Tracking teenagers

[glittergrrl]

Am I the only person not doing this or to find this really odd ?

Get over yourselves with your wow just wowing and fed flag waving.

It's a handy app, not the equivalent of CIA surveillance.

@100problems

Get over yourselves with your wow just wowing and fed flag waving.

It's a handy app, not the equivalent of CIA surveillance.

Hmmmm

Never agree to being tracked by your partner or family. Ever.

Depends on the age of the teenager! I’m definitely going to be tracking my 13 yo - if something’s gone wrong on her way home, I will know sooner which could buy vital time.

I wouldn’t track an older teenager, say 16, as that does feel wrong (not sure exactly where I’d draw the line but it’s somewhere between now and 16!)

I think it’s a very unhealthy thing to do.

I mean tracking other adults.

Googling ‘is tracking good for teenagers’ brings up many articles
One from the BBC for example

Livingstone worries that there are simply too many unknowns around what tracking apps are doing to children and their development to recommend their use. “We just don't know what it will be like for this generation of children to grow up in a world in which they’ve always been watched, always been tracked and never got lost and had to recover themselves,” she says. “I really do respect parents’ anxiety that leads them to think this could be a solution, and I really invite them to find a different one.

My daughter was spiked at a nightclub (she was 19) the only way her friends knew she was in hospital was because they are all on a tracking app. Since then she's added me to it so she can see where I am and I can see where she is.
I rarely look at it unless I know she's been on a night out (she's at Uni) if I wake up during the night I check she's got home.
I'm also an estate agent so if I'm doing a viewing out of hours I let her know just in case I get murdered 😁 she can see where I last was.
Both of us have the option to log out.

I suppose it depends on your family circumstances. All the family have it on their phones, but only look at it once in a blue moon.

We first used it for when DD was transported to fixtures and competitions by her school and club. It saved a lot of hanging about on parents' part.

If DH is away and had a long journey home it was useful to see whether it is worth waiting to eat as a family or leave him to fend for himself.

I track my DH, my mum and my sister. When they're older, I will probably track my kids too.

I don't actively "track" them. I look where they are if I am thinking of calling them. If I'm calling for a chat, I don't do it while my mum is in Tesco! I can see if my sister is at work or at home, and not call if she's at work.

I started tracking DH because I was at home on Maternity Leave with two tiny babies and wanted to know when my DH would likely be home (loooong commute). He was totally rubbish at remembering to drop me a text when he got on the train, so HE suggested tracking instead, so I could see when he'd likely be home.

None of us see it as an invasion of privacy at all. If I felt "watched" then I'd turn it off.

@Madcats

I suppose it depends on your family circumstances. All the family have it on their phones, but only look at it once in a blue moon.

We first used it for when DD was transported to fixtures and competitions by her school and club. It saved a lot of hanging about on parents' part.

If DH is away and had a long journey home it was useful to see whether it is worth waiting to eat as a family or leave him to fend for himself.

Yes, my teens travel across London to various fixtures, sometimes with several changes of train/busbon the way, so it's useful to see where they are on their journey and that they've arrived safely. I don't need to remind them to tell me they've got there safely (which they would find very annoying). Also, they have left phones on buses in the past - you can see where they are and meet the bus on its return journey to pick it up.

I don’t understand the hysteria about it being an invasion of privacy. If you feel that your partner is controlling because they want to track you then the tracking is not your problem, the relationship is doomed.The partner still be controlling or obsessive without the tracking.

In a place where all the people involved consent to being tracked then I don’t see what the issue is.
My children are young so I’ve not had to deal with that but we started using the tracking app when MIL asked us to use it to check on her. She is a community nurse and lives abroad, in a country where the gun laws are relaxed, etc, she goes to lots of people’s homes and sometimes to places she’s never been to, she felt ‘safe’ because we agreed to keep the app to check her if we’ve not heard from her. Since then, myself and dh have added ourselves to. Since wfh, I’ve not had any need to check him on it but if he starts travelling again for work, I’ll check if he’s not yet home and I just want to see if he’s driving. He picks up for one of our kids after her activity on his way from work and he used to tell me to check 30 mins to pick up time so I’ll know if he’ll be there in time or I pick up myself because then, I’ll have to postpone bedtime for the younger child, etc. I’m definitely not interested in where he has been.
If my child is older, I’ll ask her and hopefully she’ll be happy to have the app too. As a teenager, I never had to sneak out with friends, etc I told my parents or siblings where I was going after school. I hope my child will be that way and they’ll know that the tracker is not to limit them but to hopefully allow them the freedom they need sensibly

