AIBU to track ds16 location

[NimbleMintOrca]

I want to install a location tracker on DS16 phone for his safety. He travels to school by train and goes out with friends. DS16 is refusing to be tracked and is saying it's an invasion of privacy. AIBU to make him install an app that lets me see his location? I don't see how this would invade his privacy unless he's up to something dodgy in which case I should know about that.

Tracking wasn’t availability in the dark ages.
Even if it was we wouldn’t have used it on our DC, now in their 30s.
If course it’s your decision, your DS is under 18 so you could force him. Why not trust him till you know you can’t. He has to go out into the World at sometime without you spying on him.

Perfectly reasonable, especially these days.

Vast majority of kids and young adults share their locations on snap maps.

it’s worth having a chat about restricting it to trusted/known contacts only. Lots unknowingly share their location with every single contact- guys they meet in a bar that they swap usernames with for example.

you can set the location so only contacts you allow can see it.

more than once I’ve taken dc to meet a mate, to get lost and used snap maps to get them to the right place…

I don't track DD13 or DS15. I feel like I need them to know that I trust them. I give them freedom and I ask them for updates if they're in town with friends. We have shared location on Whatsapp before if trying to find each other but tbh being able to message to say "What time will you be back?" Is just nicer. It starts a conversation and I like to take every opportunity to communicate with my teens.

I don't want permission to follow a dot on a screen either, because there isn't consideration or thought in that. I want my kids to be responsible and let people know where they are and where they're going, what time they're to be expected home etc. That's a good habit to develop. They're good at it. I also think they appreciate the trust I give them and know that if I have reason to remove that then I'll need a rethink.

Tracker won't do anything to keep him safe. If he's so opposed then he will just find a way to mislead you. A friend was so reassured that her son 's tracker showed he was in city A , until she realised he was actually at his father's at city B. He just used another phone and avoided the tracker for two days. (His mate in city A just had the phone in his bag to give the illusion of having that phone with him). Thevex just said "he's perfectly safe, he doesn't want or need tracking '.

At 16 the legal presumption is he has mental capacity to make his own decisions even foolish ones. No parent should be tracking a 16 year old without consent unless they have intellectual disability. I agree it normalises coercive control and abuse and a breach of privacy. Legally he can leave home at 16 so you don’t have any rights over him.

They can’t see that you’re ‘safe’ at all.
All they can see is where your phone is. It tells them nothing about you, and how safe or otherwise you might be.

You are probably correct about my intelligence, however crime has definitely decreased over recent decades

I’m going to pick on this comment not because it is rude and wrong (although it is both) but because it’s indicative of a very common misconception on MN and in the UK more broadly.

Crime, including violent crime, in the UK is just about the lowest it has ever been. Some things are increasing because of better reporting or definitions (a lot of what we now rightly classify as domestic abuse would have gone unreported 30 years ago). But most outside-the-home crimes, including violent crimes, are lower than when most of us were children. Sometimes much lower. Deaths on the roads are also lower than a generation ago.

And yet parents on MN almost always think that the world is more dangerous than when they were young, and use this as a reason to not give their children the same freedoms they themselves enjoyed. Or they justify intrusive technology like trackers because “the world has changed”, which is shorthand for “I think the world is riskier but I’m not sure exactly how.”

The world is not riskier then when you were young. If you live in the UK it’s almost certainly safer. This is also true in most of the rest of the world.

If you want to give your children much more restricted and intrusive childhoods than you yourself enjoyed, that’s up to you. When they’re adults, your children might or might not thank you for it. But ask yourself whether it’s less about quantifiable risks, and more about your personal anxiety.

https://policinginsight.com/feature/analysis/most-crime-has-fallen-by-90-in-30-years-so-why-does-the-public-think-its-increased/

If course it’s your decision, your DS is under 18 so you could force him.

You can force him to have a tracker on his phone. You can't force him to carry his phone with him at all times. A moderately resourceful 16 yo - or even a younger teenager - will easily get around that.

I would add to this that keeping a good relationship and communication lines with a child of this age is so important.

That means you listen to his point of view. He doesn't want to be tracked, so what can he do to alleviate OP's fears? Telling her where he is going and with who and letting her know if he will be late back shows responsibility.

my children are beyond teen years now, but their friends who had the strictest and most controlling parents were the ones who became accomplished in lying, leaving their phones at friends' houses and having a second PAYG phone so that their parents didn't know what they were doing despite them ostensibly following the rules. This makes them less safe.

we tried life 360 and the level of detail felt overly intrusive and stalkerish. Dh and I hated it. If dd1 goes somewhere new/quite a distance then I ask she shares her live location on WhatsApp. Gives her control but is admit respecting each other’s boundaries and right to be independent and my parenting needs to keep her safe. She and I are more comfortable with the arrangement.

We all use find my phone to track each other within the family. DS is on Life 360 and Snapchat with friends, so they all track each other. It’s not in a stalky way but if I’m going to pick him up it’s useful to know if he’s reach the pick up point. If he’s meeting up with friends he knows if they are on their way or already there. If they don’t want to be visible they just switch it off.
DS is happy fir us to know where he is. It means he doesn’t have to keep texting or phoning with his plans. He’s 21 so it’s really none of my business but he’s at uni so when home it’s just good manners to let me know whether he’s likely to come home and need feeding.

