Phone tracking while at university

[Fenimore]

Astonished that so many parents I know are tracking their kids by phone. These are 18/19 year olds. I guess the young people don’t mind or they’d turn off the tracking. I just don’t think it’s healthy.

One parent I know is checking every day to see if their son is at lectures as well as what time he’s home from a night out.

i don’t track DD. One, she really wouldn’t like it and two, I think it would be stressful as well as being an invasion of privacy.

Does anyone do this?

If you want to track your daughter and she's happy with it, that's up to you. But things are not far more scary than they were in the 90s, in fact crime, including violent crime against women, has dropped dramatically since the 1990s. Source: https://policinginsight.com/feature/analysis/most-crime-has-fallen-by-90-in-30-years-so-why-does-the-public-think-its-increased/ You believe crime has risen because you hear about it more because of the reach that social media and online news outlets have, but actually the world, or certainly the UK is a far safer place than it was 30 years ago. We all have mobile phones, there is CCTV everywhere, people are far more aware of safeguarding etc. Tracking your daughter's every move is far more about you trying to manage your anxiety than about the risk of her being attacked, and it is not healthy for either of you.

It is an extension of the "helicopter parent" phenomenon. My BFF does it with all her kids and it sounds reasonable when she explains why. But she also thinks having a video doorbell is important so you can see who is at the door when you are home (and she bought one for her DD). I just think: open the door and see! It is all driven by a massively hyper-inflated risk awareness as far as I can tell. I admit that I asked my DS to turn on his location when he went to study abroad but he declined and that's fair enough. Let them have some independence!

We all have each other on google maps i think it is? By consent.
I dont think i have checked where the kids are, they are all adults. I will admit to sometimes checking where one DD is if I see a RTA reported on a traffic app i have, so i know its not her. I have never once contacted them to say i know where they are, thats wierd. But we are all in regular contact anyways, we dont need to track each other, we usually loosely know what we are up to.
I do however download DHs maps once a month for work purposes, god love him you would die of boredom reading it.
Its a fierce handy app, like anything else internetty, if used correctly its not a bad thing. If used in a bad way, then yes its not cool at all.

I don’t. It feels a bit big brother to me, and it’s not as if at this distance I would be able todo anything to help.

i know lots of people who do - each to their own.

It wasn’t much LOL. I possibly should have been in hospital but there were no beds left as it was sweeping round the area. I ‘lost’ 2 days and my Mum drove to me. No idea about pooing - I know I had wee’d in the bed as my mum told me afterwards.

No one got me paracetamol. I didn’t know anyone that well yet.

We all have each other on "find my", it's reassuring with younger teens newly independent, and useful for DH so I know when he's on his way home.

I think I would feel intrusive to still be tracking a child who has moved out though, and I'd probably be happier not being able to be nosy about what he's up to, or knowing when he's going out all night etc.

I have got Find my phone for my son. I only needed it a couple of times when he was in the first year of uni, once because he couldn’t find his phone and the second when he was supposed to be meeting me but overslept. I personally don’t want to use it other than those type of situations as I’d just worry if I saw he was nowhere near uni. He doesn’t mind me having it because without it he wouldn’t have found his mislaid phone, but I’m not going to worry myself unnecessarily.

I don’t track my kids as such and never have. They are ND and one daughter puts her location on when she goes on a night out (her choice) so I know she’s got to whichever friends house or boyfriends house when I wake up for the loo at 4am and she’s not home so I don’t worry. It’s the other way round in my house and the one child keeps inviting me to join a tracking app and I keep declining! I would have hated this as a teen and still would now hence not joining the app. They don’t need to know where I am every hour of the day and neither do I at their ages. I also feel it’s a massive breach of privacy!

But then again do you want to see your DDs going round a lads house late at night? Do you really want to known that?

Parental concern is normal. Anxiety is not. You have it completely upside down. Using apps to remote supervise and monitor adds to rather than alleviates it. Teaching young people that having their location monitored is a sign of love can absolutely lead to them thinking it is a normal healthy expression of love. Young adults in general still do not like saying no to their parents so they accept it rather than have a fight.

I think if I was at uni now, I would end up leaving my phone in my accommodation if my parents were of the tracking variety. And that would make me much less safe.

What happens if your (adult) child hooks up with someone and goes back to their place for the night? Do you start sending messages asking where they are? Do you try to call? Do you try to casually slip it into conversation next time you speak to them to find out what the were up to? I see no benefit to that information - only a way of feeding anxiety and giving you an unnecessary insight into their private life!

