I don’t think I ever did it to my kids, but I remember other parents say they had their kids take a selfie in the location they said they were going. Old school!
It’s worse than you think.
Well, maybe slightly less worse because after the blowback from that story, they are selling your personal location data to “just” two companies now.
I have two teenaged kids, and I wouldn’t dream of violating their privacy by tracking their phones.
No, my Wife and I don’t. I kind of thought about it though. She takes the dogs for long walks in the mountains around us. Thing is, she pops in and out of cell coverage I’m sure, so would probably not be reliable.
I generally know where she is/what trail she is on.
if all agree on it, how is it a violation of privacy?
We got our oldest kid a phone when she went away to college. In high school, we usually set a curfew, but we didn’t stay up late enough to know if they followed it or not. We told them not to ride with anyone who had been drinking, and to not have us have to pick them up in the hospital or police station.
All 3 survived somehow.
well, it could lead to things like:
That just feels like a creepy invasion of privacy.
Yeah, the odd thing is, despite my wife and I sharing each other’s location, I do feel somewhat odd about doing that to my kids. Ask me in a few years when they’re teenagers. They’re in K and 3 and don’t even have phones yet.
I guess it depends on the kid. Ours (not quite a teenager) has a tendency to forget to tell us where he’s going. We used to drive him to school ourselves. Now we let him walk or bike with the condition that we can track him.
My wife and I keep location sharing on for each other. It’s very convenient when traveling if we separate briefly. For instance, if she wants to go look at a certain thing, but I want to go look at something else. Or if one of us disappears to go find a restroom. The other doesn’t need to sit there and wait or follow the other around. We can keep exploring or whatever, and be able to walk straight to their location later. We don’t have to get on the phone and try to describe where we’re at or what we’re next to. We just walk to the blue icon. Sometime I might drop her off while I find parking or something. We can always reunite easily.
Just yesterday I picked my wife up at the train station. I knew exactly where the train was, so I didn’t have to keep asking “how much longer”, “is the train running on time”? And when she arrived, she didn’t need to ask where I was parked. She was able to walk straight to me. It’s the same when picking each other up at the airport after a trip. We always know exactly where the other person is.
If I’m wondering if she’s still at work or on the way home, or whatever. It’s just a quick glance at the phone to know.
I disagree that it has anything to do with a lack of trust. On the contrary, I’d say a couple needs absolute trust in each other to enable such a feature. It’s an easy convenience if you have complete trust in the other person. It’s an annoying invasion of privacy if you don’t. We have nothing to hide from each other, so it’s all pros and zero cons.
Even if you can’t see the benefits of it. What possibly could be the negative if you have nothing to hide?
My mom, 93 years old absolutely refuses to wear a ‘I’ve fallen and can’t get up button’. It’s crazy.
I’m trying to get her some in home help. The owner of the company came to evaluate, and we could talk to him. He suggested I install cameras in the house to keep an eye on her. Now THAT would be creepy.
She did fall once but waited for 10 hours before calling me. She did not want to wake me. So instead she called when I was in a face to face meeting with co-workers. Gaaaaa.
yes, that seemed very “off” to me as well.
What was the anger about?
Is there something worse about having teenage sex in a car v teenage sex in a house?
Yeah, i can see sharing location with my husband. I don’t, and there aren’t a lot of times it would be helpful, but i doubt it would ever be a problem. I can’t see sharing location with my kids.
For the record, we are not activating location tracking on our tween girl’s phone so we can monitor her activities — “surveillance,” to use the word upthread. We will use it only to find her when specific circumstances warrant.
(e.g. she gets on the wrong bus, and calls us. If we ask, “where are you?” she is likely to respond “I don’t know, there are some houses, and I think the bus passed a gas station a couple minutes ago?” This is the type of situation where we will look to see where she is.)
Yeah, I could never track my kids, but my friend’s son had done a couple things that justified his actions.
When my kids started middle school, the school district put them on metro buses to get them to school across town. That was when I got them cell phones, in case they got lost or had problems with creeps on the bus or whatever. If tracking had been available back then, I definitely would have gotten it. High school would have been another issue, though. Idk what I would have done. Looking back, it would have been really useful, but they wouldn’t have stood for it and would have figured out ways around it (claim to have left the phone in their locker, gotten a burner phone, etc).
It’s over on the in-laws side that tracking is done. So, my wife and her sister, and their parents, the five of us we all track each other. It comes in handy from time to time. No big deal.
I have the logon to our shared iTunes account (that my husband’s iPhone is linked to), so I could do Find My iPhone if I felt the urge.
And he has the login info to check the location of my Android. I made sure of that when I was planning to drive, solo, to Florida to help his parents move. He did check occasionally.
And I have (or at least, 6 years ago, HAD) my son’s iTunes password saved - I used it to check on his location a few times when he did his solo Europe trip. I have not told him that I cyber-stalked him. It was tremendously reassuring though, when we didn’t hear from him for several days - I spotted him in a city that he had planned to visit, but later in the trip than he actually wound up doing.
I have no clue if he has changed his password.
When my daughter did a solo trip a year or so later, I asked her to write her password down in a sealed envelope. She knew about the son’s trip, and didn’t want us to be following her from afar, so we compromised on that solution.
And… we got Air Tags for the in-laws to keep in their wallets - because this way if they are ever out of the house and need help, we can help from afar in directing the police or whatever.