Are tracking apps OK for parents to use on adult children?

Does he care or is he a bully?

Many parents turn to their phones to keep track of their adult children; But is this normal (if they accept it) or is it a sign that parents are trying to give up?

Steven Medway, 53, a father of two, set up a tracking app for his entire family and couldn’t understand why it was such a divisive issue with other parents.

It was especially helpful, he said, when his daughter Martha moved 100 miles from home for college.

“When he gets this, he feels a little less distant,” he said.

Research by Unite StudentsThe research, which surveyed 1,027 parents of first-year university students across the UK, found that 67 per cent of parents use an app to track their child’s location, but only 17 per cent contact them on a daily basis.

Doctor and writer Dr. who publishes mental health content on social media. Martin Brunet said it was a “personal choice” but strongly advised parents to “let them fly the nest” for their own health.

“One of the hardest parts of parenting is giving up, and our modern world has made it easy for us not to do that, and I’m not sure that’s a good thing,” she added.

Steven, from Michaelston-y-Fedw, near Cardiff, has been using the Life 360 ​​app for years and first took action when his daughter Martha, now 19, started spending time with friends away from their village.

“We live in a very rural area [and] We thought it was a good idea because if she needed to be picked up or something…this would give you directions to Martha wherever she was.”

So when Martha started at the University of Reading in September, it felt natural that they would continue to use the app.

“He goes to parties, doesn’t come to their living room until 3.30am. But it’s okay, ‘what’s going on?’ I don’t call and ask.

“I can just wake up in the morning and see him in the corridors. “If he wasn’t, if he was still in the middle of Reading or if his phone was there, maybe I would have called him.

“It’s not that I don’t want him to do anything, I just like knowing he’s back.”

Steven added that Martha was “a pretty independent girl” and had traveled around Japan on her own for a month and traveled around Europe with friends, so he was used to her being away from home.

He said Martha had never closed the app “not once,” but that he would respect her choice if she did.

“A lot of people wrongly thought I was forcing her to be tracked. If Martha doesn’t want to be tracked, she can turn it off whenever she wants. I wouldn’t tell her that.”

Owain, the 19-year-old son of pub landlady Maria Connolly, also recently moved from his home in Swansea to attend university in Hertfordshire.

Maria, 56, said Owain could be “quite naive” due to being autistic and sometimes struggled to mix with people his own age, so the app offered “peace of mind”.

She checks her phone’s battery several times a day to make sure Owain has gone outside and to remind her to charge it when necessary.

“He was a little reluctant at first, but I said, ‘I’m paying your cell phone bill, if you want me to keep paying the bill, you’re going to put this app on your phone.’

“‘I see you’re in Wetherspoons, what table are you at, should I send you some drinks?’ I say. So we keep it fun, but we keep in mind that it’s for safety purposes.”

She said she would be “disappointed” if Owain no longer wanted to use the app but would “keep it up” while admitting she would text and call him more often.

“I let him go, he regained his independence. I don’t constantly check on it, I just know it’s a little safety net.

“He’s not a child, but he’s my child. He’s my baby.”

Safety is a major motivator for Steven, who addresses cases such as: Triple fatal crash in St Mellons in 2023 It took police two days to find the car involved.

“These situations often depend on speed and accuracy and [a tracking app] He gives it to us. “This is very valuable to me.”

Although Steven has been accused of not trusting his daughter, he says the opposite is true because “You should trust your family completely if you’re giving them 24-hour access to your location.”

The Unite Students survey found that 71% of fathers and 59% of mothers used tracking apps for their children at university.

Lianne Hannam, from Cardiff, also uses Life 360 ​​with her daughter Erin Mae, 21, and son Ostyn Lee, 15.

“With the world the way it is, I like knowing where my kids are,” she said.

It was actually Erin Mae who suggested her mother download the app because she used it with her friends about a year ago.

Lianne, 45, thought it was a good idea, especially since her daughter was a new driver and had started a job that required her to work nights.

“This gives me relief because I worry so much. But I can give him space because I know where he is, I can’t be after him all the time,” he said.

“It’s not that I have a hard time leaving them because my children are growing up, it’s the outside world that I’m worried about. The world scares me.”

Dr Brunet said he thought parents weren’t as worried on days when they couldn’t communicate so easily with their children.

“If you follow them when they go to college, will you follow them five years later? When does it stop?”

“I don’t think tracking companies are bad, but they’re trying to sell their product and with that the myth that if you love your kids, you’ll want to track them and it will make you feel calmer.

“In the short term you think it helps your own anxiety, but like many short term things related to anxiety, you need to think about the long term as well.

“If you grow a tree indoors where there is no wind, it will grow tall but not strong. You need your children to be exposed to challenges in a fairly safe environment.”