It’s only natural for a parent to want to care for and worry about their children, but when parents install tracking apps on their children’s phones, it goes too far. More detrimentally, tracking apps damage the element of trust that’s integral to every parent-child relationship.

The introduction of tracking apps such as Life360 into the mainstream and the transformation of Find My iPhone from an app that people actually used to find their iPhones to just another location tracker have been symptoms of more parents want to keep tabs on their children's locations, which can be a good thing when it comes to safety. Unfortunately, these tracker apps also create the possibility that the trust and mutual respect from location-sharing becomes a twisted, abuse of power in which the teenager often feels “stalked” by their parents.

Personally, my parents have showed me through the years that they have a lot of trust in me to make my own decisions, so their unwavering trust is a natural deterrent for me to make smart choices.

But, had my parents forced me to install Life360 or turned Find My iPhone into their personal tracking device, the trust that my parents and I have naturally built up would take a significant hit.

I’m fortunate enough to have parents who respect my boundaries and will not force a tracker app onto my phone for the paternalistic claim that “it’s for my own good,” as another problem that arises with trackers is the potential overuse of them by overbearing parents. For these parents, tracker apps might just be the first step in forcing their children to slowly forfeit more and more of the little privacy they had to begin with, and with all the available surveillance technology there is on the market today, trackers are surely not the last thing those type of parents would forcibly install on their children’s devices.

For children who unluckily have to put trackers on their phones, the apps might mark the beginning of a rebellious streak. In their attempts to defy their parents’ tracking, some teenages just simply disable the tracker apps or their phone’s location services. And if their parents punish them for deliberately resisting tracker apps that way, they resort to more drastic measures: spoofing their GPS location services or leaving their phones at home when they leave the house (which defeats the purpose of any supposed safety altogether).

Tracker apps are ineffective and the information they provide to parents would do little to quell their fears that their children may be in danger. Often times, the only data trackers give to parents is the battery percentage level and location of their children’s phone. But that doesn’t give them any more context as far as what their child is actually doing. While Life360 of Find My iPhone might tell parents that their child is at a friend’s house, the parents would never know if the child was doing drugs and partying, or if they were just hanging out.

Put simply, tracker apps, while an intriguing idea on paper, fail to adequately benefit either parents or students when they are installed. Instead, the best way a parent can make sure their child stays safe isn’t through some tracker downloaded from the App Store, but through the mutual trust and understanding that comes from never installing a tracker in the first place.