Should your teen's cell phone have GPS tracking?

From Amy, mother of teenagers:

I have more to learn than to share, but I will tell you something another mom told me.

You ask them to call to let you know where they are, and they do. From their cell phone. In a perfect world they're accurately reporting their whereabouts, but, well... it's not a perfect world, is it? Hence "call me back from a land line". This provides Caller ID information that (hopefully) matches the location the little darling gave you. If you notice that the location rarely matches, consider GPS tracking on the phone.

When I first read this hack, I admit I was taken aback. My children (ages 7 and 3) are so innocent! They'd never do anything to betray my trust! Other teens maybe, but not my babies. Figuring I was naive, but also anticipating some of you might feel the same way, I wrote back to Amy sharing my thoughts. Here's her reply:

It's likely that parents of small children will think it's extreme, but they'll think differently when their own kids are teenagers. At that point they, too, will realize that good kids sometimes don't tell the truth and often do dangerous and stupid things. And they'll try whatever they can think of to keep their kids safe.

Tags: Cell phones, Parenting, GPS

Comments

[Daniel Nicolas]

While I can see this as being helpful in some cases, I really don't agree with GPS tracking as the solution to keeping track of your kids.

Shouldn't parents keep track of their children themselves? Teenagers will lie? Did you lie to your parents as a teenager? Maybe, maybe not, but I'm sure there were instances where you'd rather not have your parents know where you were. Not anywhere dangerous, illegal, but just something they wouldn't approve of. Maybe they were very religious and you didn't want to go to church and pray for hours. Maybe you wanted to spend your free time practicing to be a pro surfer while they wanted you to study to become a doctor. Maybe you wanted to suprise them with a gift for their birthday and the only way to do it was to sneak out of the house late at night and go pick out a gift. There are many many more instances I can think of off the top of my head where this would be a negative thing.

I'm seeing this in the same light as the parents who complain about video games in their children's lives. Instead of what I consider proper parenting - keeping the games out of their own homes and making sure their kids don't bring them home - they whine to the government asking for laws and rules made against what the game designers and stores would rather do (make the games as they intended).

I see this as a lack of taking responsibility for their own actions and obligations to take care of their children.

Now, I don't have children of my own - heck, I'm 19 - and so maybe I'm seeing this from a kid's perspective of this being largely invasion of privacy.

Now - final thought - good parents can use technology as a tool to help (the key word) them, but it will never replace actual parenting.

[Cynthia Samuels]

As MONK would say "Here's the thing:" By the time our kids need to be tracked on cell phones it's too late to instill the trust we need to share. They need to learn that they are whole people from the beginning and gradually, through incremental doses of responsibility and earned independance, become reliable. Dr. Robert Schwebel, at iVillage, told me once when I worked there "Childrearing is a gradual transfer of power." That's what I believe. SO. Take chances with them a little at a time - let them know you're offering them a progression of responsiblities and that you WANT to trust them and believe they can learn to be reliable. They'll still experiment but the basic honor you need to share will arrive. AT least it has seemed so to me with my (now grown) sons. The most important thing is to start early early early - so the conversation is an integral part of life.

[Rob O'Daniel]

I'm with Cynthia, as far as instilling the responsibility and trustworthiness from the get go. I've been getting into the Love & Logic stuff this year and that's right in line with those philosophies.

But more to the core of the matter, I'm not at all convinced that kids should have cell phones - and I'm certain that there's little or no real "need." Granted, there are sure to be times when it would be nice to have them more readily reachable, but part of the whole "call me if you're going to be running late" trust thing that parents can use as a teaching tool gets sidestepped entirely when you can simply call up your kids. Their responsibility in that scenario just gets wiped clear. This is a prime example of the pathway to "helicopter parenting" and I think its a big mistake.

[flynn]

Whenever this issue comes up, people question the necessity for kids to have cell phones. I'm all for a crtical approach to adopting new "needs," but before deciding, take a look around. Most of those pay phones a lot of us used to use are gone, or constantly broken. Carrying a quarter (or whatever) to make a call is just about useless. "Call me back from a land line"? OK, give me an hour to find one. I ran into this problem when my cell phone went dead--there really aren't many public places to make a call anymore.

