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 track mine every day from 3pm to see if they have got the bus ok and how far away they are.

This.

I have little children so perhaps I'll feel really differently about this in a few years - though the idea of DH and I tracking each other is unthinkable to me and apparently people are doing that! - but to me this feels like some sort of dystopia. My main safety takeaway so far is to make sure my children understand why it's not safe to share their location with hundreds of social media followers.

No Because they deserve right to right to privacy, and unless i microchip my child or their device is glued to them does not mean they are where their device is anyway

Statically it is said children are more unsafe with people they know than strangers

There could be a million scenarios of 'yeah but it helped me when whatever'

I won't track

I do it largely to work out how close teens/DH are to home when I’m considering cooking dinner /collecting them etc. We all are in different parts of the county for schools and work - kids take buses through town and traffic is bad - so I can see if they’re stuck in traffic. Traffic is terrible in our city! I don’t really use it unless I need to work out how far away they are.

Another one who is horrified by this. No I do not track my teen. We use our phones to call each other and he is very good at keeping in touch when out and about. It is not healthy to be sat watching an app ffs, no wonder so anxiety is becoming an epidemic in our teens.

I have an app but I don't track her as such. She's just about to go into secondary school and will be getting the bus there and back alone. She has also just started shopping trips on her own.

Having the app gives me peace of mind that I can see where she is if she's a bit later than expected, or I can check to make sure she got where she was meant to be.

We all have it on our phones, so if she's home alone she can check where we are too.

Absolutely no way with my dcs. When they're young enough to still worry about, you surely keep a closer eye anyway? When they're older, they need privacy. And I'd absolutely hate to be tracked. Had enough of that with my stbxh.

And in adults! I feel quite strongly about this as someone who has suffered from clinical anxiety, has done a lot of work in therapy to address this (and taken a lot of medication along the way), and who has not passing my own anxiety onto my children as one of my biggest hopes and aims as a parent. I think it's getting harder and harder to model not being overly anxious as society makes extreme anxiety more and more acceptable and even desirable as a sign of being a 'good' parent. Trying to control the anxiety by trying to cover every 'just in case' scenario isn't healthy and it doesn't actually work.

So if I can see if they are on their way home without embarrassing them by keep ringing in front of their friends. If they are home late I can see if they have stayed at school late etc.

To check they have got somewhere safely.

To check they haven’t got lost or got on the wrong bus.

Not to check they are where they say they are really.

They find it useful to be logged in to find my phone as they ask me to play the find my phone sound often.

We all have it logged in. I can see if my husband is on his way home from work to time dinner or go to meet him without disturbing him. I have to walk to and from work at different times often in the dark and I’m on my own in the building. I like that he can see if I’ve arrived or not.

We use Find My Phone on iPhones. Two DC’s 15 & 17. Mostly used on the journey home from school, especially if DD is walking alone. Both DC are very sporty so it gives me a heads up when they’re on the minibus heading back to school after a match, because they’d never let me know and always expect me to be there waiting for them!

DC’s do have a lot of freedom and it gives us the comfort of knowing where they are but not what they’re up to.

I am thinking about this for when DS starts secondary this year. Difference is he has ASD and I only want to use it for if he gets lost or something goes wrong and he rings me in a panic. Then I can look where he is and go get him. I am not 100% confident he would be able to articulate where he is if in a panic. I think as he gets older, that won't be so necessary and he will become more confident.

I don't. Husband put an app on the kids phone, eldest often turns data off as otherwise his credit all goes. So then you can't track them. Tbh I wouldn't let them out of I didn't think they could manage.
Also a tracker only shows you where the phone is......not where your child is.......so a child wanting to do something you say they shouldn't would jist leave their phone with a friend.

For us there is absolutely zero anxiety around tracking.
It’s never discussed, it’s just there in the background.
It honestly takes up zero space in our lives!

There is no being glued to an app or frantic checking if seconds late.

It is helpful.

Our reasons are for safety and at first reassurance but now it’s kind of useful to see that my kids are where they should be.

That “edge of a cliff” moment when your child gets themselves to school on their own for the first time or scooters to the local shop or first long drive after passing their test, it’s just a “good to know” tool in my parenting tool bag.

