Honey I tracked the kids: How to supervise with technology

When it comes to kids, tracking – like almost all technology – can be a double-edged sword. Knowing where your children are at all times can be reassuring, but it can also be a major breach of their privacy and a hindrance to their ability to learn self-reliance.

Setting rules based on where your kids can go and when sounds fine, but becoming an omnipotent helicopter parent isn’t necessarily the healthiest way to enforce them.

Apple’s AirTag can become a child tracking device for kids too young to have phones.

It’s worth remembering that a lot of these tracking solutions market themselves as providing “peace of mind”, which in the worlds of both technology and consumer products is often another way of saying the company’s identified a common anxiety to exploit for profit.

That said, if you do feel there’s a genuine need for them, there are ways to use the available tools thoughtfully and transparently.

Apple and Google solutions

If you and your kids have Apple devices, and you’ve already set up Family Sharing, there’s a built-in way to be able to see their location. On their device they’ll need to go to Settings> Family> Location Sharing to turn it on, and they can choose which family members to share with.

People can generally revoke or change these sharing permissions at any time, but if you’re their guardian you can use your device to block them from making changes, meaning you’ll always be able to see where they are.

While someone is sharing their location with you, you can open the Find My app to see where they are on a map. You can also set up recurring notifications that will be sent when their devices arrive or leave certain places, so for example you could get a notification when they leave school, and another when they arrive home.

If your child has an Android device, things work similarly using Family Link – a main difference being that you don’t strictly have to ask them to do anything on your device. On your Android or Apple device, you can open the Family Link app and turn on location sharing for any child. This will activate the feature on any device they’re signed in on, and automatically share with their guardians.

From there, you can see their location on a map. You can also set up a number of “family places” like your home or school, and create regular notifications for when your child leaves or arrives at those locations.

A separate subscription

For more in-depth tracking, or for larger families who all want to be able to track each other, a dedicated app could be more useful than the solution baked into your phone. There are a number of these, but the most important thing to remember is that all of these solutions involve sending very private information from your device and the devices of your family to a company that wouldn’t otherwise get it.

This could be used for marketing and research, sold to data brokers, combined with data from social media and elsewhere to build profiles, subject to law enforcement requests or even exposed in a data breach.

The most popular of these apps is Life360, which offers both free and paid memberships. You need to install the app on each family member’s phone, and have the organiser of the membership send invites to everyone else. Once linked together, you can see each family member’s location on a map, but you can also check on your kids’ phone battery level and get ETAs on when they’ll arrive wherever they’re going.

Life360 can track the location of a whole family’s phones and Tile trackers.

Life360 goes a bit beyond the built-in trackers when it comes to features. Users can send quick check-in or SOS notifications to other family members with a tap, you can choose a family member at any time to get step-by-step directions on how to get to them, and you can set custom geo-fencing zones and be alerted if a family member leaves the approved area.

The app could also be of interest to those with older kids, since the Apple and Google solutions give users more autonomy automatically when they turn 13. Life360 not only lets you continue to track teens and young adults, but it also records information about their driving to deliver statistics like their top speed, number of trips and whether the phone was used. It will also alert family members if it detects a high-speed collision.

Non-phone trackers

If your kids are too young for a phone but you still want to be able to find them, you’ll need to use some kind of trackable object. The obvious downside is that, unlike a phone, kids may be fine with ditching an object or throwing it into a lake if its only purpose is tracking, so it’s still best to make sure they understand what’s happening.

Apple and Samsung make small trackers that integrate with their respective finding apps, which you could attach to a kid’s backpack or sew into their jacket. Tile trackers are similar, but can be used with the Tile app across Apple and Android or integrated into Life360. Depending on the app, you can set up notifications and approved locations just like with phone tracking. The batteries in these types of trackers should last between one and three years.

Since tracker tags are generally made for locating luggage and objects rather than people, they might not be suitable if you need constant real-time tracking; they only update when they ping other nearby devices and networks. There are trackers with built-in GPS and their own power source, like the Jiobit, which will give you constant surveillance. But these are expensive, require you to pay a subscription and need frequent charging.

Another option is a smartwatch. The Apple Watch can be set up by a parent and given to a child connected to them by Family Sharing, which will then allow them to be tracked as above. But there are also many less expensive watches designed specifically for tracking.

These often have a SIM slot, so you’ll need to pay for a data account with a telco so the watch can access the internet. Then you can use an app on your phone to track the watch or, in many cases, call it with voice or video to talk to your child.

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