To Track or Not to Track
Seemingly overnight, everyone has a cellphone. About 97% of American adults between the ages of 18 and 49, and 80% of kids between the ages of 14 and 18 have one, usually a smart phone. It has become a right of passage for kids to get their first phone, usually around 11 years old, when they start Middle School. And one of the primary conditions parents put on their kids when they get their first phone is that they will be tracked by their parents. This turns out to be a devil’s bargain.
According to a study published in the Journal of Family Psychology, about half of parents in the U.S. monitor their kids’ movements via location-tracking apps. In my community, it’s closer to 100%, minus a few outliers like me. In 2015, Find My Friends became standard on Apple Phones and many of my friends started tracking their kids. I had a visceral reaction to this. When I was a teenager, I really would not have wanted my Mom tracking me, it would have felt like she was stalking me.
Parents instinctually want to protect their kids and many feel that tracking them keeps them safer. But are you really protecting your kids by tracking them? Take the worst case scenario: your child is abducted. So there you are, then watching the little blip of your child being trafficked out of state. And even in that scenario, don’t you think the first thing your child’s kidnaper will do is throw your kid’s phone away?
Tracking your kids could give you and your kids a false sense of security. One of the real world dangers of cellphones is obliviousness to the world around you.
Recently my son told me about another danger, that when kids want to escape their parents’ surveillance, they leave their phones at one house and then are out and about without the safety of having their phone.
If tracking your kids phones is not really about protecting them, what is it for? To calm your own anxiety? To make logistics easier? Curiosity? Boredom? And what are you and your kid losing from this practice? There is a real danger of damaging your relationship with your kids by tracking them. This is the phase of life when they are developing their sense of autonomy, independence, responsibility. By tracking them, are you sending the message that you don’t trust them? This can be a real hit to their self confidence.
Both of my kids have thanked me for not tracking them. When they go out, we agree on when they will check in with me and that I expect them to respond to my (infrequent) texts. They understand that being responsible is part of the deal - they can have as much freedom and privacy as they want as long as they are responsible. The truth is, they have to be able to navigate the world without me, and managing their cell phone use is now part of being an adult.