Do you use trackers with your college kids?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I truly cannot believe the BS excuses for all of this tracking!
It's unhealthy and insane. My kids and my husband deserve privacy. I deserve privacy. We owe it to our kids to let them be independent adults ON THEIR OWN.

LOL, the righteousness. Google and Apple both know where you are, all the time.

You are rationalizing the fact that you’re tracking your adult children!

And You are literally losing it over something that has no consequence to you. It is a technology that my family chooses as a Form Of Communication
But you’re a boomer and have no clue what Im saying. Amiright??

It actually does have consequences to everyone. Every employer they have, every relationship they have. The levels of anxiety and depression.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I truly cannot believe the BS excuses for all of this tracking!
It's unhealthy and insane. My kids and my husband deserve privacy. I deserve privacy. We owe it to our kids to let them be independent adults ON THEIR OWN.

LOL, the righteousness. Google and Apple both know where you are, all the time.

You are rationalizing the fact that you’re tracking your adult children!

And You are literally losing it over something that has no consequence to you. It is a technology that my family chooses as a Form Of Communication
But you’re a boomer and have no clue what Im saying. Amiright??

It actually does have consequences to everyone. Every employer they have, every relationship they have. The levels of anxiety and depression.

Oh please. 🙄 Stop projecting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid goes to school in LA and there are weekly police advisories of incidents. Par for the course for a major city and I usually don’t pay any attention to the small ones. When there’s an ongoing incident though, I check on find my to see where my kid is relative to the incidents. If they went to college in the middle of cowtown USA, I’d probably never use the feature. Context matters.

Why? What do you intend to do with this information?

Why are you the one getting campus alerts from 3,000 miles away?

If there’s an armed robbery at the In and Out Burger two blocks from your adult daughter’s residence…. you do what, exactly, when your location tracker tells you your daughter is two blocks away? Have a reassuring conversation? Tell her to shut her blinds and stay away from windows?

Trying to understand how tracking your adult relatives using TWO surveillance domains is in fact helpful

Have you had a child on a campus where there is a lockdown because of an active shooter? I have, and ir f—king scary. Not a rando store two miles off campus. Shooter on campus. Parents who shrug while students are being shot at UVA and criticize parents who try to make certain their kid isn’t dead have something wrong with them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid goes to school in LA and there are weekly police advisories of incidents. Par for the course for a major city and I usually don’t pay any attention to the small ones. When there’s an ongoing incident though, I check on find my to see where my kid is relative to the incidents. If they went to college in the middle of cowtown USA, I’d probably never use the feature. Context matters.

Why? What do you intend to do with this information?

Why are you the one getting campus alerts from 3,000 miles away?

If there’s an armed robbery at the In and Out Burger two blocks from your adult daughter’s residence…. you do what, exactly, when your location tracker tells you your daughter is two blocks away? Have a reassuring conversation? Tell her to shut her blinds and stay away from windows?

Trying to understand how tracking your adult relatives using TWO surveillance domains is in fact helpful

Have you had a child on a campus where there is a lockdown because of an active shooter? I have, and ir f—king scary. Not a rando store two miles off campus. Shooter on campus. Parents who shrug while students are being shot at UVA and criticize parents who try to make certain their kid isn’t dead have something wrong with them.

PS— I have the schools public app on my phone. When there is a campus lockdown due to an active shooter, everyone with the app gets an alert. I guess having the publicly accessible app for your kids school so you can easily do things like pay tuition is also smothering them?

[Anonymous]

For the record, parents get notified when occurrences happen ON campus. Not when they are across campus at Five Guys.

You can complain all you want about everything else in the world but don’t complain about parents caring about their loved ones. Be a better human. Honestly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Kids share their location with everyone on Snapchat. They simply don't care if parents know their location.

I think this is another one of many generational differences. People who think it is creepy are probably old (or up to no good, lol).

+1. I’m 36 and I don’t location share. It’s just not something I’m used to doing and it feels weird. My SIL is 25 and location shares with family, friends etc. and it’s a normal part of her life.

I’m not against it, I do see that it’s a normal thing in a lot of families, especially with teen/ young adult kids

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Some of the problem here is framing.

“Tracking my young adult child” sounds a lot worse than “Young adult child opted to share location.”

I think the point that many of us are making is that your adult child shouldn’t want to do that if they matured properly.

They also may not “mind” if you search for jobs for them or did their laundry. That also doesn’t make it healthy.

FYI, this is a story you have created in your head. You have taken a single data point — that sometimes young adults raised with technology actively choose to share their location, not only with parents but also with friends (have you never seen a snap map?) — then woven from this one fact an entire fiction, complete with caricatures.

I too pass judgement on the caricatures you created! They’re ridiculous!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don’t use it myself for my college age kids bc it just seems too controlling almost stalkerish. But an acquaintance uses it on her college aged DC to track them daily and see where they are at all times. Seems a bit much.

We started turning it on for the HS/College kids when we took summer vacations to Europe---so we would know where the kids were if they went a different path than us. The kids have chosen to leave it on 99% of the time.

However, they also know we never comment on where they are. If they are at bars or parties, we might see that on a Sat night. But I never comment on it to them. They are free to do whatever they want as college students/post college kids now. For me, it's a safety thing. When my oldest was in college, they attended an urban school in a not so good area. There were often reports of "shots fired" or student attacked/robbed both on campus and near the bars/areas college kids hang out. When I get those alerts, I can see my kid's location and know they are safe, while I wait for a text confirmation from them. Senior year, multiple kids from the school were in the bars when several shooting happened. Many were on the floor in a few bars for hours until it was cleared. I was able to see my kid had already left the area (30 mins prior) and was safely their house.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kids are rising seniors in high school and we all track each other.