He’s been out since last night, staying over at a friend’s house. I checked his location while prepping our evening meal and I can see that he won’t need feeding. He’s more than happy with the arrangement because it means less hassle for both of us and as he has stated if he doesn’t want me to know his business he can switch it off, but since he has no need to hide anything then there is no point.
It works both ways because if I’m picking him up from uni or the station he knows where I am, although he’s more likely to phone me for updates. I’m expecting a call at some point this evening to ask me to put his evening meal in to cook.

The other benefit is locating his phone. He went abroad with friends last year and he couldn’t find his phone 📱 n the villa they were staying in. His friend texted me to activate the beep. He also asks me to use it sometimes as a backup to his alarm when he needs to get up early.

I think that you do what works and is comfortable in your own family. DS has always been free to switch off tracking but he has never seen the need.

We live rurally with virtually no public transport so at 16 he relied on us to ferry him around. Being able to spot him on a map made it easy to find the friend’s house he’d ended up going to. If he’d had a lift with someone else’s parent it was often tricky locating him just from a postcode.

I think the scariest thing DS went through was being spiked. On the night it happened I had n reason to check his location and he was getting a taxi home. He some how managed to get home but ended up putting his hand through the glass in our front door. We spent most of the night in A&E. When I eventually checked my phone he had messaged me but it was gobbledygook. Had I seen it at the time I would have been straight out to look for him. Even at his most drunk he is able to text coherently. He was in the taxi home at that point so I would have been able to track him. I may have been able to prevent the injuries he sustained. I think it was this episode that made him realised how useful tracking is. I know that he uses it with friends to keep an eye on them when they get separated. Huge learning experience.

I have both of my adult dcs on find my phone and have done since they first got phones. One is travelling at the moment and I love seeing where in the world they are.

They both know that they can turn it off at any point and don’t seem to be bothered.

when they started driving it was a huge relief to be able to check they were safe. I never question them about where they are. They also have me, as does my dad. I have dp for when he wanders off in shopping centres.

Nobody does anything interesting enough to hide so we all just get on with it.

My son has my location but doesn't want to give me his. When I lost my phone at a street market, he was able to go get it for me quickly.

He's 27, so does what he wants, but my other two kids didn't used to want me to track them, but now they are older, they let me. I occasionally look at their location, either for a practical reason, or because it's nice to see that they exist somewhere in the world, especially reassuring when they are 3000 miles away.

My daughter goes to a university where a popular student night club is just next to the river.
Every year, multiple parents who insist on tracking their children for no particular reason, have major panics as the tracker shows their child is in the river at 2am.

Dh used to go for works drinks at a pub on the banks of the Thames.

The amount of times it showed him in the river. Sometimes, the thought made me quite happy.

I suppose you can't make them join, easy enough to disable location.

We have life360, my mums also in our circle for the odd every few years occasion she'll be here watching them as dd was doing Duke of Edinburgh last time we were away. I stalked her all the way to London and back this Christmas as I worry about my dad driving (insomniac)

Yes it won't make them any safer, but I know my kids and I know that if eg dd15 has been at the park for 5 mins on her walk home from town then I'm heading right there for her.

Brilliant idea. If you wanted to get some extra reassurance while allowing your teen to continue to spread his wings this seems like it would be a good compromise.

Tbh I’m a bit baffled by the notion of tracking anyone else’s phone long term - not just dropping a pin as part of a message about meeting up somewhere. But clearly from this thread some people do it routinely! I think he has a valid point in not wanting it, as a teen I would also have been horrified (and I wasn’t up to anything particularly nefarious! Didn’t even have a boyfriend). A little privacy is important at his age. If you try to enforce tracking it might backfire in him leaving the phone behind and then he couldn’t call you if he really did need you…

Yes it won't make them any safer, but I know my kids and I know that if eg dd15 has been at the park for 5 mins on her walk home from town then I'm heading right there for her.

You track her to the extent that you know immediately if she's taking five minutes longer than normal to walk home?

What if she's met someone she knows and has just stopped to speak to them?

Yes. By all objective measures, the world (well, as far as the UK goes) is very much safer now.

Lots of people are massively more anxious, but the actual risks are much lower.

He is well on the way to adulthood. He needs to develop independence and resilience. He's up for that. You need to allow it, so that he can grow up.

As others have said, manage your own anxiety and do not track him. It's a massively false reassurance anyway.

😮
You weren't allowed out on your own at 16?!

My DS is 12. His location is visible to me but I've told him (and I mean it) that I will never look at it unless I have reason to be worried (e.g. he's late home and not answering) or he loses his phone.

I think routinely tracking a 16 year old is really suffocating and OTT

Gods, a 16 year old is legally able to leave home and live alone!

If you insist he'd be within his rights not to take the thing with him, and what would you do then - tell him he can't go out?

This kind of thing is a bi part of the mental health crises among youth.

People keep saying the "world has changed" when trying to justify tracking their children. The only thing that has changed is this ability to keep tabs on your children at all times. Statistically we are just as safe now as we have ever been. Levels of crime etc haven't increased.

I'm really against tracking anyone. The only situations I think it is acceptable are ones where perhaps an adult parent has dementia or a child with ASD. But outside of this, I think it's such a breach of privacy. And in any case if a person loses their phone or its stolen, all a tracker does is tell you where the phone is not the person.

I also find it weird to be tracking people so you know when to get dinner ready. Can people not just phone to say they are nearby or re-heat their dinner when they get home when they are late?!