Parents should trust, not track, their kids [column] (2024)

Most parents want to make sure their children are safe. But is tracking your kid’s phone 24/7 the best option?

Tracking apps like Life360 may be helpful or informative for families that are happy, healthy and high-functioning — but we should agree that not every family fits that bill.

Parents should be able to ask their child where they are and not rely on an app to confirm their activity and whereabouts. Having a trust-based connection between a parent and a child is essential. Putting your trust in an app undermines that relationship.

Believe it or not, if parents simply ask their child where they are, most of the time their child will tell the truth. Most teenagers I know are more likely to be honest with their parents if the kids know that their parents trust them and have confidence in their ability to make good decisions and ask for help when they need it.

To parents: If you say you trust your kid but you still check their location history and other details that are included in Life360 or other tracking apps, you are basically saying, “I trust my kid when they’re in front of me, but I’m not sure they’re doing the right thing when I’m not around.”

That’s the opposite of trust.

Most parents want their teenage kids to develop independence and show increased levels of responsibility, but we’re hampering the development of those skills by relying on this Big Brother-like app. Life360 keeps kids under constant, oppressive surveillance.

You know what happens when surveillance and tracking become overbearing? Kids learn to outsmart the system. What’s going to stop a teenager from leaving their phone in the place they are supposed to be and going somewhere else? What happens when there’s a genuine emergency and the kids have left their smartphones behind at someone’s house?

To the parents who did rebellious things when they were younger: When you really think about it, aren’t you grateful that you had the chance to learn from your youthful mistakes? Didn’t those mistakes make you a more resilient, more resourceful person? Mistakes give someone more character development than someone who has been a “goody two shoes” their whole life.

Is it really a smart idea to pay up to $25 per month just to review someone’s location history? The Life360 app may have some positive aspects, but it also has some weird flaws. If you no longer wish to be tracked by the people in your circle, you can’t just uninstall the app on your phone; you also need to leave the circle and have other members delete you from their circle.

Justin Sherman, a cyberpolicy fellow at the Duke Technology Policy Lab, told The Markup, “Families probably would not like the (hypothetical Life360) slogan, ‘You can watch where your kids are, and so can anyone who buys this information.’ ”

This quote is extremely concerning, especially considering that cybersecurity experts like Sherman have found through a series of tests that Life360 does not provide basic security measures to thwart online hackers, according to a 2022 article by The Markup.

That’s a huge red flag: You and your child’s private locations can apparently be easily exposed to hackers.

As useful as technology can be, there is no substitute for trust — and it works both ways. As handy as it is to be able to see your loved one’s locations, it may also be just as easy for anyone else to hack the technology and see it as well.

We must be much more careful with our technology. And we must be much more trusting in our relationships, too.

Lilly Emch is in the 12th grade at Garden Spot High School.