AIBU to have my (just) 16 Yr old DD on a tracking app?

[ChicaneOvenchips]

Posting here for traffic as teens board not very busy.

My DD, just turned 16, says out of all her friends, she's the only person who's parent has them on a tracking app (in our case life 360) and this is highly embarrassing and uncalled for because she's really sensible.

She is sensible, I'm not worried she'll do anything silly. But I like to know that I could find her if she was in danger or scared. We live on an estate not in a town, with a bus service that is unreliable and infrequent and requires her to walk around 10-15 mins home from the nearest bus stop, partly through an unlit lane.

So AIBU or is this quite normal for her age and our circumstances?

I think it's really invasive to track someone's whereabouts, whether it's your teen child or your partner.

I agree. People need to read ‘anxious generation’ by Jonathan Haidt. Or at least look at his instagram/listen to his podcasts.

I am bewildered by how normal it is for entire families to be able to track each others locations. I find it so strange.

Exactly. I agree. Being tracked by parent could easily turn into being tracked by an abusive partner for vulnerable people.

And it does noting at all to make kids safer

I can give you half a dozen occasions when my DC or their friends have been safer because of tracking (we are the parents who always get phoned if there’s a problem, so have done multiple “rescues” of drunk/unwell kids over the years). Drunk or panicked kids, even sensible ones, are notoriously bad at being able to explain exactly where they are especially if outside big venues/parks/fields

there was also an occasion where DC2 was blue lighted to hospital after a bad sports injury, because I was meeting the ambulance at the hospital and because I was tracking him I was able to see that they’d changed there mind about which hospital to take him to en route so was still able to be there on arrival.

I am bewildered by how normal it is for entire families to be able to track each others locations. I find it so strange

im more bewildered by how normal it is for entire school classes and friend groups to track each other. But they all seem to.

And if we didn’t always swoop in to rescue them, they’d learn how to rescue themselves. That’s building resilience amongst older children.

You would still have found out that he was at a different hospital, even without the app.

Its like people cannot conceive of how we ever survived before smart phones!

I have DS on Snapchat. It's mostly hardly because he'll be playing football with his phone in his bag, forget the time and I'll need to pick him up and there's about 4 different parks/fields that they go between. He has no problem with it because it's better than me turning up pissed off after driving round a bunch of parks because he hasn't picked up his phone.

Probably because it’s normalised at home first.

All those saying that they’ve always had them and their adult kids still haven’t switched them off… of course they haven’t! They think it’s normal!

Well, I guess if you've been raised with it as "normal" then you won't see an issue.

I really don't get it though. It's honestly no wonder so many teenagers are highly anxious to the point of not being able to do basic things alone.

It's a hard one, while i agree that it could be invasive, they are still kids and actually I own and pay for the phone so being able to locate the device isn't that unreasonable.

Also i wonder how many of these kids have Snap Maps on where they can track their friends and if on open settings share locations with all sorts of people.

it needs to be by consent, but poor communication and risky behaviour is mitigated a bit when you know they are where they say they are.

I guess what bothers me most is the normalising of thinking that regularly tracking (anyone, esp. our kids) is a "good" thing and even "entirely sensible." The world is probably far far safer now for lone 16yr old females than it was 20,30,40+ years ago. And yet the story persists that the world is more dangerous than ever. It's daft thinking at very best.

It also tells our kids that we don't have faith in them to sort their own problems.

Tracking definitely shouldn't be done at age 16 without consent. Teaching our kids that they have autonomy & right to say no to many things is important, too, & demonstrating that we respect their autonomy is also important, right?

I have my 20yo on the find my iphone app and my 18yo on 360. I don’t routinely check them but 18yo drives and when she is on her way home from her part time job at 1/2am she likes to know if something happened we could get to her and help.

They have us too on the apps - all of us consented to this 😀

I don't have it for my 16yo. I don't want to be tracked myself so I won't make him have it if he doesn't want it. To be honest he doesn't go out late often anyway, he's not into parties so if he's out it's usually at a mate's gaming or something.

OP

If you persuade your daughter to override her innate discomfort with this, and accept the tracking because you feel it is best, how do you prepare her to stand up to a controlling boyfriend who refuses to let her go out without him except if she is being tracked?

I agree - picking up ‘sensible’ kids that were drunk and had no idea where they were, my DD being threatened (in daylight) walking home. My 20yo lost in the peak district 2 weeks ago (with his mates) he called us and we could give him directions from where he was. As long as there are rules/ boundaries in place and there is consent.

