Trackers on phones - weird or not?

[Judijudi]

Someone I know their entire family uses a location tracker on their phones for everyone in the immediate family, husband, son, son’s girlfriend, sister, nieces, nephews, parents. They all have it. I don’t know how often the others use it but frequently this person will say, oh I see sister has come home early from her holiday, or son’s girlfriend- oh she must’ve got out of bed to go to the hairdressers, you get the jist.
I find this really really weird and a total invasion of privacy. It actually gives me the creeps! I can see how it would be handy if someone unexpectedly goes out of touch and their is an actual reason to want to know where they are like they’ve gone hillwalking and not returned when expected or if it is someone vulnerable etc.
What do you all think?
YABU this is perfectly normal behaviour to track the movements of your entire family
or
YANBU it is TOTALLY weird and an invasion of privacy verging on stalking behaviour

Your teen has the right to privacy, just like you did as a teen. I'd be concerned that this is normalising tracking to the point where teens think it's normal for their bf/gf to watch their every movement. They'll end up trapped in a controlling relationships.

Never read such nonsense in my life! Ridiculous. I want to know where my 14 year old is. Doesn’t make me an obsessive stalker - it’s called parenting.

@TheaBrandt Would you really call your teenager at a party and insist she moved indoors? Seriously?

They all track each other ALL the time! Do you have a sociable teen girl?

No but I know where she is.

Eg Last Saturday they went to a party but turned out wasn’t at friends house but was in a field in town. Made me revise her curfew as meant zero adult supervision randoms and it was dark and chilly. She was actually fine with it as they got cold so I got them an hour earlier than planned.

I’ve had two (and an older boy) and they and their friends rarely track each other. Out hiking or the likes they would, but not as standard.

DS (13) and his friends don’t either.

The CEOPS talk in school very firmly put them all off off.

I think our teens are very different 😀 <tries to imagine dd2 hiking - fails>

They’ve done their fair share of parties in fields.

it was simply an example of when their cohort would use tracking amongst each other.

You don't know where your teenager is though... you know where their phone is. If they wanted to sneak off, they would just leave their phone where they are supposed to be.

@YetMoreNewBeginnings

"I’ve had two (and an older boy) and they and their friends rarely track each other. Out hiking or the likes they would, but not as standard."

+++

Tracking where your friends are is a standard feature on Snapchat.

I find it weird for adults to track adults, but if everyone is happy, let it be.

My MIL sent me a request with I declined, thank god

We've been in shops before and she's turned up as she's stalked my partner. I hate it. If we go to her house she's sometimes waiting at the front door as we pull up

My mum tracks me. I’m almost 39 😆 but I live nearly 5hrs away and it gives her piece of mind. If I want to do something I don’t want her to know about (rare) I can switch it off for a while.

My best mate also tracks me and vice versa. We started it when my horse had an abscess in her back hoof. I was going out in the dark and the rain to rebandage her every day in a field in the middle of nowhere in the dark in the winter. Obviously messing around with the back legs of a horse is dangerous at the best of times but with no one going to notice if you have been injured or knocked out it’s even more risky. So I would tell him what time I was going down to see her and text him after 20 mins to say I was ok. He didn’t really know where the field was so he could use the app to find me if he didn’t hear from me.

I also used it on him a few weeks ago when he came off his motorbike and didn’t know quite where he was to call for help. I was able to give him the address and then drive down to pick him up and take him to A&E.

Not something we do as a family. My daughters are 21 and 22 and at uni. I don't want to be worrying when they are still out at 3am. I dont want to know they are "sleeping" over, etc. They are away from home and parental "oversight" , living their best lives as you do when young, free and single

Which is easily turned off.

@TheaBrandt "They all track each other ALL the time! Do you have a sociable teen girl?"

That's up to them. It's very different to having a parent tracking a child.

@CurlewKate

"That's up to them. It's very different to having a parent tracking a child."

+++

Exactly it's up to them if they accept or not their parents tracking them in return for them to be able to track their parents then what is the issue.

It’s a quid pro quo I guess. She gets generous amount of freedom / leeway but I like to know where she is as she is only mid teens Never tracked my oldest who is sensible and at that age had a sensible established friendship group - so for me it’s entirely child specific.

I don’t judge how other parents deal with each child as I haven’t walked in their shoes - you do what gets you through each parenting stage.

Yes we do , me and dh And for all the dc at secondary age and above up to adult dd.

We rarely if ever check for the older dc but they had the choice and were fine about it as they understood if there’s ever a problem we will be able to see where they are if need to.

For younger ones we check maybe 1-2 times a week eg if ds is a bit late home from school just in case

I find it very strange, me and DH sometimes share our current location on WhatsApp for various reasons but I hate the thought of it being constant. Very weird behaviour to be tracking teens, no wonder so many are ill equipped for independence.

It's fucking creepy and if my partner did it i'd leave.

I think it also enables and drives anxiety. I have a friend who has alwayas been odd and anxious about her husband going out alone, but it has got a lot worse with age.

Poor man agreed to tracking "give her peace of mind", but now it has just created a new thing to be anxious about if tracking shows his location or time keeping deviates at all from what he told her.

It's no way to live.

I think when it’s like you describe with your friend @Ginmonkeyagain then it’s weird and obviously not working for either of them. You say you would leave but it’s not like (most) partners do this secretly. It’s agreed. I always hated the idea of it but we started doing it for a specific reason and it was supposed to be temporary but having tried it, we found it worked really well for us. I feel a sense of freedom tbh, which is the total opposite to how I thought I would feel!

If different families chose to make different decisions especially if they are happy, comfortable and confident about them what's the actual problem?

We often go shopping as a family in a big mall … and then dh and our sons want to look at store A and i go to store B. But then I get distracted and visit store C also, while my dh needs to find a loo for the youngest and then we try to find eachother again for coffee. So much easier if you can track eachother! If i browse the whatsapp -history of me and dh the most often used line was “where are you now?”. I’m glad we don’t need that one anymore!