I Never Tracked My Teens. Why Am I the Only One?

Hi, friends. A "Find My" setting here, a Snap Map there, all to see where the kids are right now. Somehow it feels like it just comes with the territory. And if you don't do it? Anna doesn't want to track her kids. She won't use apps like that, because she grew up with a lot of freedom herself. But she wonders why she's so alone in that…

Dear Anna, our kids are growing up differently than we did. Back then we went backpacking through Europe on rail passes, wandered into random clubs in Italy, and called home from a phone booth once a week to say we were still alive. Today, parents track their kids' every step. How do you feel about that?

Honestly, it kind of baffles me. My childhood and teen years were, thankfully, wonderfully phone-free. I was born and raised in Bonn, which isn't a big city, but it isn't a village either. We roamed around in big groups of kids, and the rule was clear: at a set time, you were home. You had a key to the apartment, and if your parents weren't there when you got back, you stayed home alone and waited, or you went over to a friend's. You'd leave a quick note first, of course, saying where you'd gone.

My teen years were a lot like what you described. You'd go off for weeks with a youth group to Sweden, France, wherever, and there was no phone at all… My mom once told me, "If the kids don't call, everything's fine." Later, when I went out partying, it was the same. You said goodbye, told your parents the rough plan for the evening (or didn't), and then you were unreachable until you showed up at home at some point. During school breaks, sometimes not for days.

Sometimes you'd call from a phone booth to check in, or stop by the house or your parents' work and give them a quick update. As a kid and a teen, that made me feel very free, and still always safe. There was usually someone with me anyway: friends, cousins, neighbors, and so on.

When my older kids (the girls are almost 24 and 22 now) hit their teens, tracking wasn't even a thing yet. For my oldest, the feature simply didn't exist at first. It started slowly when they were about 14 and 16. Friends of my girls had to text their parents regularly and say where they were. The kids were constantly being driven places and picked up again. The first time my oldest went out partying (we'd moved to Cologne by then) was, of all things, during Carnival, the city's giant street party, and of course on Zülpicher Straße, the epicenter of it all.

She had her phone with her, but not for me. I wished her a great time and just trusted that she'd let me know if she needed help or if anything happened. She took the bus and train there and back. Sure, we drove her to some places, but whenever we could, we supported her independence. To be fair, my oldest was super reliable, maybe partly because we trusted her, and she always sent quick updates.

At a family gathering one time, it came out that the much older cousins, and only the girls, mind you, were being tracked. My aunt and uncle were swapping notes about this wonderful new invention. My tracked cousins were 19 and 20 at the time! I couldn't believe it.

Why do you think this is happening? Why do parents need so much more control these days? Or is it just that the technology makes it possible, so of course we look?

I've asked myself that a lot, too. I mean, these parents are exactly our generation, the one that partied so hard and could disappear for weeks and had exactly that freedom. They should still know the feeling. I've wondered whether it's because the internet has connected us so globally, and we're flooded with news and information, and negative headlines from other countries make such big waves here, that it creates the feeling of a much less safe world.

Maybe it really is a lot less safe now? Or maybe the parents had bad experiences themselves? I always had a "safety net." In our friend group, the rules were clear: nobody drinks from a glass that's been left sitting on the table, we go onto the dance floor together, nobody walks home alone, and the girls with the longest way home get walked by the guys.

But I think just having the option is one of the main reasons. My mom would absolutely have used this feature if it had existed back then! This sounds a bit morbid, but look at what doesn't get tracked. You're sitting at work, your phone pings, someone rang the doorbell at your smart home, so you quickly switch on the security camera to see who it is. Oh, where's my wife with the car right now? Let me quickly track the car… From there it's not a big step to monitoring the kids all the time, too.

Who in your family gets tracked? And have you ever asked the parents why it matters so much to them?

In my family it's mainly my cousins who get tracked. My family is huge, and because of some late-in-life babies, the ages are really mixed. So I have cousins ranging from 16 to 43 😉 The younger ones, who are 16 to 22 right now, are the ones being tracked.

Of course I asked the parents. I was totally surprised, especially with those two, because they're the youngest siblings of my mom and only a little over 15 years older than me. So I saw firsthand how they behaved at the age their kids are now. They're basically the party animals of my family. Their answer: "This way I always know where she is, and it gives me a feeling of security. So much can happen."

Did you ever ask your cousins and nieces how they feel about Mom being able to see their location?