YABU. If she's sensible and has said she doesn't want it, then you should deactivate it. I can't see how it'll help in an actual emergency for reasons stated by other posters.

I have a 13 yo and a 16 yo and have never used them and don't plan to.

I have all the family on the Find My app. It’s not malicious sneaky tracking, it’s lots convenience than anything else. If you’re can see one of them is in their way home I can get the kettle on for them. My son does a lot of late evening driving down country lanes to get to his Rugby club, I can quickly check the app to see if he’s making his way home ok rather than pestering him with messages.

You shouldn't track without consent.

In my family some have tracking on all the time, and others switch it on for particular circumstances of their choice i.e when they want someone to keep an eye on them when travelling abroad or late at night.

The excuses and reasons why people are tracking their entire families make no sense to me. From the ‘well I don’t have to text them so much’ or the ‘I can put the kettle on for them’ to the ‘we will then be able to swoop in and rescue them from any situation’ none of those arguments stand up to me.

Jonathan Haidt says that we massively over estimate the risks of the real world and underestimate the risks of the online world. The introduction of tech and social media directly correlates with a huge uptick in mental health issues amongst adolescents and teens. The reasons are numerous and complex… but I find it sad that, now we live in a world where our kids take phones everywhere with them, that when they run in to issues in the real world (and I’m not talking life or death emergencies here) which they inevitably will, because that’s life, their first instincts are to phone their parents to rescue them, rather than trying to figure out a way of getting through things on their own.

If you’ve raised them to be secure and confident, which I’m sure you all have because that’s what we do for our kids, then by the time they’re allowed to roam around the big bad world on their own, they’re also old enough to fix any problems they encounter.

We are policing and controlling our kids too much and it shows. No wonder so many of them fall to pieces as soon as their parents aren’t around to fix everything for them…. They never learned how

I’m all for building resilience but I’m curious what you think would have been achieved in terms of resilience if DS (12) had spent time alone in hospital, seriously injured, frightened and without a parent?

The kettle takes 2 minutes to boil, I don't see why you'd need to track someone for that, just put it on when they get home!

My 20 year old and 24 year old has tracking apps and are happy to be on them. Why do their friends need to know? One doesn't even live in the IKEA but if I needed to know where they are I would immediately. DC2 had a car accident in the middle of nowhere once and DH could easily find them. It's great for peace of mind.

My other DC who is younger also does for me to know when her bus is arriving.

With all of them it's not an issue. Just say it's non negotiable.

I can track my 17 DS. We have findmyiphone and can see each other on that. He isn’t the greatest at communicating so I often have a look to see if he is on the way home, waiting for a bus, still in McDs etc. He has gone away this weekend and I had a quick look to make sure they had arrived. It is peace of mind and he doesn’t mind as he gets less grief for not texting.

It is also very useful if he leaves his phone anywhere and there have been a few occasions where I have tracked and found his phone. He and his Dad (my ex) can also track each other and he often has a look if he Dad has left home yet when he is picking him up and does not appear when he says (not unusual). He has looked how far away I am or looked where I am parked when I am picking him up from somewhere too.

That said, if he objected I would stop doing it but he would need to get better at being back when he says he will or texting me to update. Now he is older I obviously don’t control where he goes or what time he is home but do like to know when to expect him back. He would expect the same from me.

It wouldn’t have and that is not my point and you know it.
Tracking your kids 24/7 in case something happens to them is what prevents them from developing resilience. They already have phones, they can call you in a genuine emergency and obviously, a trip to the hospital is an emergency.
Likewise with the 18 year old daughter mentioned above who actually wants to be tracked in case ‘something bad’ happens on the way home from work in the early hours… she already has a phone? If she breaks down or whatever she can call. Why are our kids constantly scared that something bad is going to happen to them? Where do you think that stems from? Probably from their parents drumming it in to them. It’s like they’re too afraid to live and I find that very worrying.

Phones can be useful, but we managed to survive without them. Being able to call someone in a genuine emergency is a very good thing. Wandering around being tracked because everyone thinks bad things are going to happen to them all the time is not a good use of that tech in my opinion.

I have a 17 year old daughter who put the tracking app on all our phones! She tracks us - is very useful as she can track where I am when I have to collect her from various places, or she knows how far away I am to put the tea on!