I grew up in the days before technological tracking was possible. This did not stop my parents.
I'd be out with friends, minding my own business and spot my Fathers car slowly drive past. One night I was meeting a friend and was aware I was being followed. I was quite scared at the time and managed to pop behind a wall out of sight. Imagine my surprise when my Dad turned the corner.

That was two incidents I recall but there were many, all at the behest of my Mum who desperately needed to know where I was, what I was doing and who I was with. This started at around 14 and continued to 17, at which point I walked out and didn't return for two years. I was effectively stalked by my own parents.

It took years to repair the relationship, and it's exactly why I never tracked my own teens past the point of 'where you off to?'.

I don’t understand the hysteria about it being an invasion of privacy. If you feel that your partner is controlling because they want to track you then the tracking is not your problem, the relationship is doomed.The partner still be controlling or obsessive without the tracking.

Nobody is saying otherwise.

But the more these things are normalised, the more they can be used against people when they object.

Someone could argue "there's no reason for you not to be tracked - my parents tracked each other and they were happy" etc.

The more people track each other (and their kids) the more it's seen as "normal" and so it becomes harder to object to.

The tracking just adds an extra layer of coercion to relationships and could stop people going and seeing friends/family or accessing help if they know their partner can track their every move and cause a fight (or worse) because of it.

I don’t find the “it normalises abuse” line persuasive at all.

My husband and I share all our money and regularly take cash from each other’s wallets- totally fine assuming mutual consent. If we did it without consent it would be theft. The idea that you shouldn’t do something with agreement because without agreement it’s abuse is a total non-starter. Look at sex.

@MrPenguinsPoppers

I grew up in the days before technological tracking was possible. This did not stop my parents. I'd be out with friends, minding my own business and spot my Fathers car slowly drive past. One night I was meeting a friend and was aware I was being followed. I was quite scared at the time and managed to pop behind a wall out of sight. Imagine my surprise when my Dad turned the corner.

That was two incidents I recall but there were many, all at the behest of my Mum who desperately needed to know where I was, what I was doing and who I was with. This started at around 14 and continued to 17, at which point I walked out and didn't return for two years. I was effectively stalked by my own parents.

It took years to repair the relationship, and it's exactly why I never tracked my own teens past the point of 'where you off to?'.

Yes, exactly- people who are going to stalk someone else are going to find a way, tech or no tech. It really denotes a problem in the relationship rather than a tech problem.

I had a very close friend in my teens whose parents were similar to yours (also in the days before tech tracking) and we would sometimes see her mom when we were out. My friend also had to be at home studying when her parents weren’t there and her parents would phone the landline to make sure she was studying- we used to forward the phone calls to my landline so she could hang out at my house and we would all be quiet when the phone would ring in case it was her parents. Her overbearing parents just drove her to subvert their controlling attempts.

Stalkers gonna stalk, even some parents.

That article just says “we don’t know how tracking kids will affect them but really trust and open communication should be paramount” well, no shit. As for letting them get lost and finding their way, even with Google maps, they can still do that. I certainly can.

@NoneOfYour32Potatoes I look back at that time with complete sadness. I should have been enjoying shopping trips and meeting friends, instead I spent half my time in total paranoia that one of my parents were about to turn up.

With the benefit of age and lots of talking I did eventually get to understand why it happened. My Mum had lost a child at birth before me, I was an only child. I was very over protected and I do get that now, but none of this was my fault. My parents should have had counselling but at the time it didn't exist. I spent years thinking I must have been such a horrid child to deserve this, but it wasn't my fault.

Obviously my case is extreme, but the whole idea of tracking just does not sit well with me. My DC's had phones. If they needed me they could call me.

Jesus, I'm absolutely horrified at the number of people who are OK with tracking!!

