Holy shit what happened to "have fun, just be back by dinner time"? I'm not that far from my teenage years so the fact that this is already happening to today's teens is a bit terrifying to me. We had cellphones back then and I had an early smartphone (Nokia N95 - anyone remember those?) when at least half my school didn't even have a brickphone, so the capability was there. Bot neither my parents nor the parents of any of my peers ever used it, even later when all of us had proper smartphones with parental control options only a few clicks away.

So what happened? Crime rates are down, kinds these days do drugs and drink at lower rates than back then, I can't remember the last time I heard of a kid go missing... We now have many privacy-preserving options for emergency tracking so there's less of a reason for total control than ever. Even monitoring Internet usage - there are fewer "predators" out there and kids are better at recognising and avoiding them than ever. I don't get it.