That’s creepy story but I imagine the son was freely sharing his location, whether he expected his mom to be looking at it as frequently as she did or not.
My kids can and do certainly turn off Find My on their iPhones when they want to. They usually leave it on when traveling.
It’s not like most parents are surreptitiously sticking magnet GPS trackers under the wheel well of their cars like in the detective shows.
Well, that is creepy. You have to click on their profile, and actively look, it doesn’t pop up or anything like a text.
The fact that she told me not to tell my son lest he tell her son tells me that he didn’t know this was happening.
That IS icky. I have never asked my kids “why were you at xyz place last night?” My daughter however asks all the time “why were you at XYZ city?”
My 23 yo shuts his location on and off sometimes. I don’t question it. My 19 yo has shut it off for long periods of time out of rebellion proving he’s “an adult” but after his recent crash, I think he understands. I was an ER nurse for 25 years. He knows it helps. And he has learned that I do respect his privacy and am not one to stalk him.
We stopped sharing locations when the app (Google’s Location Share) started storing our location data. My wife and our daughter share location, because they have iphones, and my wife only uses it to check if if our daughter is home when we want to call. If she isn’t, that means that she’s busy doing something and we don’t call, just leave a message for her to call.
All of our AirTags are connected to my wife’s app on her iphone, but that is purely for tracking luggage that is checked in.
I’m not going to get any app that tracks any members of my family unless my mother starts showing signs of senility (unlikely), because I am obsessive and am easily worried about family. So if I need to know where somebody is, I’ll text them to ask.
I didn’t even track my kids in high school. It’s a delicate balance letting kids learn things on their own, including screwing up occasionally, and making sure they don’t do anything too stupid, but I definitely think by the time they are legal adults, as parents we really should start letting go more. YMMV though.
I think it tells you that her son didn’t know how often his mom was checking his location that he shared with her — not that he didn’t know that she could see his location, just that he didn’t know how often she looked at it.
@Mjkacmom
I fully comprehend that times change and there are new fangled tech things available that were not in the past. Still, even if tracking was available when my kids were in college, I would not use it. I think it is an invasion of some of their privacy. Do I need to know they slept over so and so’s place? Etc. I don’t think I should be privy to every move they make. In fact, I likely would get anxious if I followed it closely. I just feel that once kids leave home, such as for college and onward, you can be close with them without knowing every single thing they are doing every moment of every day. I understand that there are some positive safety aspects to the technology…such as elderly parent living alone, kid on very long multi-state or multi-country travel day, etc. But it appears as if many parents are using it all day every day for young adults who ought to have more independence of every move they make that their parents do not need to know. That’s my personal opinion. I think some parents today are checking with their college age kids multiple times per day via text, etc. While I didn’t have that capability when my kids were in college, I have had it since and I have never done that. We keep in touch. We don’t text every day but moreover, not multiple times per day.
But most are saying they don’t use it to track their kids while they are away at college! I’m so much more relaxed when they are away, I have no idea if they never made it back home. When they’re living with me, I do know. Yes, they are supposed to text (same as high school, once my kids turn 18 the curfew goes out the window). I don’t even text with them daily at school, my college graduates even less except for the family text. I only check their location if I feel the activity is somewhat risky, like kayaking or hiking alone, had state troopers show up once because my son’s car was parked at a state park, during COVID when it was closed, and they had to send someone a mile in to find him since it was dark. My other graduate performs at these huge fairs, locations change every other week. Again, a handy tool. There really aren’t many times I use it, certainly not to just see where they are!
I think there are a lot of misconceptions, and judgements, about these apps from those that aren’t familiar. The OP story link is about a family with a student who opposed having the app. Overwhelmingly it seems that those that are responding, myself included, have kids who use these tools as a normal part of their lives with not just with their parents, but with their friends. And absolutely they can remove themselves anytime they want. For the vast majority, it’s absolutely not about tracking or spying, but just another safety tool.
We didn’t have airbags in cars back in the day either but no one is decrying using them in modern vehicles. I look at these apps in the same way.
I think one of the challenges here is that the real problem with the use of location data is the intent with which it’s used. If it’s like a previous poster, and some mom is watching her son to see if he’s visiting an old girlfriend and not telling him that she’s looking, that is creepy. That’s a total invasion of privacy.
And if it’s a parent who is watching their college kid because they are having a hard time letting go and they want to see if they are in their dorm at night, or walking to class on time, or in a classroom building, or where they went after class, then that’s probably a bit much, and not something you really need to know, and probably feeding your anxiety. it’s not necessarily nefarious - people I’ve seen who do this just miss their kids so much and they want to be able to picture them in their new lives, and not all kids are great at communicating even if they are willing and happy to share details of their lives (mine still answers most questions with “fine” or “good”).
