Should Your Parents Track Your Location?

You’re walking home from school when your friend invites you over to play video games. It’s last minute, but your parents will know where you are before you even have a chance to grab a controller—thanks to the latest location-tracking technology.

Apps like Find My and Life360 make it easy for adults to monitor your every move. The apps use GPS technology to pinpoint the location of your phone, smartwatch, or other device. Your parents can see where you are in real time—as a dot on a digital map.

A growing number of parents rely on these apps. According to Life360, one in nine families in the United States now use its service. Many parents say the apps help them keep their kids safe. For instance, they can get alerts if their teen leaves a certain area. Some apps even track the speed of teen drivers’ cars. 

But not everyone thinks tracking kids is a good idea. Plenty of students—and some experts—say location-sharing apps make it harder for teens to practice being independent, an important skill for high school, college, and beyond. 

What do you think? Read on, then decide for yourself. 

Here’s something you likely already know: Parents worry about their kids—a lot. Tracking apps can help reassure them that all is well. 

That’s why Courtney Hamilton of Trumbull, Connecticut, uses one. She monitors her kids’ locations using the Find My app. “It’s not like I sit and stare at it for hours,” she says. 

“I think it’s helpful to know when they’re going somewhere on their own that they made it there OK.” 

Some students say the technology gives them more freedom to explore their world. “When teens get older, they like to do more stuff with their friends,” points out Lila Shanks, 11, from Canton, Massachusetts. Location-tracking apps can give them the confidence to do that since the technology provides a safety net, she says. If they need help or someone gets hurt, Lila explains, “it will be easy for their parents to find them.”

Even if nothing goes wrong, being able to track where kids are makes life easier, some parents say. For example, Hamilton’s 14-year-old son runs cross-country. She finds it helpful to know when she can pick him up from practice without having to call or text to ask whether he is done. “I can see if he is still out running somewhere or if he’s back at the school,” she says. 

But being tracked with an app doesn’t make life easier for teens like Jeremiah Vecchioni. The 18-year-old from Knoxville, Tennessee, says he feels like he doesn’t have any privacy. If he makes an unplanned stop on his way home from school, his parents usually text him. “They ask a million questions. Why did you stop? Who are you with?” Jeremiah says. “It’s like they forget I’m a person and not just a dot on the map.”

The apps can also get in the way of teens learning to be more responsible, some experts say. “Part of being a teen is learning how to make decisions independently,” says Lorrie Faith Cranor, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She studies security and privacy technologies. Parents need to have faith that their teens can handle some situations on their own, Cranor explains. “As useful as technology can be,” she says, “there is no substitute for trust.” 

Plus, tracking teens can backfire. Some kids try to get around the apps. Jeremiah, for one, admits he sometimes gets so tired of being tracked that he leaves his phone behind when he goes someplace new. “I know it’s not good to lie, but I need to feel like I’m not being watched all the time,” he explains. 

—with additional reporting by Anna Starecheski