Parent gets ‘anxious’ when kids are away at college without tracking apps
Dear Carolyn: We have two “kids,” 18 and 20. We used an app to track them in high school, when they were driving, etc. We found it simplified our schedules and knowing where everyone was or needed to be picked up. I even liked knowing when my husband was headed home after work. He uses and likes the app.
When our older kid went to college, we took the app off their phone but could see where they were through AirTag/item trackers. I’d wonder what they were up to above and beyond their excellent communication. They refused my request to put the app back on for a car trip, saying they would be fine and in good touch. And they were.
My younger child is about to leave for college, and I’m anxious about removing the app. They don’t have any backup AirTags or trackers. I’ve asked friends for reassurance that it’s the right time, but EVERY single one still tracks their “kids”! Including one with a married 24-year-old daughter. Our younger kid wants it off their phone soon. My husband agrees and says our kids are independent and trustworthy who are in close touch. I rationally agree and would have been horrified to be “tracked” in college by my parents. Am I in a bubble with my friends who are parents of newly launched adults? I will deal with getting rid of the app, but I wonder if we are outliers with this technology. – Tracking
Tracking: I don’t care whether you are outliers with this technology. Stop tracking your kids. It encourages more anxiety than it eases, at the cost of their independence and your trust in one another. And yourselves. It’s about the anxiety! Which is natural! But so unhealthy to indulge. Tracking only prolongs it by promising something you can’t be given. Ever. By anything. The app won’t make your kids OK.
Your tracking what they are “up to” is not! OK! Nor will it make them OK. Because whatever is happening to them at any given moment is independent of your knowing where. Treating location as your early warning system to parachute in with ... advice? warnings? law enforcement? sharply worded concerns? is parenting beyond your job description to make yourself feel better. We can flip that around, too. Learning to sleep when you don’t know where your adult offspring are will not harm them. It will help you relax and trust them, though, which will help you become a better parent of adults.
Meanwhile: Their being “independent,” “trustworthy” and “in close touch” speaks well of your family and reduces the risk of their coming to harm – but not to zero, and apps can’t change that except at the edges of the margins. So using “They’re good kids!” in deciding whether to app or not to app is merely an extension of the false premise for tracking them in the first place.
Anxiety is your problem. Counting on false assurances instead of developing healthy detachment and coping skills is your problem. An anxious worldview is your problem, and it’s contagious.
If you all mutually consent to locationshare in the event of a so-rare, absoluteworst-case, gone-missing-type scenario, then have at it. But don’t peek, ever, unless needed. And yay to trackers for wilderness adventurers, solo travelers, at-risk minors, people with developmental, cognitive, memory issues that make wandering a serious risk. When trackers help families in hard circumstances, great. But a typical launch isn’t a hard circumstance. It’s life.
Email Hax at tellme@washpost.com.