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?

DD, at uni,messaged me yesterday to say "Tell nana I love her" I was indeed at my mums. Tracking works both ways.

My eldest started uni a few weeks ago. I don't track him. I get that it would be nice to see him go about his day but I don't think that it is very conducive to becoming a confident and relaxed adult to feel like you must be constantly observable to your parents to be safe.

DD asked me to have life 360 when she went to uni as she had a bar job that finished late and wanted to know that I knew she had got home. No 3 years later and she’s working I check it once a week as Friday night she has a job that finishes in the evening she drives to us to stay the night and do a different job on Saturday. So I use it to time her dinner to be ready.
In the week she will look to see where I am to know when she can give me a call I am also freelance so work different days, times and locations.

But you couldn't stop that from happening by tracking. I find it odd the world is no worse thsn it's ever been, depressingly the same in some ways.

Unless they are un a very dangerous area or there are very specific safety issues, I don’t think this is healthy at all.

Even taking into account the various attacks that have happened, I don’t want my children to live a fearful life full of anxiety.

How does tracking stop these things happening though?

I’m watching the Hack at the moment and I thought this was going to be a thread about some criminal activity. I can’t get my head round that people track each other all the time and that it’s so normalised. Having a private, separate life is important for emotional and psychological development. Tracking each other all the time shows a lack of boundaries between people. I’m prepared to be persuaded differently about the advantages of the safety aspect but I can’t see how tracking helps preserve safety (most people are safe most of the time anyway!) and it would have to be a compelling argument to outweigh the huge psychological cost of being tracked all the time and giving up a right to privacy and separation from others.

I wouldn’t dream of tracking my adult children. What an invasion of privacy!

We have had find our phones and our kids have just gone to uni. I don’t ‘track’ them as such ie never even occurred to me to check where they are when - but I do like to click on the app occasionally. The whole family’s phones appear and it makes me happy to think of everyone and still feel connected.

Yes I agree with this. Developing a separate life is part of being an adult.

i get that there are risks in life but how does constantly checking phones mitigate these risks. Or help young people develop their own strategies to mitigate? And when will you stop tracking them? At 20? 30?

I would have resented this has my mum done this when I was a mid teen and into late teens.
So the poster up thread is saying how 'close she is to her d, very, very close' and she tracks her to protect her. Fair enough that's her choice.
That suggests smothering to me because if anything is going to go wrong, it will do, a phone could be lost, stolen or damaged. It doesn't protect the carrier from harm but only summon help if possible.

Over to you omgno222 - Like other posters on here who have quoted you, how DOES tracking stop things happening? Can't for the life of me answer that myself.

As lots of PP have said – how would this help your DD – how would it have helped the students who were so horrifically attacked in Nottingham?

In fact you have no idea if they were being tracked or not. And I find it insulting to their parents, who have behaved with immense courage and dignity, that you imply that if they had been tracked, what happened would not have happened.

I don’t track my DC or my DH as it goes. You track your DD – that’s for the two of you to be happy with.

What do you mean btw by "We don't live in 1990 anymore"? As if 1990 was a time when no attackers or muggers were around? What's that about?

I am pretty sure the stats show no special rise in violent crime in the last 30 or 50 years. I grew up in the 1970s, in the shadow of the Yorkshire Ripper (women were advised against applying to Leeds or Manchester Uni). Violence has always existed.

As PP have said, attacks in the street are, thankfully, vanishingly rare. DC need to know how to keep themselves safer – in a bar, in the street.

I was sexually assaulted as a 19yo student walking home from.a student society one night.

I don't track my teens. I find it counter productive.
Firstly.. it just shows whee the phone is, not them.
Secondly... how do you know where the phone is supposed to be? If it stops suddenly... has it just run out of battery, or is there a problem?
Thirdly... what can you actually di?

Saying that... I can see the benefit in those rare cases someone is injured but missing, like when a car has left the road. Something that could be activated only when there is a known emergency. Or for those with medical issues. Just not normal everyday life.

We used find my for ages. It helped when dd was out to 3am or 4am I could wake up and know she was hone safely as she lives in a big city. It gave me huge piece of mind, and I could go back to sleep.

Now she is older and doesn’t enjoy clubbing we have removed it. I miss it when she goes to a late party, but I am becoming more confident that she is safe so it has eased.

Due to the timing of he pandemic she had been to very few parties, clubs and even cities. It was a big deal for all of us when she left, she said she felt safer knowing people knew where she was. Her flat mates track each other too.

I have got used to no tracking now and appreciate her texts to let me know she is home. I used to enjoy knowing she was enjoying her life, and dancing across the city, seeeing her dot move around was really reassuring. I can see why parents and students use them. If a student goes missing etc

its useful to see where they are on the train home etc so I know when to leave to collect her. They don’t feel so alone I guess. I rarely checked it, just late nights and transport reasons.

Turning tracking on when driving on country roads at night or when going out late at night (with the potential to be coming home alone even if friends say they won't go home separately) is a reasonable safety decision for adults of any age.

A young man whose parents live near us died when he fell (yes, he was drunk or at least had been drinking, but that's hardly a crime) on the way home from a night out and wasn't found until the next day - it's unbearable that he might have been alright if he'd been found quickly, rather than many hours later by a morning dog walker.

I suppose it depends whether the individual will be potentially in any kind of vulnerable situations where it's helpful to them for someone to know where they are.

I ask my young adults to switch tracking on when they drive at night (we're in the countryside and the one who lives in a city drives back to us and also to partner and to various friends scattered around the county). I share my location with my young adult kids all the time, though only expect them to check where I am if they need a lift or I'm late home/ to meet them!

A generation of parents who went to university and called home once a week of the pay phone in halls was free, are now tracking their kids’ every move?!

Who is going to be the first to admit to installing a Ring camera in the student child’s bedroom?

I can see both my DDs on Find Friends. They are aged 27 and 33! They can see where me and DH are too. I don't stalk them or ask them why they have gone somewhere but i find it reassuring somehow in a comfort way not in an anxious way.

This will divide the room- people get v cross about calling it tracking and will give all sorts of reason why it’s safe and helpful.

Its stalking. Stop it

Yes, I remember one of them saying they could see the phone had moved to the police station.

I think this is over bearing, they’re adults. Surely they don’t want their parents to know their every move. It invades their privacy.

I agree it is very odd. I have a Son at Uni and a DD who has just graduated and is now living in London. I am around 4 hours from both of them. How on earth would tracking them stop them being attacked? I think it is unnecessarily intrusive.

I've never tracked my teen. And I've never allowed anyone to track me. I find it creepy as fuck and totally unnecessary. I can't believe there are young adults out there happy for their parents to do this. It's very unhealthy. Just shows how normalised it's become though. I'm very grateful to have grown up pre mobile phones.

I’m sorry but you knowing where she is is not protecting her from any of the things above! Unless she goes missing its going to be of no help to you other than offering peace of mind, or satisfying some sort of weird stalkerish mentality.

@omgno222 - it’s no more dangerous now than it was in 1990, and quite possibly less so. See eg below:

https://www.murdermap.co.uk/statistics/london-murder-statistics-historical/. This London “murder map” actually compares murder stats from 1990 to 2024.

It might feel more dangerous because of the constant news cycle but it isn’t.

I don’t track my DDs.

That said, if you feel better for tracking your DC and they don’t mind, that seems fair enough, as long as it’s not used to police their movements.