No, we don't track each other, nor send a pin. DD's usual haunts are within a three mile radius so she can walk or take the bus and be home within 20 minutes. If I need to get hold of her I use WhatsApp to text her. Or she tells her Dad & I where she is and/or if she needs an escort home.

If she goes on longer trips she's usually with a friend or relative. Her friends are very sensible. She's good at updating us on WhatsApp where she is.

She binned Snapchat early on when some other kids tried to bully her on it. She's only on Instagram and WhatsApp now. I don't watch her stories and only pick up her Insta posts (which is mostly her artwork) some time after she's posted.

I grew up much the same as she has, except I come from a rural area and the technology was different. In the early 90s my dad got me a reloadable phone card, then later, a pager! If I needed to tell him where I was that's what I used. I never missed the last bus, but I had the pager for his peace of mind.

Every family is different, depending on where you live, how much you use your phone, how anxious you might be, and how sensible your kids are.

My DS and I don't view it as tracking each other we just have each other on life 360. It's just a facet of modern life now and it does help a lot when they start being independent and travelling alone.

I track my 13 and 16 year olds. I don’t track my 20 year old as he’s an adult and doesn’t need his mummy watching what he’s doing at uni. Nobody follows me and nobody will, I am not having anyone invading my privacy and watching what I’m doing. I have never ajd will never track dp. If I need him I’ll call or message him

We have the app as family, it's up to the family member if they have it on - we have 2 older teens, one in Uni.

DH uses it when I'm working late as I visit peoples houses on my own and the working lone policy is a bit crap at my work.. due to staffing there's never no one about.

DD uses if with a group of friends when they go out to be safe.

Most of the time I forget it's there. DS turns his off when he goes out and that his choice.

DH, DD16, DS13 and I all have find my iPhone so we know each others locations all the time.

I wouldn't say we track each other, just that we’re able to check where someone is if needed.

DH is T1D so he likes the peace of mind knowing that I know where he is in an emergency.

DD started going into the city for concerts last year so again, peace of mind to be able to check where she is if I haven’t heard from her etc.

DS likes to check where we are if he’s home alone.

We’re all 100% ok with our location being known, it’s not a big deal.

Like others have said the kids all see each other on Snapchat etc anyway (although DD turned her snapmaps off because a boy from her grade lives next door and it always showed them as being “together” 😂)

Oh and those saying they can just leave their phone at a friends house so it looks like they’re there - my DD would be more likely to cut off a limb and leave it at a friends house than leave her phone!

I would have bought a burner phone if this had been around when I was a teen. Tracker phone left at mates, me out somewhere fun with the burner!

I don’t really understand the ‘so I can see they are safely on the way home etc’ argument - all the posters here made it through their teen years without such tracking 🤷🏻‍♀️

Your kids are probably in the minority then - most of my kids mates have snapmaps

Oh FFS this has been done to death on MN.

Yes, we all share location on Google maps. Everyone has the option to opt in or out whenever they want.

There have been a number of times it's been super useful, like when DH was unconscious at a train station and I was able to go find him.

Sometimes they go offline. And that's fine.

But yes, I "track" my kids. Fairly sure on MN that means I am psychologically damaging them, I'm a weird sociopath and a terrible person in general. Shucks!

Nope creepy

DD17 tells me the teens that do have it either know how to fake their location (apparently surprisingly easy) or leave there phone when they don't want their parents to know where there are. I'd rather DD had her phone in a dodgy situation.

Sometimes DD will turn on Google location if I'm picking her up from the train, if she feeling a bit u comfortable she video calls

I don't see it as a tracker app, as such. Its more about security and keeping in touch. We have Life 360 too for our household. I have to go into people's homes for my work, so I like it that dh can check in to see where I am. My dc can check in to see where we are when we pick them up. The eldest (17yo) has theirs switched off most of the time now, but switches it back on when they want us to know where they are. My youngest dc is 14 and uses Snapchat, so all of his contacts know where each other are which they seem to find fun. My dh and ds both go wandering on a nearby vast shooting wood to help a game keeper, so it's important that we know where they are.