Would You Track Your Kids on an App?

I remember one time when my husband and I were still in the states, trying to meet up without constantly texting our locations. I think it was for a Renaissance Fair where we wanted the ability to move around with our different kids and not worry that we lost anyone. He asked if we could turn on the tracking function in Google Maps, a feature I didn’t even know was possible. It felt fine for that purpose, and as soon as that event was over, I turned it off.

I don’t hide much from my husband. If anything, I overshare about my day because I like talking to him and would rather focus on the big conversations when we see each other rather than the minutiae of the day. But I’d never, ever ask him to install a tracking app on his phone that tracks every single centimeter he travels. We have a very honest relationship, and I know I’ve surprised other spouses when I say he’s on a business trip but don’t know the hotel he’s staying at, and haven’t asked him for photographic proof of where he is and who he is with at all times.

I’d like to think that the same will apply to my kids. I thought about it a lot when I researched the smartwatch article in our November issue. I dug through a lot of research and was ready to submit the piece, then had this nagging feeling that I should check on the safety of using a smartwatch with GPS for your kids. That’s when I found this information:

As exciting as these smartwatches might seem as an alternative to younger kids owning a cell phone, parents must be sure to check the latest data and security findings for their products. In their 2010 paper “STALK: Security Analysis of Smartwatches for Kids,“ researchers at the Münster University of Applied Sciences in Germany found an incredible amount of vulnerabilities in many smartwatch security systems. Often hackers could listen in to conversations, track or change GPS coordinates, and even send text messages that looked like they came from a child’s parents in some cases.

My takeaway from this research is to not only perform my due diligence as a parent to find the right features for my child but also check out my top choices against studies like the one from Münster University. Don’t let a tool bought for safety turn into a security nightmare.

So you can imagine my hackles rising as I read about the app Zenly. The tracking is constant, and there have been horror stories of boyfriends and girlfriends freaking out about their significant others taking detours, or saying they’re on the way when they clearly aren’t.

But is it useful if you have kids? I thought back to my own childhood when I had to use a calling card or have spare change to use a payphone (yes, I’m that old). My parents were constantly frustrated that I wouldn’t make the call to say I would be late, and I don’t know why I had that particular block. So I asked them if smartphones were around when we were kids, would they have installed a tracking app for myself and my sister?

“If I couldn’t turn it off I wouldn’t. My kids would have hated it,” my mom Barbara Fulchino answered. “I believed in trust back then.” She’s right, we would have hated it. But we also weren’t the most well-behaved teenagers on the block, so I would have understood if she wanted to.

My dad Stephen Fulchino had both a trusting and a pragmatic view: “When you and your sister were 14 or 15, it would have been tempting. But I think it wouldn’t have been right. Also, if you delete the app, wouldn’t that turn it off?”

He’s right, we probably would have just uninstalled it or used the one option to pause it, the freezing function. Forget to unfreeze Zenly, however, and you may tell on yourself since you could physically be with someone but it says you’re still at school or work.

So as tempting as it would be to know where my kids are at every moment of the day, I think even when they’re older I won’t want to track them. For one thing, the more we communicate with each other about safety, like in online gaming, the more they show me how much they can be trusted.

What about you? Would you use a tracking app? Take our poll below and let us know!