Being a parent in today’s day and age is using technology to monitor their kids’ activity. Nowadays, parents are using methods such as Life360 and Find My Friends to monitor their childrens’ location when not at home. Sometimes tracking can do more harm than good when it comes to the relationship between a parent and child. 

Research from the New York Times shows that adolescents who believe their parents have invaded their privacy have higher levels of conflict at home. Teenagers who resent being trailed digitally sometimes disable location features, make plans to “spoof” their GPS or leave their phones at friends’ houses to throw parents off. This does more harm than good because tracking creates lies and causes the child to be less safe by focusing on how to get around being tracked.

A survey conducted by the Pew Research Center found that while most parents don’t track their 13 to 17-year-olds,16 percent of parents do. Lorrie Faith Cranor, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University who studies children’s privacy and safety, said to the New York Times that she has decided against monitoring the location of her two teenagers. “It’s tempting to do it because we are all worried about our kids,” she said. Yet she resists the urge because she doesn’t want her children to “feel like their parents are following them around all the time.” 

Parents should, to an extent, trust their kids and allow them to go out into the world. Kids should try to monitor themselves and make decisions as adults would. Parents cannot always protect a child when they are out. Tracking can tell where they are but cannot always stop them from going to a potentially unsafe place. Tracking should not be an option when it comes to letting kids out in the world. It causes harm to the trust and relationship of the parent and child and causes children to be more sneaky. 

Growing up, children need to learn basic skills on how to make good decisions for themselves in situations, therefore digitally tracking a child is for the worse. Tracking a child can do more harm than good and can overstep boundaries. All in all, talking more and tracking less will lead to a healthier relationship between parents and children.