Should I track my teenage son's location?

Questions to consider before you activate that app on his phone

With all the technology that exists in parenting, we are often faced with questions about what is appropriate to use when it comes to our teenage sons. The questions start as soon as he gets his first cell phone and no, they do not stop as he gets older. When your son starts organizing his own social outings or even starts driving, we, as parents, have to consider whether to utilize some kind of location tracker for our teenage sons.

My own sons were around 12 and 13 when we started using Life360. To be honest, we had not even entertained the idea (they had had phones for less than a year at that point) until we were at a party talking with friends who had older children as well as a son our son’s age. They talked about how this app had helped them find their son’s lost phone and how fun it was to see what their older child was up to in college. After we got home, my husband and I discussed it and thought it would be a great idea for our family so we downloaded the app, talked to our boys about it, and off we went. It has evolved into something that we are all now used to but there were some bumps along the way. One of the boys turned off his location. One changed his settings so that once it went into low battery mode we could not track him. We had not even considered that our teenage boys would not be wild about being tracked but tried to deal with obstacles as they arose. To be honest, we should have anticipated some of the difficulties but now they are used to it and it works for our family. Before you decide to start tracking your own teenage son, here are some questions to consider:

1- Why are you tracking him?

Look, we all want to know where our kids are at all times, but, as a parent, you really need to think about WHY you want to know where he is and try to give him some space into the teenage years. Safety is usually a top priority. When we first added Life360, our boys were walking everywhere to spend time with their friends. It was helpful to know when they made it to a friend’s house or when they started walking home. However, most of us parents recall that our own parents never tracked us and we ended up okay. So think about your reasons for tracking. We explained to our boys that it brought us peace of mind and kept our “where are you?” texts to a minimum.

2- What will you do with the information?

Any time you start looking around into your teenage son’s location, you need to know ahead of time what you will do with the information. Are there prohibited locations for your son? If you look and see him there, are you prepared to get in your car and go get him? How are you going to handle it? What if he lies about where he has been? It may seem simple to just track his location but you need to be prepared to deal with inconsistencies, as you know they will occur.

3- Can he track you?

Maybe it seems like an obvious question but depending on your dynamics with your teenage son you might want really think about how you feel about your teenage son being able to track you if you track him. It can be helpful for him to see you are on your way to pick him up, but do you want him seeing everywhere you go? Be sure you think about it ahead of time.

4- How will you communicate about locations?

This is a general question that you need to examine once your son becomes more able to travel about on his own. Do you want him to tell you every time he moves location? If you do start tracking, your teenage son might be less inclined to tell you where he is going and what he is doing because he thinks you can just look anyway. So be sure to keep communication open and set expectations about what you want to know about where your son is. Yes, you can check his tracking but do not let that replace communication with your son.

5- Ultimately, will tracking impact your relationship with your son?

Finally, you need to think about how tracking your teenage son might impact your relationship with him. It can be a supplement to give you a sense of safety but does not need to feel controlling to him as he enters into this important part of his development. If you use it as a punishment, he will definitely feel that but if you use it as a tool for the family to stay connected it can enhance your relationship with your son.