But having the app doesnt mean you check it.
I have it and honestly cant remember when I last looked at it.
It all depends on how its used, much like the majority of the internet.
People saying its creepy etc etc doesnt bother me in the slightest, cos i know how its being used, or not, in my world.

We don’t track our uni student, she goes to lectures all of the time, it would be boring. She’s so good, not like me at all, lol

Our 24yo DS shares his location even though we’ve never asked. We have no idea how he gets some places. He’s either at work, which he does religiously, at home or is in a pub. Then there are times where we just go ‘what the hell is he doing there?’ We then invariably get a funny story. He lives in a city centre but ends up in the middle of the country or in a different city. He flits here and there, at random. Tracking him just worries me more!! He’s much more like me, lol!

Another thing I hadn't realised is that some people still get their young adult dc tutored at uni. I thought they'd manage their degree on their own!

I track my family. My daughter at Uni used to walk home alone after a society event and for my own peace of mind I would check she was back in her accommodation before I went to sleep (or she would phone and chat to me until she was back). I suppose the difference is she knew I was doing it. If she stayed out all night at a friends ( or whoever!), I never commented, not my business.

I agree.

I also worry it then goes even beyond uni - and then hits partners - who could be my kids - who then face pressure because it's normal and then is it much of a step to them being constantly questioned about why they were where they were.

I had pfb before due date but was already sick to death of phone calls about had we had it - we didn't tell them when I went in labour we told everyone afterwards. We'd have had huge pressue to be tracked if it had been possible then.

I think at uni whole point is to leave home get them some space but with a uni there are services and support there for them to make it easy.

It doesn’t - it gives parents the illusion of control - realistically in that horrific situation you would later be able to discern where your child was when it occurred. Even if you spent all day glued to the tracker how would you know what was going on?

I find it shocking that any parent thinks it's appropriate to track their 18+ children, and also astonishing that some young people collude with it. We are bringing up a completely infantilised generation, FFS. Parents - you have no right to know where your adult child is, or what they are doing, so just get on with your own lives.
(And same thing applies to tracking partners!).

My DS17 had a sudden decline in his mental health this year after the death of his best friend in a terrible accident.

It has been very helpful to have him on Life360 as it enables us to keep an eye on him while also giving him freedom to see his friends. It was because of tracking that I realised he was spending a lot of time at the last place he saw his friend alive, which told me that he was struggling more than he was letting on.

I also have my DD19 on it who is away at Uni. I must be a weird mum because if I see that she’s out clubbing at 2am I think that’s good she’s having fun and I go back to sleep. I’d be more worried if she was always in her room.

I’d have no problem if our 18 and 20yr old wanted to stop using life360, but they seem to like to know where me and their dad are, it’s normal for them i think. It’s really handy if I'm collecting them from the train or similar which is the only time I look at it really.
Doesn’t snap chat show them where friends are too? It’s just how the world is now, but I wouldn't have liked it at their age!

They’ll be your baby when they’re in their fifties or sixties. Will you still want to track them then? It’s perfectly normal to worry about your DC, no matter their age. Having to know where they are, what their plans are, when they get home isn’t.

People can be close to their adult children and choose not to track.
I've never tracked my kids.
It really doesn't make them safer

I find your attitude shocking tbh. Why do you think you are right?
I totally get on with my own life as do my dds, they arent in the slightest infantalised either. What a bizarre narrow minded view of other peoples relationships. And its not collusion in the slightest, its adults saying hey mum i dont have you on google maps do u want to add me? end of converstation.
Tis all very non eventful in my family really.

Ok back in the mid 80s when I went to uni I didn’t even call my parents. Infact I never had a close relationship with them from the day I moved out. I do have a very different relationship with my adult Dds. We’ve always chatted to each other daily. I know my youngest has flat mates that don’t contact their parents and have little desire to visit or be visited. I’m glad I don’t have that relationship tbh. However if that’s the relationship they want I respect it. I wouldn’t judge someone never be condescending enough to think my way is the only way. Unlike 90% of posters on here.

Much better to teach them to look out for people.

DD1 was needle spiked in a club as a fresher and her new uni mates looked out for her and she came to no harm other than feeling unwell. A tracker wouldn't have helped there, you need good mates in that situation and a club that cares about security and the welfare of its customers, and a well-funded police force to try to stop the situation occurring in the first place.