Using Your Kids' Cellphones to Track Them

[Jeff Higgins]

A buddy just forwarded a text that his 16 year old daughter received from her mother, my buddy's ex. It contained what looked like a copy and paste from some sort of a tracking app that her mother must have installed on her phone. It had three blocks of information, Total Miles (223), Top Speed (96 mph, which was while riding with my buddy in his 911), and Total Drives (21). Her mother demanded to know who she was with, I'm sure owing to that 96 mph run.

I have very mixed feelings about this. Mostly negative. Yes, I can see some value in being able to track one's kids, but only in situations wherein they are missing, late, or presumed to be at some peril for whatever reason. But day to day, just to monitor this sort of information? Seems like the ultimate expression of "helicopter parenting".

Even if this technology were available when my two boys were that age (and maybe it was), I would have never considered using it. I had a lot more respect for their privacy and a lot more trust in them to have ever monitored them at this level. I feel truly sorry for kids that suffer under parents like this, who are that untrusting and controlling. Maybe that's part of why my buddy divorced her.

[Rusty Heap]

People put Air Tags on luggage, just have the kid swallow it before a date.

[rattlsnak]

I can still track my kid's locations simply by using the Apple Find My app and they are 26 and 31... That being said, It's leftover from when they were teens. Being a divorced dad I used it just to verify that they got home safe from their parties when they were at home, etc.. Or when they drove 4 hours to college late at night. I still check on my daughter occasionally as she drives home from work at 3am- ish.. It wasn't a trust issue but simply a safety issue.

[unclebilly]

My 13 year old son is pretty independent and rides his dirt bike with his buddies. Yesterday there were 7 of them out riding. They met up in a coulee that is central and went to the store 10 miles away for ice cream and then eventually came back to our place to ride our track. One of his buddies fathers farms 10,000 acres nearby so lots of room to ride…

I use the location feature on his cell phone to know where he is all the time. It also works well when he is at the Calgary Stempede with his buddies (no parents).

This isn’t about trust, it’s about safety. There are lots of things that could go wrong when you have a bunch of kids out riding… I remember what it was like when I was that age on my dirt bike…

[Sooner or later]

I would be more concerned about the 96 mph than the tracking by the mom.

[LWJ]

We (my family) uses find my iPhone. It works great. We trust each other. Although Wife and I do spy on our kids, we don't react to what we learn from spying. And yes, everyone is very aware of this.

It is useful for when Grandma hasn't picked up the phone for 4 days or responded to texts. Is she dead, we ask? A quick look and we can see she is out doing her thing. Pfew...

[Arizona_928]

All of the apps gps track you. Take a photo? Geolocation. Snapchat. Ect.
The cell companies and albeit (government) keeps logs of every location you’ve been based on pings to cell towers, which then can be pulled months to years later.

A parent that does tracking needs to do it judicially as any confrontation leads to a bigger issue of lack of trust/respect…. That snow balls down to a further erosion of the relationship or trauma that will then have that girl tracking their s.o. locations. I’ll pass on that crazy.


Can we just go back to playing outside until dark, or being home at 11 for a date night?!
We’re zombies that are constantly looking at a screen…