Parents tracking their children

[intrestedvic]

I am always reading on threads how people know where their children are due to apple air tags or, apps, or location sharing on a phone.

Not just on mumsnet but in my circle I know lots of parents who use maps or share location with children.

I am a parent to small children currently but I was wondering opinions on this situation. If you track your children and why and if not why not?

I'm not against them, many of my friends have their children tracked (and the parents) but I've never done it regularly.

We will occasionally share location on What's app (it's time limited) if I'm collecting him, so that we can see where each other is.

I agree with SmallAssassin. I don't think my teens mind being tracked. They can always turn off location tracking or switch off their phone. They are in control. So much of social media has presence status and real time BeReels designed to tell people where or what they are doing at that time. They don't have the same sense of privacy over their location that us older folk do.

And there would be no repercussions from you if they did turn it off? Right...

My kids are 14. We all share our location with each other. It makes a bunch of logistics easier. They check my location far more than I check theirs. They’ve turned the tracking off before a few times (maybe more, I’ve only noticed a few times) and I only have a go at them about it on the occasions when I need it to pick them up or use it for something else for their benefit. It’s fine to turn it off, I’m not trying to check up on them, but if I’m doing them a favour I expect them to be making it easy for me without me having to nag them about it.

This topic came up at a dinner out with mum friends recently and I was shocked, as on here, at how many track their kids. I find it a bit Orwellian tbh. Mine are older teens and I don’t track them - I’d have hated to feel “watched” at their ages. I think they deserve their privacy and my trust in them, plus how will they ever grow up and learn to be independent and resilient adults if they know Big Mother is watching their every move.

For their safety. If they are late home unexpectedly I can check they are moving or not in a random place. If they are somewhere they shouldn't be, (unsafe) I can call them and arrange for them to come home. If God forbid they went missing we qould have a better idea where they were when it happened. So we can start looking. Have you not seen the police and how long it takes them to do anything? If I was working away from home or was out a lot I would share my location with dh so I would feel safer. I'm not doing anything wrong so it doesn't matter if he can see where I am.

Cctv is everywhere, I don't see it as any different but useful should something happen so the right cctv can be pulled up.
I was followed by a neighbour pedophile for a while as a kid. So maybe I have more worries about it. But a lot iof people go missing!

11 and 13 and just starting to use public transport alone. We have tracking on so I can check they got to where they're supposed to be; in case they get the wrong bus so I can tell them how to get back; same if they get lost. I was never allowed anywhere without my parents until I was 18 so they have far more freedom than I did.

DH and I can also track each other. I use it mainly to check if he's driving home yet. I don't know if he checks on me.

It horrifies some oldies but hate to break it to you but teens track each other all the time on snap chat so are unbothered by the concept. We have a family find my phone which is useful when 4 people whizzing about in different places. Eg Dd 1 (16) doesn’t come back from school I look her up she’s at her mates house great can you get some milk friend lives next to tescos.

Also my 14 year old is the ultimate social butterfly forever making new friends and going to their houses so at that old enough to be independent but not always sensible stage so it’s pretty helpful to see where she is.

It horrifies some oldies but hate to break it to you but teens track each other all the time on snap chat so are unbothered by the concept.

Exactly, if I want to know if my ds is at college, or at home or out somewhere I go on Snapchat where I can see his whereabouts, as can all the the other 200 people he has on there.

Same with my dd, who is 250 miles away at uni.

Well I can assure the “oh all teens track each other all the time” brigade that none of my teens track or are tracked by their friends. It’s just not a thing with them.

And what kind of message are you sending your kids? “The world is such a malevolent and dangerous place that I need to track your location at all times to be sure you’re safe” - no wonder there’s so much teen anxiety about now.

Well call me old fashioned, but if I want to know where my kids are I, you know, ask them.

I can see where my DD and my DH are at any time of the day or night on Find Friends and they can see me too. They are adults age 25 and 30 and live hundreds of miles away. It's never been an issue and they know they can switch it off if they want to. I certainly wouldn't ask them why or demand they put it on again. I don't spend my life stalking them it's just a tool that's there. I mostly use it to see where DH when he has left work so I can get the tea on!

Saves pestering them though doesn’t it. I really don’t see the drama. It’s a blunt tool anyway you can see where they are but not what they are doing. I’ve only learned to do it in the last few months and have found it quite logistically useful. Both mine are ardent Snapchat / BeReal users anyway and didn’t bat an eyelid when I got find my phone. Dh was already on their Snapchat thing anyway.

Most teens on Snapchat will have a quick look to see where their friends are. I can imagine a hormonal teen constantly looking to see where their crush is to imagine what they’re doing too, stalking them from home, school, wherever. The other thing with quite a lot of teens and Snapchat or TikTok (or whichever SM app is trending) is its all about numbers, how many followers do they have and so you might be tracking your child but who else is?

My kids are 29, 18 and 14 (DS,DS,DD). I’ve never tracked them and never will. Not apart from when they sometimes send me an 8hr what’s app location if DD going to local town etc. Always her who sends it. I find it unnecessary and my God if my mother would have had this ability I dread to think how terrible my teenage years would be. I would not have wanted to be tracked and therefore wouldn’t track my kids. Maybe in the minority but I find the trend a bit OTT, especially when you bring spouses into it and you see women (usually) sitting there checking where their husband and kids are.

I have FindMy on my iPhone and can see where dd15 and dd18 are all the time. I only check if they're late home or if they're walking alone. My dd15 tracks me far more than I track her, she's got hers set so it notifies her when I leave and arrive home 😂

100%. I can’t even bear the thought of my mother having the ability to track me. She would have been sat there every night checking where I was going next. I shudder at the thought

Fine if it doesn’t work for your family but don’t get the pearl clutching about what other families do and the need to slag us off. If you don’t want to do it fine others find it useful.

Nope never did it. Mine are early 20s. I wouldn’t like DH knowing my every movement either. I’ve nothing to hide, I just find it odd.

The thought of DH and I being able to track each other makes me uncomfortable. Sounds a bit much to me. But as long as the dinner is on time.

You are probably 40 plus though. This generation have a totally different mindset.

I used life360 when they first started walking to school alone but stopped after a few days. It's been of my 16yo phone for years. My 12yo still has it but we rarely use it, she doesn't switch her phone on most of the time anyway so it doesn't work.

This feels so instinctively, horrifyingly unsafe to me that I find it really hard to understand how you think it's a good thing.

IMO there’s a difference between tracking someone and being able to see their location.

I can see my DS 20’ location and he can see mine, and it has been that way purely since we had iPhone and allowed location sharing via find my friends.

But I don’t track him and he doesn’t track me, but either one of us could, if we wanted, see where the other is.

When he was thirteen he came home from school to see an ambulance leaving our house. I had been taken ill at home and called one, and we were leaving just as he got home. As it turned out they didn’t take me to our local hospital but to a bigger one further away, and DS used find my frends to track my phone to that hospital. Which is just as well because by the time I got there I had been put into an induced coma and spent the next three days on life support, so God knows how long it would have been before someone had been called to let them know where I was.

DS works on the other side of London and is often travelling home late at night. If I wake up in the night and realise he’s not home I can quickly look at find my to see if he’s still at work or on his way home, if he’s still in the part of London he works in then I can assume he’s stayed on for whatever reason and won’t be home yet.

I would never have insisted on being able to track him, he was on android for a long time and I couldn’t then, s it was just a convenient tool iyswim.