But - what if (example from my college parents facebook page) it’s a college student who has told their parent they are suffering from depression. That there are days where they can’t get out of bed. That things are really bad for them right now. And you see that their phone hasn’t moved in the morning when it should have. And you text them and call them and they don’t answer. And an hour later their phone still hasn’t moved. Yes, that parent is anxious as all hell. And scared. But maybe with good reason. So when that parent calls campus police and says “I need a well check on my kid, their phone hasn’t moved and it should have” maybe that gets someone the help they need.
And to an uninformed observer, both these parents did the same thing - both were just looking to see if their kid was in their dorm, or in class. But to one parent, it was a bit of parental overreach and struggle to let go, and to the other, it was a legit health and safety issue.
Added to all of that, having the ability to see the location your child is in, doesn’t mean you’ll use it. I can use Find My and see where either of my kids are at any time. If I look at it even once a month I’d be shocked.
So I feel like there are so many gradations here. Intent matters. Consent matters. No one is categorically wrong to use an app, nor is anyone categorically wrong to say it’s not right for their family. There’s just a lot to unpack here.
Wow, I mentally blocked some trauma from a couple of years ago! I knew in my heart that my youngest was going through some mental health issues before college even started in 2021. Senior year, summer before, H thought it was a combination of COVID and senioritis. I did check on him with find my iPhone, he was almost always in his dorm room. He only had one in person class, so at first I was thinking he was enjoying Xbox a lot. Then the phone calls started, wanted to keep coming home. Then we found a psychiatrist aftrehe admitted a psychotic episode. He said this wasn’t really his expertise. He then started meeting with my daughter’s therapist over zoom. He couldn’t even manage to remember his appointments. His last call was 4 am, asking for a ride home, I stayed on the phone while H drove there, he refused to go back into the dorm. He was in bad shape. It caused me tremendous anxiety checking on him, each time hoping I was wrong, hoping he’d be at a football game or something.
Yes, as I mentioned in my posts, there are definitely exceptions when I think tracking is acceptable. But it’s a small percentage of kids in that category.
Yes I know, I just claimed to have never tracked any of my kids like that (seeing how often they were in their dorm), and I completely lied unintentionally.
I think that it’s a bit disingenuous to compare these apps to airbags. Two things that exist now but didn’t at one time is an incredibly loose equivalence to make.
As someone discussed above, we are adding a level of surveillance to our lives which is new, and outside of anything we have experienced in earlier times. Maybe some people think this is good, or a reasonable tradeoff, while others may feel it’s a loss of a kind of privacy that more and more does not exist.
The fact that many young people assent to this, and use it among themselves, does not perforce make it benign. (Nor does it automatically make it malignant either). But what it does do is make the world we’re moving around in a different kind of place than it’s been in previous times.
Is that good, bad? That’s up to us all to figure out.
I myself treasure the ability to get lost, even if I don’t have a particular reason to need to. I would be sad to know it doesn’t exist --though our world makes it more and more difficult in a zillion ways. Maybe personal tracking is not the worst one, but I think we’re talking eventual tip of the iceberg.
I don’t think as a society we are capable of not letting ALL the geniis out of the bottle that we can. We just don’t seem to be built that way.
Two of my boys are unmarried and they still send me their flight info when they travel for work or fun…just so someone knows if something happens to a plane/airport/city. Edit, just to say, I don’t even ask them - they just never stopped doing it. I’m assuming if/when they marry or have a significant other that knows us, that will likely stop.
My older daughter is married and she still texts me to say shes taking off and that she’s landed. I’m always tempted to say that if a commercial plane doesn’t land , g-d forbid, I’ll know it because it would be breaking news. But that would freak her out. So I just give it a heat emoji when she texts.
I’m sorry - I didn’t mean to inadvertently bring up something upsetting. I should’ve put a warning on my reply or thought about that before I included the story. It just made such a huge impression on me at the time. I’m glad to hear that things must be on the upswing with your child.
I will add my experience with my kids as another data point. I was quite involved in their life when they were in high school – driving, coordinating, looking at grades and trying to prevent every misstep. They did go to school and sports by themselves as our town is safe and bike-able. Never tracked their location but was in their life a lot. In hindsight, that was not good for them or me.
My daughter went to college abroad and now lives overseas. It would be impossible to track her anyway. If I were able to track her location, I’d go crazy as she travels all over and is also a long-distance runner who runs at all hours. Most importantly, tracking her would not make her safer. Bad things can happen in a blink of an eye, I would not able to prevent anything. As the article said “ Tracking only prolongs it by promising something you can’t be given. Ever. By anything. The app won’t make your kids okay. Your knowing where they are, when they arrive and how fast a car gets them there will not make them okay. Because whatever is happening to them at any given moment is independent of your knowing where. Treating location as your early warning system to parachute in with … advice? warnings? law enforcement? sharply worded concerns? is parenting beyond your job description to make yourself feel better.”
So true. My sister would have lost her son even if she’d been tracking him. 