Why we’ve decided not to geotrack our children

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Alison Yeung is a family physician and creator of The Smartphone Effect MD, a platform she uses to educate parents about the impact of digital media on youth.

Last March, we lost our three-year-old on a beach in Mexico. She was playing at my feet at the water’s edge when I briefly looked away to check out what my husband and son were doing. When I turned back around, maybe 20 seconds later, she was gone. Time seemed to stand still. We didn’t know if she’d been swept into the water, if someone had taken her, or if she was just wandering somewhere on the crowded beach. After the most horrifying three (or so) minutes of our lives, we found her sitting on a lounge chair about 50 metres up the beach with a complete, but kind, stranger. She was perfectly happy and had no idea she’d etched some trauma into our psyches.

So this spring, when our seven-year-old asked permission to bike unaccompanied to the park, our initial instinct was to track his location. What if someone snatched him? What if he got lost? What if he didn’t go where he said he would? Surely seeing a blinking dot on our smartphone screens would ease our minds, right?

Many options for location tracking exist today – Bluetooth trackers like AirTags, smart watches with GPS, phones with location-sharing capabilities. There are all kinds of fancy ways to use geotags, including as bracelets, in shoes, and attached to backpacks. Tracking a child’s location has become normalized and commonplace for many parents even into the teen years, and proponents suggest it provides a sense of reassurance regarding their safety.

But after sitting with our feelings and critically examining our discomfort around this need for certainty, we have now become resolute not to track our child.

Opinion: Stop tracking your kid’s every move. It’s bad for both of you

In my clinical practice, I see the consequences of near-constant surveillance and supervision playing out in mental-health outcomes for children. It’s become widely accepted for parents to supervise every moment of play, drive their kids to school instead of letting them walk, text with them all day, and send them to supervised extracurriculars all evening. And whenever they’re out of sight, tracking their location has become the default.

Parental anxiety has increased over the past few decades due to frightening media headlines, anecdotal online parenting advice, and the absence of a “village” to help navigate trying times. With great intentions, parents are doing more for their kids and allowing them less autonomy – doubling down on the phenomenon that’s long been referred to as “helicopter parenting.” The result is kids suffering with record-high rates of anxiety, a lack of resilience and little confidence to navigate the real world independently.

We’ve unknowingly over-estimated the harms of the real world while undermining our kids’ ability to work through them.

The obvious truth, if you take a moment to think about it, is that location tracking does nothing for your child; and to the contrary, may actually harm them. The chances of a child being kidnapped are lower than the chances of them being struck by lightning. Even if this statistically improbable event happened, a tracking device will surely be the first thing the kidnapper ditches. Research has shown geotagging may also give your child a false sense of security whereby they may be more likely to engage in unsafe behaviour.

But there are some less obvious reasons we’ve made the choice not to track our son, or provide him with a device that would allow him to contact us.

We want him to feel that he can tolerate uncertainty. And that starts with us modelling that we can tolerate uncertainty. Just because we can know where he is at all times, doesn’t mean we should know.

We want him to believe that he is safe. We can have conversations about the reality that unsafe people exist, while also believing that most people are good and will look out for him if he needs help. We don’t want him believing he needs to be surveilled by us so that he isn’t picked up by a man in a white van.

We want him to believe that we trust him. If he tells us he will be somewhere, we will trust that’s where he’ll be until he gives us a reason to believe otherwise.

We want to respect his privacy. I understand he’s only seven, and that this will become more relevant as he gets older, but tracking seems much harder to stop once it starts than to simply never start at all.

We want him to believe that he can solve problems. We can build his confidence by trusting in his ability to get crafty and navigate challenges on his own.

When children feel safe, trusted and capable of solving their own problems, their confidence grows. When their ability to tolerate uncertainty grows, their anxiety decreases. I recognize that tracking can be a useful tool and doesn’t always lead to increased parental anxiety, but I still believe it’s largely unnecessary.

I’m happy to report that for the past few months, my son has been going to the park free from any electronic tether. Each time, he returns happy, confident, and eager for more independence. And with every safe return, my anxiety about letting him go eases a little more.