[Gayle]

I'm the mom of a teen(16-year-old daughter) and I do still trust her to be honest about where she is. We have a very good relationship. Now, I realize that this doesn't mean she'd never lie to me. She might, at times. However, I realize that, no matter how much I want to, I can never protect her from EVERYTHING. I have to give her my trust to make her more self-sufficient. After all, she'll be going away to college in a couple of years, where I won't be able to keep the same close eye on her that I can now. I'd like to know that I've taught her to be as safe as possible on her own.

[Amy]

When Asha asked me if I was prepared for disagreement, I told her I absolutely was... and am. I'm not saying I don't trust my teenagers and I lojack them everywhere they go. What I am saying is that years of childrearing kick in and sometimes you can "smell" something's up. They tell you they're heading out to a destination you agree on. Then they call an hour later to say they've changed location ("thank you, glad you called") but that nagging thought returns. It's usually right.

My good kid made a colossally bad decision last year, ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time, not coincidentally a different place from where he said he'd be. That land-line call request would have saved him and us a bit of grief.

As for the cell phone, in our house kids philisophically wait for parents, not the other way around. My kids are active on teams and in organizations that don't always end when they're supposed to. That cell phone has kept me from wasting precious time in parking lots. I don't call my kids when they're out unless they are more than 15m past the time we agreed they'd be home.

I agree that these teenage years are a transition. They're a time for them to try stuff which sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. The phones allow for them to make plans with their friends and head out on their own while providing backup in case the ride falls through or the plans otherwise don't work out. The important thing is that in the early teenage years they're on the trapeze with a net below. Later there's no net.

Last year my younger son called when the kids he was riding bikes with chose the shortcut across the railroad bridge he preferred not to take, leaving him alone on the long way when it was getting dark. I was relieved to get that call, happy to pick him up.

[michaele]

I have two younger children, but I'm writing now more from a former teenager's point of view. My mother's crazy. Some parents should absolutely NOT have the kind of power to track their children in real time. I went to parties all the time in high school to be the designated driver. Once, when I made the mistake of actually telling my mom the truth, she exploded. She honestly thought that it would be better for my friends to wind up dead on the side of the road than to trust me to make the decision not to drink. Our relationship will never be very good because of situations like that. I don't know how I'd be able to trust anybody if she'd had access to that kind of technology.

I'm not saying that everyone who chooses this method is a control freak, or even that they're being over protective, but there comes a time when our children will know what decisions are best for them. Isn't that the whole point of raising children? Having their every move monitored, or even knowing it's a possiblity, is only going to alienate them. We look at it as a way of protecting them, and there are certainly situations where it might, but if they think we don't have faith in them, they'll be more likely to defy the rules we've been trying to enforce for their safety.

[Micki]

I am currently looking into tracking software for my 15 year old daughter’s cell phone, because while we have tried to teach her all we can about how to behave and what is expected of her she is in a self-destructive phase that we can’t seem to get her out of. I honestly think the only way would be to home school her and never let her out of the house. She goes to malls to see movies with her friends, but then leaves the mall to get high and give blow jobs to boys in the parking lot hoping they will like her and ask her out. We drop her off at her girlfriend’s house only to find out after that they invited boys over and she got naked in front of one of them. I wake up at 3AM to find she snuck out to meet boys and got picked up by the cops. She says she is taking the bus to a friend’s house after school and she is really driving around town with other friends getting drunk and wriggling around on top of one of the boys half naked. We told her we were going to monitor her computer and we find sex chat with strangers and naked pictures of herself being sent to school mates with plans to cut class and have sex in soccer fields.

Now you’ll judge me and say we’re probably bad parents, but we love her and spend lots of time with her and try very hard to teach her good behavior and the negative consequences of her actions. We tell her that we care about her and her future and instruct her on how positive behavior will only help her now and later in life. We have two daughters and parent them both the same and one is wild and self destructive and the other is not. Sometimes they just turn out differently and this one is just in a bad time in her life and needs a bit more attention. We’ve given her the support and tools she needs to stay safe and a little freedom to learn from her mistakes, but there are some mistakes I cannot afford for her to learn on her own. At the rate she’s going she’ll get herself pregnant, raped or killed and it would be irresponsible of me as a parent to just let her ‘live and learn’. I know she’ll be in college someday and we won’t be there to protect her and that is something that scares the hell out of me, but again there are some lessons I just cannot afford for her to learn the ‘hard way’.

I just wanted to share from the point of view of a frightened parent who is desperately trying to save their child.