We give our kids an extremely long leash and don't require that they tell us their itinerary in advance or check in with us when they change locations. For example, one of mine was out yesterday from 10am to 12 midnight. The other was gone from noon to midnight. To my knowledge, they were at a succession of end-of-school parties (grad and otherwise) but I really have no idea.
We do track them so we can find them if needed in an emergency or far more likely it's a situation of "oh, I need someone to pick up XX (their younger sibling who is in 9th grade). Let me see where ZZ is right now and if they're close."

Anyway, I think parents who don't track (in high school) generally have a "tell me where you're going when you go out" policy. We don't. My kids are comfortable with being tracked because it comes with great freedom. And I don't say the next day, "Oh, I noticed you were XYZ, what were do doing there?" Also, you (as the parent) have to be comfortable with the set up too. If you're the type that will check in all day long "I wonder were they are now?" then it doesn't work. I rarely if ever check in on them. I can imagine we will still track them in college but I won't be the one saying "Hmm, it's 10am and they're in bed, shouldn't they be in class?" because that's just never been my default. I don't want to know their every move. Never have.

We didn't track our oldest in HS. They just told us where they were going and about when they'd be home. We trusted them. The next kid kept forgetting to follow the rules of "first year of driving, you text when you leave a location and when you arrive to next location, and tell us what that location is". So we started tracking---for safety with a new driver. Had they followed the simple rules, we never would have turned on location

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have never tracked my kids - HS, college, and young adult. I prefer to parent, not stalk. I disagree with the posters saying tracking is not stalking. I've been with so many friends who pull out their phones to see where their kids are. It's creepy. Have some trust in your relationship with your kids.

I have friends whose kids are required to say (in 11th and 12th grade) "I'm going to xx's house" every time they leave their own home. To me that is FAR more controlling and creepy than having an in-case-of-emergency way of locating them.

"I'm going to xx's house" is general respect for people you live with. DH and I can locate each other on the phones, but we rarely if ever do - we just say where we're going. When I go out I tell the kids where I'm going and approximate when I'm getting back and I expect the same from them.

You do you. I consider that super controlling. I don't tell my husband everywhere I"m going. I'll say "I'm running errands, I'll be back at 5pm" but I would never tell him where. I give my kids the same courtesy. They tell us when they'll be back but I don't ask for details. I have "find my phone" in the event that I need to locate them.

My 16yo needs to tell me where they are going. My 20 year old does not. However, we have good kids who we trust, and they happily tell us that. Just like my husband tells me if he's working late or going out to dinner for work/drinks/etc. Just general common courtesy. And yes, I tell my DH if I'm going out to shop/whatever. It's not about what I'm doing, but that I'm out and will be home at X time, so we can plan our schedule.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Kids share their location with everyone on Snapchat. They simply don't care if parents know their location.

I think this is another one of many generational differences. People who think it is creepy are probably old (or up to no good, lol).

+1. I’m 36 and I don’t location share. It’s just not something I’m used to doing and it feels weird. My SIL is 25 and location shares with family, friends etc. and it’s a normal part of her life.

I’m not against it, I do see that it’s a normal thing in a lot of families, especially with teen/ young adult kids

Yeah, my 24 and 20 can see all of their friends locations (it's over 25 for each of them, as you include HS friends, college friends, and now work friends for the oldest). It's just something this generation does. Hence why most don't care if you track them as a family. If I stalked my kids and commenting on them going to bars/parties, they would turn it off. But we don't. I use it to know "don't text my kid if they are still at work or driving home". Or they are driving home, so now's a good time to call.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid goes to school in LA and there are weekly police advisories of incidents. Par for the course for a major city and I usually don’t pay any attention to the small ones. When there’s an ongoing incident though, I check on find my to see where my kid is relative to the incidents. If they went to college in the middle of cowtown USA, I’d probably never use the feature. Context matters.

Why? What do you intend to do with this information?

Why are you the one getting campus alerts from 3,000 miles away?

If there’s an armed robbery at the In and Out Burger two blocks from your adult daughter’s residence…. you do what, exactly, when your location tracker tells you your daughter is two blocks away? Have a reassuring conversation? Tell her to shut her blinds and stay away from windows?

Trying to understand how tracking your adult relatives using TWO surveillance domains is in fact helpful

Have you had a child on a campus where there is a lockdown because of an active shooter? I have, and ir f—king scary. Not a rando store two miles off campus. Shooter on campus. Parents who shrug while students are being shot at UVA and criticize parents who try to make certain their kid isn’t dead have something wrong with them.

DP - and that was the only time we ever pinged DC phone. An extreme and exceptional situation. DC reply was basically .... we have been thru so many active shooter drills, will stay put and away from door/window. Makes one sad.

Other than that, nope never used the feature.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Based on the responses on this thread those families with open, communicative relationships with their kids use these tools and It Is No Biggie Whatsoever because the lines of communication are wide open in the family.

Those families with very closed, cut off, non- communicative relationships with their kids can only think of findmy or other tracker as a surreptitious unhealthy stalking tool.

There can be too much communication in families.

Quit projecting your crazy family drama onto others.

[Anonymous]

Kids do not care. My college sophomore son just realized he had been sharing his location with his entire contact list for YEARS after one of his buddies told him. He just shrugged. He didn't care.

[Anonymous]

It depends. I have two in college, one graduating HS.

22 year old - haven't tracked him since he was 16

20 year old - bipolar diagnosis for two years. He is medication compliant and doing very well. He wants us to be able to track him just in case.

18 year old - likes being tracked. She has nicknames for locations, and regularly tracks me as well. She's a communicator. She wants everyone to know where she is, and wants to know where I am. It's fine. Maybe she will grow out of it, maybe not.

They are adults, they can determine the level of tracking they want. They understand the pros and cons of it, and I don't stalk them for fun or control.