Life 360 in College

[Anonymous]

Do you guys leave Life 360 or Find My iPhone on when your child goes to college?
I just dropped mine off as a freshman, and got a text asking me when we can shut it off.
I'm not ready!!! Does everyone get rid of it or do people keep it on? I am sure my child would love to turn it off, but I feel like it helps with safety too.

[Anonymous]

I wouldn’t do life 360- good grief but my kids and I are all on find my friends. Just for emergencies. My daughter checks my location to see how close I am to home etc

[Anonymous]

You shouldn't be using that in college.

We all share Find My Friends but that's it.

[Anonymous]

What's Find My Friends?

[Anonymous]

And why is Find My Friends any different than Life 360? (serious question)

[Anonymous]

Your kid is an adult. Cut the apron strings.

[Anonymous]

Find my friends just shows location. I thought life 360 let you track usage and turn it off and block things. That’s a whole other level.

[Anonymous]

Our sophomore daughter still has the free version of Life360 on her phone specifically for safety. She sets up a name for her dorm and now apartment. We get an alert when she gets home. We don’t track to see where she is and don’t plan to unless she goes unheard from after a few days.

She uses it to see when we are getting close so she can meet us at her door.

Her and her friend groups all use it.

We are not interested in the features that come with the paid version.

If I wanted to track her location I would put air tags in her car and backpack, but I don’t.

There is zero wrong with it if it works for your family. I could care less what anyone else on a free anonymous message board may think.

[Anonymous]

My soon-to-be college sophomore still has it on her phone. I don't check it, I think I checked it when I was visiting to find her on a corner.

However, I think it's important to have in case there is an emergency.

When she was in high school, she was in a car accident on a street that we drive on all the time. She was crying and when I said "where are you" she said "I don't know!" so I looked and knew exactly where to go.

[Anonymous]

^^OP if you are "not ready" just explain that you are not checking it, but it's helping you deal with that s/he is so far away, so to give you a little time.

[Anonymous]

I never had Life360 on my kids nor do I think it’s appropriate to have on a college student. My kids do have it on each other so if there is an emergency I can always ask one of them to locate the other. I asked my DS to check last year about a week into school where my DD was after she didn’t respond to a text from me for a long time and turns out she was at a bar lol. Color me surprised, I didn’t even know she had an ID. Anyway, I ask my DD to let me know she’s home safe if she is going out, sometimes she does, sometimes she doesn’t but I’m learning to let go.

[Anonymous]

In June my 17-yr-old went to beach week with classmates in NC. Drove there with another kid his age. Of course I had him use turn on the Life 360 free version. (I've no idea what the PP above is talking about when they say you can turn off things with it. I just know how to track the general vicinity of the phone.) Now that he's in PA about 8 weeks later, we're supposed to have zero interest in making sure he's where he is supposed to be?

As I see it, this is a transition period. I have no intention of needing to keep tabs on him once we've set up a regular pattern of communicating and checking in. He isn't even old enough to vote or buy cigarettes, FFS, so why would we pretend that he is a full fledged independent adult all of a sudden? It's not like he even wants that yet. He doesn't want us telling him what time to go to bed or with whom to go to bed, nor do we want to be involved in those issues any longer. But that's a long way from having zero connection to us.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In June my 17-yr-old went to beach week with classmates in NC. Drove there with another kid his age. Of course I had him use turn on the Life 360 free version. (I've no idea what the PP above is talking about when they say you can turn off things with it. I just know how to track the general vicinity of the phone.) Now that he's in PA about 8 weeks later, we're supposed to have zero interest in making sure he's where he is supposed to be?

As I see it, this is a transition period. I have no intention of needing to keep tabs on him once we've set up a regular pattern of communicating and checking in. He isn't even old enough to vote or buy cigarettes, FFS, so why would we pretend that he is a full fledged independent adult all of a sudden? It's not like he even wants that yet. He doesn't want us telling him what time to go to bed or with whom to go to bed, nor do we want to be involved in those issues any longer. But that's a long way from having zero connection to us.

You do realize that your DS is younger than many of his peers? My freshman last year turned 19 in October so yeah, she didn't want us tracking her life on Life360, and I respect that. Everyone’s kid is different.

[Anonymous]

I think its really really weird to track family members phones. I don't need to know exacrky where my teens or DH is. How stifling! Wow.

[Anonymous]

No. We stopped using it in HS.