@Youdon_tsay that’s a good question. I just asked my son - he was sitting right with me and said his Find My Friend/Phone app lists his Airpods but he said it always has No Location Found or something like that. He showed me, then I looked on mine and I could see their last location. He must have something wrong with his settings? I asked my daughter the same question and she said her AirPod location sometimes works, but not always - depends on where she is and how strong the signal I guess.
It would never occur to me to track our son (anyone) or his grades. Tracking apps seem kinda creepy to me.
The idea of trying to track a West Point cadet is hilarious. Pretty sure the Army would take a dim view of that. Plus, my cyber kid could thwart that in a nanosecond.
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Thwart? I can’t imagine anyone using the app without permission, actually not possible, anyone can just turn it off.
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Being a bit facetious there with common phone apps, but one of the projects he worked on was a location spoofing app that enables the trackee to control what the tracker sees–think of the Marauder’s Map where the trackee controls where the footprints go. The Army needs to be able to “thwart” the enemy’s ability to locate ground troops.
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Might be good for the army but we are discussing young adults. Not only do my kids use this technology with their friends, but with their siblings as well. No one is spying on them, they turn it on and off at will.
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Exactly. My kid sees it as a normal thing. She has no desire to thwart it - she’s an adult and can go where she wants whether I can see it on find my friend or not. And if she wanted to stop sharing her location with me she could at anytime - I’m not forcing her to share.
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It’s all relative.
I can track my kids but I obviously don’t watch it much as my oldest did end up in the ER without me even knowing (for a simple nose bleed). However, my 19 year old with adhd who rides a motorcycle I was thankful for the phone call from life 360 telling me a crash was detected and they auto called 911 and were in contact with my son.
I agree some parents are overbearing with it. Most of the parents I know personally use it simply for an extra layer of safety. My 16 year old daughter shares location with me and many of her friends. I guarantee she looks at it way more than I do.
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I didn’t even know this was a thing! I just cannot imagine tracking my kids ever. They are now in their 30s. But even back in college, I just cannot. Sure when they went off to college, it was an adjustment on my part to never know if they got home to their dorm each night and so on (one of my kids went from growing up on a dirt road in a rural area to going to college at age 16 in NYC even). When they were in college, I couldn’t even text with them as cell phones did not get service in my rural town at the time. We lived! I think once a kid is off to college, time to cut the apron strings. We should not know where they are at all moments. It is not really my business to know their every move as an adult. I just expect my adult kids to stay in touch periodically (not every day).
The only “check-ins” we do is if someone travels on a trip (either very long car trip, train, plane), to let me know they arrived safely at their destination. I let my then 18 year old drive from Vermont to Alaska and just asked her to call each night that she reached her destination.
I’ve always been an involved parent but what I am observing today with some teens and college kids are the parents are TOO involved in their lives and movements 24/7. I think it is particularly intrusive for a kid over 18 to be tracked and for a parent to know their every move. I would never do it but can’t imagine my kids wanting that either and we have close relationships.
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Everyone has their reason and level of using/abusing this whole idea of tracking apps. But I think that there are those who use it for 1. seeing where their kids are when, what they are up to…more snooping and 2. a layer of safety/safety measure.
It’s hard to knock #2. While a text or call when someone is traveling is your method, maybe checking the tracking app to see “yep, they arrived safely to a destination” is another families method.
Like so many things, you can use or abuse.
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I’m going to push back on the safety argument a bit that so many have mentioned. If you check that a kid arrived someplace, how is that about safety? They ARE safe. Seems to me to be more about parental anxiety/reassurance.
I think it will be really interesting years from now to see the effects of kids living in a surveillance state. I’m not talking about just tracking apps. I’m also thinking Ring doorbells and Onstar and traffic cameras, etc. Not saying that all these things are bad, of course. I just think it will be interesting to see how kids growing up thinking constant surveillance is normal are different than those of us who are Boomers and GenXers, who didn’t grow up like that.
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Yes, one could use the app to see if someone arrived safely on their trip. But trips are not an every day thing for most people. I can’t imagine using the app just for these infrequent occasions, though one could. My assumption is that it is used on a more regular basis beyond lengthy travel trips. That use is what I am questioning, not travel arrival on a long trip.
