Back when I was a teenager my parents had a simple rule – I had to be home by midnight. There was a doozie of an exception, though. If I was drinking they didn’t want me to drive, so all I had to do was call home, tell them I was drinking and I could stay over at a friend’s house.
You can imagine that my parents pretty much thought I was an alcoholic in high school since twice a week like clockwork I called home at 11:45 pm to let them know I was too drunk to drive home and would be staying the night at wherever. Most of the time I wasn’t actually drinking, but who wants to go home at midnight? One time I remember calling home from Las Vegas (a four hour drive from Huntington Beach where I lived) to let them know I had had a couple of beers and would be staying at my friend John’s house down the street until morning (oh, right, like there’s anything you can do about it now, Mom).
Today things are different, though. And seeing iPhone apps like iCurfew just makes me shudder. Kids are still going to stay out late and not tell their parents what they’re up to. They just have to get way more creative about it, I guess. Because iCurfew tells your parents exactly where you’ve been and where you are now. You can send messages back and forth along with a handy Google map showing where the little troublemaker is right at that moment (probably outside a 7-11, trying to get someone to buy them beer).
Any kid worth his salt will try to figure out a way around this. My thought is to pay off someone to hold onto your phone and hang out at the movie theater messaging nice things to your parents while you are off doing God knows what. But I’m sure some enterprising young hacker to be can come up with a much more elegant solution.
But they better hurry, because adding a breathalyzer to this thing is probably next.
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