The wildest kids I know, and knew, are preachers kids. A good friend who diffently brought up his kids in a great enviorn is now facing drugs, and much trouble.

[Dianna]

I think the best way to influence kids to become conservative is for the nanny state to send them preachy text messages.

Not only do they get that nonsense at school, now it's following them around. I love it!

Of course, it was my kid who told teachers he wasn't signing an abstinence pledge. He told them his sexual activity or lack their of was absolutely none of their business.

[devane617]

we humans must experience. no amount of ‘passing on experience’ will work. preaching ‘right and wrong’ has limited impact. the best lesson is: be crazy if you must, but don’t be stupid.

[jennyjenny]

Yup. And any kid with half an imagination would find many creative ways to thwart Mom and Dad spying on them via their cellphone. Want to know where your kids are and what they are doing? If you raise them right you can always talk to them, and they will always tell you. And sometimes they will even be proactive about it.

Yeah, and when that doesn't work, sometimes you have to follow them, go inside and yank them out by their earlobe in front of their peers.

[DieHard the Hunter]

> Yeah, and when that doesn’t work, sometimes you have to follow them, go inside and yank them out by their earlobe in front of their peers.

(big grin!) being frog-marched by Mom in front of one’s peers can have a salutory — almost Christianizing — effect on errant adolescents, to be sure!

[DBrow]

I like to extrapolate, sometimes to extremes. I don't think a liberal government would allow parents to have more control over kids, when the parents are not trained for it as school administrators and teachers are.

Schools are much like prisons now, physically (the newer ones have big roll-down steel doors to isolate sections of the building for “security”), and they have lockdowns for various “safety” reasons, just like prisons.

Kids are required to do “community service” just like parolees and those criminals not sent to jail.

So why not mandatory tracking bracelets or collars or ankle wrapped units, just like criminals?

You'd know right where the kid (and later adult) was all the time so government could keep them safe.

Like the second “Aliens”, they found all the colonists down in the air processing plant because that all, every one, had tracking beacons.

How can government keep you safe and healthy if they don't know where you are, who you are with, what you are doing, and what you are eating? You may also be engaging in risky speech, listening to risky speech, or possibly even be exposed to hate speech!