For 17-year-old Macy, it was a terrifying ordeal. Driving home one day, her car skidded on wet asphalt and plummeted eight metres down a wooded embankment, out of sight from the road. Trapped in a ditch, unable to move or reach her phone, she spent seven torturousVery complicated or difficult. hours fearing that she would never be saved.

Her mother, Catrina Alexander, was at her wits' end as her daughter failed to return her calls or texts. But then inspiration struck: she and Macy had agreed to share their locations on a mobile phone app. Soon enough, Macy had her mum by her side, and was rescued from the wreck.¹

No wonder location tracking apps have exploded in popularity over the past decade, appealing particularly to anxious parents. A survey from 2019 showed that 40% of parents and guardians in the UK were using some kind of GPS tracking on a daily basis.

Knowing where your child is at all times has become the norm. And it promises a wealth of benefits, from comforting parents when their children fail to reply to texts, to providing better safety to young people in a world full of risks.

But not everyone is convinced. Some say location sharing violates young people's right to privacy, and inhibits the natural flow of trust between parents and children. Others worry it reduces their independence and makes them reliant on their parents or guardians, trapping them in a suspended childhood.

And furthermore, some believe that they are a slippery slope to more serious forms of surveillance. A number of third-party apps have sprouted for particularly fretful folks. Parents can remotely activate the microphone on their child's phone to record audio, or scan their children's messages to alert them to "concerning interactions".² But should parents have this level of control?

Giving your child's location data freely to third-party apps presents its own pertinent dangers. Private companies can track your child's every move from infancy and sell their findings.³

You might be worried about privacy from your parents. But you should worry about privacy from companies too. Mobile location vendors, who make millions selling our "private" information, persuade us that our location data is anonymous. But researchers have found that 95% of individuals can be positively identified with just four location-time data points.⁴

As well-intentioned as parents may be, the data produced by location tracking apps could put their children at risk. Nobody knows who the data may be sold to or what it could be used for.

Some researchers say that the rise of these apps is an unfortunate symptom of parents increasingly using technology to mediate their relationships with their children. Instead of building up the trust that their children will behave sensibly, they use technology to gain control.

But others say it is a sympathetic cause amid constant headlines about the interminable dangers to children across the world. Of course, it is hardly a traditional method of parenting. But it is a way of adapting to growing challenges. And who can blame a parent for wanting to be prepared?

Are they suffocating?

Yes: Children have a right to privacy, even when they are very young. These apps are not only depriving them of that privacy; they are also creating anxieties in parents rather than dispelling them. Parents need to learn to take a more hands-off approach.

No: It is natural for parents to want to protect their children. Now they have access to more resources to do so than they would have in the past, who can blame them for using them?

Or... It is not privacy within a family that we should be worried about. We should be far more concerned about companies selling our location data to people who can use it to identify us and find out about our lives. Who knows what the implications of this could be?