I don’t have any of the tracking apps. But I’m “listening” to what people have posted here and I can understand the benefit to THAT family in having/using what they do.
Anxiety/reassurance? Sure. Also depending on life circumstances there may be reasons for that anxiety/reassurance. Maybe the family has experienced a situation where a loved one did not arrive safely - let me tell ya, that will give you anxiety for LIFE.
We grew up (without apps and texts) with the habit of letting our parents know via a phone call that we arrived safely on a trip. We asked our kids as minors to do that as well - and they still do it most of the time as adults - and guess what? When I’m traveling they all text me and say “just shoot me a text when you get there/settled”. Not a hard thing to do. Doesn’t take away my or their independence. Maybe not necessary or wanted in other families. No one has a safety gun to their head in our family - it’s just what we do!
Did you read the responses? You don’t understand the way some older folks don’t understand why people have smartphones. When my kids are at college I’d have absolutely no reason to track them, it would serve no purpose. On a day to day basis it’s not used. Heck I drop my kids at college and then see the campus again at graduation, I’ve never even moved any of them home for breaks. I’m borderline irresponsible. I was just about to track one who’s lifeguarding because he thought he’d be home around 2, and I wanted to see if he could drive me to the mechanic to pick up my car. He can’t use his phone at work. Just checked my phone, apparently he’s working his other job, who knew? Might need a plan B. I do not like to use my phone at all when driving, so I do ask my kids not to call me to ask where I am, just check my location (this drove me nuts when they were younger waiting to be picked up). It’s a tool that’s available now that wasn’t available with your kids. My kids started walking to school in 2nd grade, had the run of the town at 10, very similar to how I grew up here (and were taking public transportation to nyc at 14).
I got my first cellphone after college, but times change, my oldest got a flip phone at 13.
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If you are viewing tracking apps as preventing bad things from happening, that they do not do. However, my 4’11" daughter FEELS safer knowing that multiple people know where she is. She has had a fear of being kidnapped for a long time. She was adopted as a baby and part of this could be feelings of abandonment. I allow her to track me in return as it makes her feel less anxious.
My husband tracks his father who has had a stroke and although he is fine 95% of the time, it does help my husbands anxiety that he may be able to recognize quicker if his father is in trouble so that does feel more safe to him.
And as I said a few times before, a tracking app called 911 for my son and alerted me. Did it prevent his crash? No. But it did immediately get him help and since he was on a rural road if he truly was hurt, much time could have gone by before someone found him. So yes, to me that feels more safe.
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Why do you think that? The app is free, you could go years without using it and it’s still free. My kids use it amongst themselves to find each other at bars. I don’t know what bars they go to because I have zero need to look (I’m probably in bed already). But if someone doesn’t come home and was expecting to, it makes my morning nicer to see they’re at a friend’s and not in an alley.
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My daughters dance team uses it to find each other at competitions and away events which often times are at very large convention centers or hotels. Sadly, cell phone service in some of the places is very poor but their tracking apps run on wifi typically fine.
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I think it’s just all about consent. If the family members all consent to it then it’s no problem and good for their family & friends.
If one person doesn’t want to location share (better term than tracking which can imply it is without consent) and another person is insisting they do/pressuring them then that’s a problem.
Freely sharing your location via Find My or Life 360, etc, is no different than texting or calling your family member to say, “going to class now” or “just checked into the hotel”.
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That’s what we do, too. Just yesterday, ds1 sent me his flight info for a work trip he is taking next month. I thought, well, that’s nice that he’s letting us know, but he’s married so I don’t worry about him a whit. I figure his wife will let me know if I need to know something!
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I’m going to look more into these apps/features. Maybe I have a basic misunderstanding of them. 
I will share my first exposure to tracking your adult kid. I found it really disturbing.
Many years ago, a dear friend’s son was living and working in Europe. While she and I were having lunch she let me know that she tracked her kid and knows that he must be seeing an old gf, because the app showed that he made it to her apartment and never left the entire weekend … wink, wink, nudge, nudge. I thought that was a horrible violation of his privacy. Later, she made sure that I understood that this monitoring was not to be revealed to our kids.
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Oh I remember that! Mine were Irish dancers so regional, national and international competitions had thousands at large hotels and conference centers and yes, it did get glitchy.
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