Should Parents Track Their Teenager’s Location? A Balanced Guide

Should parents track their teenager’s location? For many families, sharing locations with a teenager is reasonable, and it’s common. But the research offers something more useful than a yes or no: how you do it matters. Open, two-way sharing that your teen agreed to, used mainly for arrival alerts and emergencies and wound down as they approach adulthood, is a very different thing from secret tracking or checking the map every hour.

Below is what the surveys and studies actually say, including where the evidence is thinner than headlines suggest. Then comes the practical part most articles skip: a family location agreement you can copy, a plan for tapering off from 13 to 18, what to do when your teen turns sharing off, and how things change once they’re adults.

Should parents track their teenager’s location? The short answer

Yes, if it’s open and agreed. No, if it’s secret. In between, four principles make the difference:

• Your teen knows and has a say. UNICEF’s privacy advice for parents is to involve your teen in decisions about their online privacy, and location is part of that.
• It goes both ways. You share your location with them too.
• Alerts, not surveillance. Arrival alerts tell you they got there. The map is for when something’s off.
• It has an end date. It loosens every year, and at 18 it becomes their decision.

If your child is younger, start with our guide on how to track your child’s phone, which covers setup on every kind of phone.

How common is it for parents to track teens?

Nearly every teen now carries the technology. Pew Research Center’s 2024 survey found 95% of U.S. teens aged 13 to 17 have access to a smartphone, and Common Sense Media’s 2021 census found 88% of 13- to 18-year-olds have their own. How many parents use those phones to track location depends on who was asked, and when:

These studies used different questions and samples, so read them as a rough picture rather than a trend line. Together they show that location sharing between parents and teens is now ordinary, and that it often continues past 18.

What research says about tracking, trust and safety

Tracking itself: no clear link to problems

The most direct study is Burnell and colleagues’ 2023 paper in the Journal of Family Psychology. It found some links between location tracking and outcomes such as externalising (acting-out) problems and cannabis use, but only among older teens and those reporting less positive parenting, and those links didn’t survive statistical correction. The authors call the work preliminary, and because it’s correlational it can’t show that tracking causes anything, good or bad.

What teens tell you matters more than what you track

A classic study by Stattin and Kerr, published in Child Development in 2000, surveyed 703 14-year-olds and their parents in Sweden. Parents’ knowledge of what their teens were doing came mainly from the teens’ own disclosure, not from parental monitoring. The authors concluded that “tracking and surveillance is not the best prescription for parental behavior.” The study predates smartphones (monitoring then meant questions and rules, not GPS), but the lesson seems to carry over: anything that makes your teen less willing to talk to you costs more than a map gives back.

Controlling monitoring goes with more risk, not less

In a 2018 survey of 215 U.S. parent–teen pairs, Ghosh, Wisniewski and colleagues found that parents who gave teens little autonomy were the most likely to use monitoring apps, and that more parental control was associated with more online risks, not fewer. Teens who had been victimised online or had peer problems were also more likely to be monitored, so the link may run both ways. The authors recommend engaged rather than restrictive parenting. Pamela Wisniewski of Vanderbilt University later told Scientific American that whether tracking helps depends on how parents use the information.

A companion 2018 study analysed 736 Google Play reviews of 37 online-safety apps, written by children aged 8 to 19. 76% gave one star, children rated the apps significantly lower than parents did, and they described them as overly restrictive, invasive and bad for their relationship with their parents. These were online-safety and parental-control apps rather than simple location sharing, but the reaction is worth taking seriously.

Teens accept location sharing more readily when it’s mutual

In focus groups with UK 16- and 17-year-olds, researchers from the Oxford Internet Institute and the University of Reading found location-tracking apps were more accepted than other monitoring tools, particularly when families used them reciprocally. The young people emphasised trust and communication over technology.

The benefits and costs, side by side

Is it OK to track your teen without telling them?

No, and every expert source we reviewed points the same way. The Nuffield Foundation’s 2025 report The monitored generation recommends that monitoring and location tracking be clearly disclosed to the young people affected, at all times and on every device. Australia’s eSafety Commissioner advises parents to talk with their child about why and when their location will be shared and how the app works.

Secret tracking does happen: Scientific American’s write-up of the 2023 Journal of Family Psychology study put the share of parents tracking without their teen’s knowledge at 14%. Beyond the risk to trust, it teaches the wrong lesson. In a 2025 release, eSafety reported that 18.6% of Australians aged 18 to 24 agreed it’s reasonable to expect to track an intimate partner whenever they want, and said modelling respectful tech habits helps young people learn about consent and privacy. How you handle location with your teen is part of how they learn what’s normal in a relationship.

That’s why GPSforFamily has no hidden mode: Android shows a persistent notification while sharing, iPhone shows its location indicator, and anyone in a circle can pause sharing. If you’re weighing up apps, our guide to whether location sharing apps are safe covers what to check.

A fair setup: two-way sharing and alerts instead of map-checking

Share both ways

Put your own location in the same circle so your teen can see you too. It’s fairer, it matches what teens in the Oxford research found most acceptable, and it’s practical: they can see you’re stuck in traffic without calling. It’s also common once kids grow up: in the Mott Poll, 48% of parents of young adults said their child tracks them too.

