Tracking kids’ – A mother’s location app turned into hours of helpless dread on a warm summer night in New York City. Research-backed patterns show roughly half of parents track teenagers and a quarter keep doing it into young adulthood. But clinicians warn that the “certainty
On a warm summer night in New York City, Archie Gottesman checked her middle daughter’s location and felt the floor fall away.
The phone tracker—attached to her daughter’s phone and her daughter’s claim that she was out with friends—showed the device sitting right near the Hudson River. unmoving for hours. “I was sure she was in trouble,” Gottesman told me. There was nothing she could do except call and call, and then rouse her husband to join in the worry. The young woman’s companion answered his phone. They’d been having drinks.
For Gottesman, it was a moment that captures what parents often hope technology will give them: a way to know where their children are when the story in their heads starts running faster than reality.
Like many parents, Gottesman keeps tabs on her kids’ location through her phone’s tracking app. It’s a widespread practice. Pew Foundation research finds that about half of parents track their teenagers. while a quarter continue doing so after their children become young adults. The same research also shows a gender split: young women (31%) are tracked more often than young men (21%). and mothers do more surveilling than fathers.
Many parents rely on tools that can pinpoint a phone’s whereabouts instantly. including Google Maps and regular Apple watches and phones. Others use apps like Life360. which adds features such as crash detection in car accidents over 25mph. along with driving summaries that provide a “weekly snapshot of everyone’s driving behavior.”.
The debate around tracking often focuses on what it does to kids—how it can undercut independence, damage trust when done in secret, and muddle accountability for safety. It can also make adolescents more likely to dodge responsibility when they believe their parents will handle the monitoring.
Clinical psychologist Lisa Damour, author of The Emotional Lives of Teenagers, puts it bluntly: “When it comes to knowing what is going on with a teenager, having their location cannot take the place of having a sturdy, working relationship.”
But Gottesman’s experience points to another side of the story: what tracking does to the parents who monitor.
Meg Jay. an author and clinical psychologist. described the mechanism to me in an email: “(U)sually people are using it to replace uncertainty with certainty.” She added that the more anxious the parent. the more likely they are to check their kids’ locations. writing that therapists often describe these parents as “reassurance junkies.” The label is stark because the pattern is familiar in therapy rooms: instead of living with the discomfort of uncertainty for a while. a parent reaches for data or information that things are OK.
That reassurance can be short-lived.
Watching where a teenager goes—especially when it doesn’t line up with a parent’s expectations—can spark new worry instead of calming it. Jay said that observing kids partying into the wee hours. dining at a fast-food joint for the seventh time that week. or spending the night in a mysterious location provokes parent anxiety and often generates friction between partners over what to do.
In those moments, tracking doesn’t just provide information. It changes the temperature in the home—pushing parents toward urgency, and sometimes toward disagreement.
There’s also the limitation no app can solve. Location tracking, Jay’s framing makes clear, is a blunt instrument. It can be misread. One child who appears “trapped” in an unfamiliar place may actually be carrying out a harmless project. Another child who looks secure—seemingly safe in an apartment or dorm—may be taking foolish risks.
The most difficult part for parents is that the device can produce a steady signal even when the meaning of that signal is unclear.
child device tracking location apps parenting anxiety Life360 Google Maps Apple watch Pew Foundation Meg Jay Lisa Damour
Life360 should come with a warning label.
So it’s like… the app made her panic because it said the phone was by the river? I mean call the kid instead of staring at the map all night, right? But I get being worried.
I’m not even sure I believe the stats part. “Half of parents track” sounds made up. Also if the phone was “unmoving,” how does that even work, like dead battery? People act like it’s certainty but then it’s just a location ping.
This is why I hate the tracking culture. My cousin kept checking Life360 and it literally caused a fight bc it glitched and said she was at some restaurant she wasn’t at. Like Google Maps can be wrong and Apple watches can lose GPS, and then suddenly you’re on the verge of calling the cops? Cameras, trackers, whatever… parents just spiral. Also “25mph crash detection” sounds scary too, like now you’re thinking about crashes all the time.