Funnily enough, the two cousins whose parents I asked are total homebodies who hardly ever go out partying and do a lot with their parents. My cousin just turned 18 last week, and the topic came up again. My aunt said proudly, "I have her permission to track her." I looked at my cousin… Silence, a slightly pained smile… what are you supposed to say? I know my mom, who's the big sister of her mother, and the two are very much alike. Resisting is pointless. It's easier to just agree, and then you get some peace.

You said you never did this with your kids. Why not?

It was never an option for me, or for us. I wanted the girls to feel that I trusted them. That I wasn't breathing down their necks. The teen years are there so we can slowly let go: so kids can make more and more of their own decisions, be responsible for themselves, and have their own adventures. Without the experience of being able to handle things on their own, kids do worse, in my opinion.

You just have to remember what it was like the first time you pulled something off without your parents, or how it felt to be stuck somewhere in the middle of nowhere with no parents and have to take care of yourself. That gives kids confidence in their own abilities, too. I trust you to handle it on your own.

You don't plan to track your eleven-year-old son either, but these days you feel a bit like a unicorn, the one who simply trusts her kid and the world out there…

Totally. With him, it's admittedly a little harder, because he has ADHD and is just super scatterbrained. He also loves to miss the school bus and so on. Since he's in fifth grade now, he just recently got a phone, and he's actually great about calling or texting when something like that happens. We live in a village now, so we do have to pick him up more often when he's stranded. But still, no. I just can't bring myself to do it. But you really do feel very alone in this.

There's also an interesting phenomenon here. The other kids who get tracked all had phones in first or second grade, were allowed to use them unfiltered, nobody checked their movies or video games, and they already have WhatsApp and Roblox chats and so on. My son, on the other hand, had no phone until recently. I've always screened his movies and games ahead of time to see if they're age-appropriate, and he wasn't allowed to have WhatsApp. He has the strictest safety settings on his phone. So I don't trust the world out there ;) but the other parents apparently do. Sometimes I find that pretty crazy.

If you tell our kids today that we used to always meet at the streetlight at 6 p.m. sharp, and that if you weren't there, you just weren't part of it and couldn't catch up, they look totally baffled. How do you feel about this shift?

Well, it has its pros and cons. You had to be at the meeting spot on time, or you weren't in and missed everything. Because of that, people actually did show up on time (some didn't, but then you'd already built in the obligatory 15 to 20 minutes). On the other hand, you couldn't join later, and sometimes you searched forever to find the group in a big area like a festival.

Sometimes we spent the whole time looking for each other and missing each other, which was really annoying, and being able to text "we're at the stage now" would have been nice. Also, I think the "flexible yes" has gotten totally out of hand. You can just cancel at the last minute if you'd rather do something else.

Was it maybe even more relaxing for parents back then, without tracking? I know a mom who tried tracking and nearly had a heart attack every time her child stood too long at a crosswalk, because she thought the kid had been hit by a car or approached by a stranger. She gave it up and has been calmer ever since…

Definitely. I just imagine I'm out with someone myself, at the movies, say, and my kid is out somewhere. I'd be sitting in the theater constantly checking where my child is… I wouldn't get anything out of the movie, and I couldn't switch off and enjoy my free time. I still go by my mom's motto: "If they don't call, you know everything's fine." So far that's always been true with my kids.

Isn't it also hard on a student exchange to really dive into another culture if you can see on your phone what your friends back home are doing? Or if your mom, thousands of miles away, can see you're at Mickey D's right now?

Wow, I hadn't even thought of that. No, that's honestly too crazy for me. A kid has a right to privacy, too. I don't need to know everything, and I'm not entitled to, just because I'm the mom.

Tracking your kids is out of the question for you. Would you say you're a fairly carefree mom? Or do you sometimes wonder whether you're missing something or being too naive?

I'm definitely not carefree! I worry constantly about whether everything's going to work out and so on. But a kid isn't responsible for making me feel better. And to me, tracking is something that makes parents feel safer and more comfortable… I have to put up with the worry just like the generations before us, who had no phones. Like I said, trust, let go, and walk beside your kid as they grow up.

I know for sure that I've missed a lot and will miss a lot, but isn't it wonderful that my girls (with the boys it hasn't quite gotten there yet) had exactly that feeling of freedom that I loved and treasured so much? I actually talked about this with my oldest recently. She hasn't lived at home for a while now, and the topic came up. She said she always thought it was great that I trusted her so much, and that in her circle of friends she was always the kid with the most freedom.