Let alerts do the checking

Sophia Choukas-Bradley, a researcher at the University of Pittsburgh, advises in Scientific American checking a teen’s location only when there’s a reason for concern or an emergency. Arrival and departure alerts make that realistic: you hear when your teen reaches school or gets home, so there’s little reason to open the map in between. That helps your own peace of mind too, given that nearly a quarter of tracking parents in the Mott Poll said it sometimes makes them more anxious.

• iPhone (Find My): People → [teen] → Notify Me → Add Location Alert. Recurring alerts need your teen’s approval the first time.
• Google Maps or Find Hub: add a place under the person’s location notifications and choose arrivals, departures or both. Your teen gets an email, and these don’t work for under-13s.
• GPSforFamily: add safe places such as home, school or a part-time job, and you’re alerted on arrival and departure. Parents share their own location in the same circle, and anyone can pause sharing from More → Share my location. It’s free, on Android now, with the iPhone app coming soon.

Step-by-step instructions are in our guide to getting notified when someone arrives or leaves, and our roundup of the best free family locator apps compares the options.

A family location agreement you can copy

The American Academy of Pediatrics doesn’t give advice on location sharing specifically, but it notes that some families use a phone agreement to set expectations. A location agreement works the same way: write it down, both sign it, and give it a review date. Common Sense Media’s advice on teens and location apps also starts with ground rules and strict privacy settings, with no public location sharing. The Nuffield Foundation report goes further, suggesting consent that expires automatically after a fixed period, with regular check-ins where parents and young people review the arrangement.

Sign and date it together, keep it somewhere you’ll both see it, and actually hold the review. The agreement only works if it changes as your teen grows up.

Tapering off: a plan from 13 to 18

On phones in general, the AAP’s HealthyChildren.org suggests easing controls and allowing more independence as a child shows more responsibility. Location sharing can follow the same curve. Here’s one way to do it; adjust it to your teen, not the calendar.

The platforms have milestones of their own. When a child supervised with Google Family Link turns 13, Google emails parent and child, though until 18 the teen needs a parent’s approval to stop supervision. Google Maps arrival notifications don’t work for sharers under 13. For a lighter touch at the older end, iPhone’s Check In (iOS 17 or later on both phones) only alerts you, and shares your teen’s location, if they stop making progress or don’t arrive and don’t respond.

What to do if your teen turns off location sharing

1. Assume the boring explanation first. A flat battery, a phone that’s off or a changed setting can look just like a deliberate switch-off. On iPhone, stopping sharing with someone doesn’t notify them, so you may not get a warning either way.
2. Check in, don’t interrogate. “Your location’s off. All okay?” is enough for now.
3. Talk later, calmly. Ask why. They may have felt watched, wanted privacy for something ordinary, or been somewhere they knew you wouldn’t like. Each calls for a different conversation.
4. Separate safety from control. If they were somewhere unsafe, talk about the place and the plan, not the app. If they simply wanted privacy, it may be time to loosen the agreement.
5. Renegotiate rather than lock down. Research on monitoring apps links more control with more risk, not less, and teens accept location sharing more readily when it’s mutual. Clamping down can push the next switch-off out of sight.

Give your teen a way out that doesn’t need hiding, too. Kaitlin Tiches of Boston Children’s Hospital told Scientific American that knowing a location isn’t the same as being safe, so teens need their own strategies for uncomfortable situations. One option is a standing promise: if they call for a lift, you come, and the questions wait until tomorrow.

What about 18-year-olds and college students?

Tracking often doesn’t stop at 18. The C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children’s Health found in 2026 that 52% of parents of 18- to 25-year-olds track their young adult’s location, more often for daughters than sons and for 18- to 20-year-olds than 21- to 25-year-olds. Pew Research Center’s 2024 survey found 25% of parents of 18- to 34-year-olds track their adult child, rising to 42% among parents of 18- to 24-year-olds.

The most telling Mott numbers are about consent. Among parents who track a young adult, 96% said their child knows, but only 54% had given them the option not to be tracked. Knowing isn’t the same as agreeing. The report suggests families talk through when tracking helps, such as travel and emergencies, and when it isn’t needed, and says young adults should have a role in deciding whether and how they’re tracked. Choukas-Bradley goes further and suggests stopping when a teen reaches adulthood.

In practice, that means turning “we track you” into “we share with each other, if you want to”:

• Ask, and accept no. At 18, it’s their location and their call.
• Make it mutual. In the Mott Poll, 48% of parents said their young adult tracks them too.
• Share for the trip, not forever. Find My, Google Maps and Find Hub all offer time-limited shares, such as an hour or until the end of the day, for a road trip or a late flight.
• Hand over control. In GPSforFamily, a young adult can stay in the family circle and pause sharing or leave the circle whenever they like, and raw location data is deleted from the server after 30 days. Our privacy policy spells out exactly what circle members can see.

Whatever their age, the goal is the same: a young person who shares because it’s useful, and who calls you when it matters.