How to get around teen freezing Life 360

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Most teens put the phone in airplane mode or disable gps on the entire phone.

And I am laughing at the comments. When the hacks work you don’t find out. That’s the whole point. You think your kid is in bed, or at a friends house, or at the library etc…

Find My IPhone with a full parent lock - without letting your teen know usually works and you can verify by checking both 360 and Find My at the same time. Caught my son this way. And yes loss of phone for 2 weeks. But I am sure he will try it again

I have a hard teen and that’s why he have a security system operating at night (it pings my phone every time the door is opened or a code used), video cameras at the door etc. But sneaking out is to me a different issue from Life360.

[Anonymous]

If your kid can’t be trusted, I get it. But if they’re generally trustworthy, why do this? With my three, including two teens and one young adult, I told them I wouldn’t track as long as they were abiding by our rules. We have Life360 for car trips and the like, but we otherwise never check. They know that if we have reason to stop trusting, they will get less freedom and independence. But I want to prepare them for a world in which no one is following their every movement to ensure they’re only making perfect decisions. Somehow all of us on here survived the teen years, and I can’t imagine there are many of us who didn’t make a few questionable decisions along the way. We learned from those as well. I do understand tightening the leash if your child is a habitual liar or meeting strangers from the internet at the mall or doing drugs, but otherwise, you’re doing no one any favors, including yourself. My anxiety would be through the roof if I felt responsible for tracking my kids all the time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How about telling your kid that if they do that again, they lose their phone for a week.

This is what I would do. I don't have Life 360 on my kids but we do use Find My Friends and if I find they've turned location off I'll reach out to them and tell them to turn it back on. If they don't, or it happens regularly, then they know their phone is in my possession for a period of time.

Caveat: I fortunately don't have kids who are getting into trouble, or have any issues where I may need to closely monitor them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How old is the teen, and what are you worried they are doing when they have location turned off?

We just had this discussed in our house. 17 year old wants privacy and not to be tracked. He does occasionally go to “hang outs” he sometimes has beer. !

As the parent of a fellow 17y...WTF? Nope. I am not naive thinking my kids will never drink. But wanting privacy and going to have a beer at 17y is not happening.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How old is the teen, and what are you worried they are doing when they have location turned off?

We just had this discussed in our house. 17 year old wants privacy and not to be tracked. He does occasionally go to “hang outs” he sometimes has beer. !

As the parent of a fellow 17y...WTF? Nope. I am not naive thinking my kids will never drink. But wanting privacy and going to have a beer at 17y is not happening.

Does 360 have a beer sensor?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Ok so I found out there are hacks to freeze life 360 so it looks like a teen is in one location but isn’t. It used to be just turning off cellular data so your location doesn’t refresh, but now it seems like offloading the app works too. Is there anyway to make it reliable to parents or do I download another tracker app and hide it on their phone?

Has anyone had success with another app? I am also thinking of Find my iPhone - with a parent lock but wasn’t sure if there were ways to get around it.

Your impulse to track and stalk your teen is creepy AF. Delete that damn app.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How old is the teen, and what are you worried they are doing when they have location turned off?

We just had this discussed in our house. 17 year old wants privacy and not to be tracked. He does occasionally go to “hang outs” he sometimes has beer. !

As the parent of a fellow 17y...WTF? Nope. I am not naive thinking my kids will never drink. But wanting privacy and going to have a beer at 17y is not happening.

So glad I’m not a kid right now. No wonder they all have mental health problems.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Seriously stop tracking your kid. People parented for thousands of years without doing this.

My kid is 14 so no

They don’t drive so your tracking their walking?

Are you kidding pp

Tracking whether they are sneaking out. Or really at a friends house. Or really at a sleepover, or really studying at home (if you are elsewhere)

Some teens lie and sneak. I have 3 of them and 1 is trying to break the rules every darn day. So I get it.

So let me get this straight. You did such a poor job raising your child to this point they engage in these behaviors? And you haven’t learned from your past mistakes and want to hover still?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How about telling your kid that if they do that again, they lose their phone for a week.

Yep. And if they drive, the car is mine too.

+1 and actually follow through on it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How old is the teen, and what are you worried they are doing when they have location turned off?

We just had this discussed in our house. 17 year old wants privacy and not to be tracked. He does occasionally go to “hang outs” he sometimes has beer. !

As the parent of a fellow 17y...WTF? Nope. I am not naive thinking my kids will never drink. But wanting privacy and going to have a beer at 17y is not happening.

I don’t give him privacy SO he can have a beer. He has admitted he sometimes does have a beer, and some of the times he hangs out with friends there are beers available. He also hates being tracked and feeling watched when he goes to Chick fil A and Top Golf with his buddies. He wants to be free of our eyes. At 17 that is totally appropriate. We simply now have the tools to invade teen’s privacy in ways no one has before, and it is super tempting to use those tools, even if they don’t keep our kids any safer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Seriously stop tracking your kid. People parented for thousands of years without doing this.

My kid is 14 so no

Your kid knows more than you and all of us. You are asking an anonymous board how to stop your kid from hacking this. He is 5 steps ahead of our ideas.

I use find my iPhone for my 13 yo and rarely check it. I don’t track my 16 yo. Either could get around any tracking quickly if they wanted to now.

[Anonymous]

Take the phone away

[Anonymous]

Very few of you are answering the question.

Many of you have acknowledged that there are situations in which this type of oversight may be necessary- proven untrustworthy, specific location that child shouldn't go to but does, overall challenge. Let's just assume already that OP is not a perfect parent and does not have a perfect kid. They are trying.

OP, you did get one good piece of advice- air tag. And no this is not "secretly" tracking if the kid already knows they have Life 360.

And advice to take the phone away is not all that helpful if you have a teen who puts themselves in dangerous situations. Taking the phone away means you lose the ability to not only locate, but also contact your kid or have them contact you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How about telling your kid that if they do that again, they lose their phone for a week.

+1 why are you allowing this, OP. Nip it in the bud. It's like putting a bandaid on a gashing would.

If your kid doesn't want you to know where they are, chances are they are doing something that you said they can't do; or there's a trust issue there.

That's the issue.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If your kid can’t be trusted, I get it. But if they’re generally trustworthy, why do this? With my three, including two teens and one young adult, I told them I wouldn’t track as long as they were abiding by our rules. We have Life360 for car trips and the like, but we otherwise never check. They know that if we have reason to stop trusting, they will get less freedom and independence. But I want to prepare them for a world in which no one is following their every movement to ensure they’re only making perfect decisions. Somehow all of us on here survived the teen years, and I can’t imagine there are many of us who didn’t make a few questionable decisions along the way. We learned from those as well. I do understand tightening the leash if your child is a habitual liar or meeting strangers from the internet at the mall or doing drugs, but otherwise, you’re doing no one any favors, including yourself. My anxiety would be through the roof if I felt responsible for tracking my kids all the time.

It’s not always about trust at all. I have a hired driver that takes my kid to after school activities etc. I use the app to track when she departs and arrives to make sure she got there safely, or to know when she is returning from say, a field trip so I know when to depart my house to pick her up. Just lots of examples like that. Has nothing to do with not trusting her.