New parenting trend? Over-protective dad tracks daughter with a drone

Drones are quickly becoming commonplace in all kinds of spaces, the military, retail, entertainment. But what about parenting? Well, an over-protective dad in the States has made global headlines today because he revealed he tracks his daughter’s movements to and from school with a drone.

According to The Mirror today, Chris Early from Knoxville, Tennessee, was a bit uneasy about his eight year old daughter walking to school on her own. His answer? Follow her by drone, of course!

Early told ABC News in the US:

“The drone flight following my daughter [to] school was a one-time thing done for fun […] It was never meant to set off a debate about how to parent in the 21st century […] We actually live very close to her school [and] I can just about see the school from my front porch without a drone.”

Unsurprisingly the news has sparked a huge debate about Early’s oh-so-2015 parenting style and many have criticised his actions, despite his daughter admitting live on TV that she thinks the idea is “cool”. So go figure.

Now admittedly Early does run a video production company, so it’s not as if he went to buy the drone purely to spy on his kid. Either way, the story may have garnered a load of fairly light-hearted media attention across the globe today, but it does raise some important questions about the future of surveillance tech and a lot of ethical concerns about how, where and why we should be using drones – whether we’re talking about heavy-handed tactics from the armed forces or OTT parenting styles.

Do you think it’s OK to keep an eye on kids with drones? Let us know what you think about this kind of surveillance tech in the comments below. 

Image via Flickr CC.