I would not be OK with another adult tracking me (I'm open about where I'm going, who I'm with and am completely able to find a way to get in touch with all my nearest and dearest if I'm running late/need a lift/stuck in traffic). Why would my mum or her partner need to know where I am - or me know where they are? It's 30 years since I left home, they can go wherever they want.

As for my kids. I (up until now) thought I was a bit helicopter-y in my parenting. They've had phones since before they started secondary school. But when they were younger, if they were going out it was usually to a friend's house, and I'd have ok'd it with their parent. Now they're older they are again open with me about where they're going, and with who, and when they'll be home. They know my mobile number and have been able to repeat it since maybe 8 years old. They call or message me if their plans change. We live in the suburbs of a city, and I've travelled to 'town' with them so many times I'm not worried about them getting lost, or finding the right bus. Since they were tiny they've been taught to 'find a shop lady' if they got separated from me - I have every confidence they can figure minor problems out by themselves, and delight in telling me how resilient they were afterwards.

Why on earth do folk think its OK to have such access to others' lives as this? And why do they think they need it? The chances of serious incident (I mean things like child abduction, murder on the way home from the pub, rather than tea being delayed by 10 minutes) are so, so minute that this seems completely dis-proportional.

I don't track my kids. They don't want to be tracked and that's fair enough. They are good at texting or calling if they are running late etc Their location is private on SnapChat too.

I think that many time don't realise that location can be faked on tracking apps and they can be inaccurate

There are situations that I would use a tracking app. For example I know people who have them on dogs or elderly parents who are prone to wandering off.

Ha, my ds is 18 now, never ever felt the need to track his phone. And with lockdowns taking a big chunk of the last 2 years' freedom, I hardly needed to track him, just bang on the ceiling at mealtimes. I occasionally text 'are you OK?' if he's forgotten to let me know he's arrived somewhere safely (just passed his driving test), the usual response I get is 'no mum, I crashed into a ditch '

@Bosephine

I don’t find the “it normalises abuse” line persuasive at all.

My husband and I share all our money and regularly take cash from each other’s wallets- totally fine assuming mutual consent. If we did it without consent it would be theft. The idea that you shouldn’t do something with agreement because without agreement it’s abuse is a total non-starter. Look at sex.

Nobody is saying that tracking automatically normalises abuse.

They're saying that there's a thin line between tracking for the right reasons and tracking for the wrong ones, and when you normalise tracking someone's every move it's not necessarily easy to know when that line has been crossed.

,None of us see it as an invasion of privacy at all. If I felt "watched" then I'd turn it off

It doesn't matter if you "feel watched". you ARE watched and not just by the people you have given permission to watch you. You are also watched by google or whatever other company you are giving away your information to.

You are slowly being groomed into accepting more and more surveillance ( Alexas, Ring door bells etc) by these large corporations ( and possibly governments) just to " keep you safe".

And no, it doesn't matter if you think that your life isn't "interesting" the potential to control a population that readily accepts this kind of surveillance in exchange for a false sense of "feeling safe" or so that they know when to put their kettle on is huge.

They're saying that there's a thin line between tracking for the right reasons and tracking for the wrong ones, and when you normalise tracking someone's every move it's not necessarily easy to know when that line has been crossed.

I don't see how the line is any thinner than the line between any other behaviour with consent and without consent. You may as well say that freely agreeing to sex makes you more likely to be coerced into sex at a later date.

Should add that I'm not arguing for tracking- I don't track my partner and he doesn't track me.

My dh and I have an app that we put on this summer when I was going to support him on a long distance cycling event. We haven't taken it off because it's really handy, mainly in terms of dinner. I am not against tracking at all.

DH and i both have trackers. DS will have trackers when he's out and about and when he's driving. Part of my job involves accidents and an employee was found by his boss because he was using the companies tracked van when he went off the road into a ditch in the middle of nowhere, you could barely see him from the road. If it hadn't had a tracker they'd have just thought he was skiving and he'd have been lucky to be found by a passing car.

So he'll be tracked, but not secretly and we wouldn't be able to read his messages and stuff. But we'll have a codeword for needing collecting immediately and we can get straight to him wherever he is.