The other day, my daughter’s orthodontics appointment got rescheduled to a date and time that neither her mom nor I can take her. Even with my flexible schedule, there was a meeting that was immovable. So, I told my daughter that she’d have to go by herself since rescheduling would extend her treatment plan. As familiar as she is with the city’s transit system on well-trodden routes, I told my daughter that after the appointment, she’d have to take herself to school. She’d used transit by herself before but not to run errands or attend appointments. Even though she knows where the clinic is, she was still surprised at the sudden independence and it gave her a bit of pause. So, I said I’d do two things to help her: install a transit app on her phone for trip planning and I’ll make the trip with her on a weekend before she needs to fly solo.
When I unlocked her phone, I discovered she had disabled the location services. My daughter confirmed this and said, she didn’t want her mom to track her. What happened? “I got an earful from her when she couldn’t locate me at a time I was in the underground subway coming home from school.” I’m sure she just wants to know you were safe. “Dad, it was more than that and I just don’t want to be constantly monitored.” Yes, there’s a fine line. Let’s delete all the parent child monitoring apps your mom wanted you to install and start fresh.
It’s these situations that she can avail herself to mapping apps and me to know her location for my peace of mind: I don’t necessarily need to know where she is; I need to know where she shouldn’t be.
I told her that in order for these transit apps to work to her benefit, she must turn location services back on. I told her that the phone company already monitors the phone’s signal so indirectly knows where she is at all times, anyway. I told her that large tech companies with payment functions like Apple Pay and Google Pay collect location data also. So, in a way, other people know where she is by providing data service to the phone through cell towers. And here’s where I went further, I told her that I have a vested interest in knowing her location from time to time. And when location services are enabled, there are public tools that I can use to ping her phone. She was originally apprehensive as she thought I was installing new tracking software replacing mom’s.
I worried less about my daughter’s location when she was younger because she mostly got driven to her activities. Even playdates and playtimes were at familiar homes and there is little to no opportunity for her to be at some place I don’t already know. It’s when she got older and ventures off. To a park near a friend’s house; a movie theatre; a mall and other legitimate teenager hangouts. As a teenager, I always want her to have the option of deciding how best to return home regardless of how she got there. It’s these situations that she can avail herself to mapping apps and me to know her location for my peace of mind: I don’t necessarily need to know where she is; I need to know where she shouldn’t be.
She was surprisingly okay with my reasons and really appreciated the honesty. She got the fact that the reason why I gave her a phone isn’t so I can call her up and anytime I want, but for us to call each other anytime we need. Similarly, adding location service and having the ability to glean positional data isn’t for me to observe her every move, but for me to be aware of her proximity in case we need to find each other. Since her phone was set up, we’ve never made an issue about it anymore. I am assured that when I need, I can locate my daughter. My daughter is remarkably comforted that while she’s increasingly more independent, she still feels she has a digital tether to me.
