Smart Bracelets or Electronic Tags?

Reading an article on Slashgear about a new creation from Continuum Studio I couldn’t help but wonder what similarities their new ‘Smart Bracelet’ has to a criminal electronic tag.

The principle is exactly the same. You put a bracelet on your child and you wear the master which alerts you when they have moved outside a certain radius that you set. It then shows you exactly how far away they are and in which direction. Now I am all for children’s safety and this sounds like a brilliant invention that I’m sure will do well with concerned parents who want to let their children play but also want to know where they are but I just can’t shake this image of a child in a prison outfit running around with a bleeping tag on their leg.

What happens when the child learns that they can just put the bracelet on their dog ’spot’ and let him run around outside the perimeter fence driving their parents mad thinking they’ve lost their child. “They should be right in front of me!” … leading to

“Oh my god the dog has eaten the children!”. It also reminds me of when you lose your phone and have to press the page button on your base station at home so the handset beeps allowing you to find it. Could this work with the prison children? I can just imagine concerned parents pressing a button and a loud noise goes off in the distance with their child trying to cover it up because if anyone hears it they are sure to get teased for being so cool (Sarcasm implied).

The trouble is, where do you draw the line? At what age to you stop wearing it? As everybody knows, parents never stop worrying about where they’re children are and if they’re safe. Should I be wearing one? Should everyone? What about when my parents get too old to look after themselves, does the system come full circle and I start to tag my parents in case they wander off unaccompanied?

Its all very ‘Logan’s Run’…