{"id":388233,"date":"2026-01-04T20:01:12","date_gmt":"2026-01-04T20:01:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/388233\/"},"modified":"2026-01-04T20:01:12","modified_gmt":"2026-01-04T20:01:12","slug":"tracking-devices-make-children-more-anxious-and-less-independent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/388233\/","title":{"rendered":"Tracking devices \u2018make children more anxious and less independent\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

The tracking of children by their parents has become so common that shoe companies are leaving slots for location devices in the heels of trainers. But a coalition of psychologists, doctors, nurses and health professionals believe the practice breeds anxiety in the younger generation and is urging a rethink.<\/p>\n

Many parents say the ability to track their children is one of the primary reasons for buying them a smartphone, which will give location updates through the device\u2019s operating system or a specific app.<\/p>\n

Even those who delay buying their children a phone use tracking devices such as Apple AirTags to keep tabs on them, as Mike and Zara Tindall were spotted doing last year. The footwear company Skechers has created a trainer with an AirTag compartment<\/a> to help parents do this.<\/p>\n

\"Hands<\/p>\n

Find My Skechers allows parents to track children via an airtag compartment within a Skechers shoe<\/p>\n

\"Illustration<\/p>\n

However, a group of health experts have said in a letter that they are \u201cdeeply concerned about the growing trend\u201d, which they believe is negatively affecting children\u2019s mental health, self-reliance and resilience.<\/p>\n

They said: \u201cWe urge all parents to pause on tracking, and to reconsider whether the surveillance childhood we are sleepwalking into is really benefiting our children.\u201d<\/p>\n

The letter, signed by 74 professionals, has been organised by Generation Focus, a campaign group that is trying to make schools smartphone-free<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Meet the parents trying to keep their children smartphone-free<\/a><\/p>\n

They said that \u201cwhen we track our children, we are implicitly telling them that the world is unsafe\u201d. There is no evidence for this, they added, although carrying a smartphone does increase the risk of being mugged.<\/p>\n

They characterised tracking as an \u201cinvisible umbilical cord between parent and child\u201d. Maintaining this \u201cundermines a child\u2019s ability to develop a sense of autonomy\u201d and risks \u201cpreventing them from learning vital real-life skills, such as learning how to find a safe place and ask for help, and knowing what to do in an emergency without a smartphone\u201d.<\/p>\n

The trend for tracking was driven by tech companies that \u201ctap into our deepest parental fears with messaging that tracking makes children safer\u201d, they said.<\/p>\n

The group acknowledged there was no academic evidence linking tracking to harm, but its leadership pointed to studies showing a positive link between \u201chelicopter parenting\u201d and anxiety<\/a>. A causal link remains less concrete.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Gap-year teens still tracked by helicopter parents \u2014 half the world away<\/a><\/p>\n

Emma Lawlor, 47, a speech and language therapist from Guernsey, is opposed to tracking her daughter, Rosie, 11. She said: \u201cI really feel like it is an issue of trust, and I don\u2019t want to put things in place that suggest I don\u2019t trust my 11-year-old. <\/p>\n

\"Emma<\/p>\n

Emma Lawlor with her daughters Rosie, 11, and Evelyn, 7<\/p>\n

\u201cI really want my daughter, like generations before her, to be able to problem-solve by herself, so if something goes wrong and she\u2019s somewhere that she can\u2019t get home from \u2026 she needs to learn those life skills.\u201d<\/p>\n

Andrew Wilmot, 30, a project manager from Bournemouth, and his partner, Anna-Maria, are debatingtracking their eight-year-old daughter, who walks part of the way to school. He is against, she is for.<\/p>\n

Wilmot, who works in the tech industry, said: \u201cI don\u2019t believe it sends a very good message to your child \u2026 it\u2019s increasingly normal for people in relationships to be tracking each other constantly, but I think that sets quite a negative and hostile model for relationships.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe other aspect is parental anxiety. It\u2019s one of the biggest problems, I think, that parents face today: anxiety about their children\u2019s safety, which isn\u2019t necessarily based in reality.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wilmot said recent attacks on women<\/a> and the prevalence of groups of young men in the town centre had increased fears of crime. Despite this, he said: \u201cA tracking tag isn\u2019t going to protect my daughter from the open drug use, violence and knife crime that we see when we go to Bournemouth town centre. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe biggest risk to our children is cars and a tracking device isn\u2019t going to help our daughter if she gets hit by a car on the way home from school.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat parents imagine with tracking is the child getting kidnapped and taken away and being able to save them because they\u2019ve got a tracking tool. But all you\u2019re actually doing is feeding paranoia and anxiety, and that, in turn, harms the child indirectly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chris Field, a consultant child psychiatrist from Sheffield who signed the letter, said: \u201cI know many parents do actually say \u2018Well, hang on a minute. We need to track them\u2019. But then you increase their [child\u2019s] anxiety. But actually is it your anxiety you are managing or is it the child\u2019s?\u201d<\/p>\n

Lauren Antonoff, chief executive of Life360, a tracking app, said that tracking \u201csupports kids\u2019 independence while keeping everyone connected in a way that feels natural to a generation that already uses digital tools to navigate daily life.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we hear from families is that location sharing often reduces anxiety. It\u2019s about peace of mind and removing the friction that comes with co-ordinating busy schedules.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor many families, it actually expands what kids can do on their own. \u2018I know where you are, so you can stay out a little later,\u2019 or \u2018You can go a bit farther.\u2019 It creates the trust and transparency that lets parents say \u2018yes\u2019 more often.\u201d<\/p>\n

Clare Fernyhough, co-founder of Generation Focus, said: \u201cAs parents, it\u2019s so normal to want to keep our children safe. But there is no evidence that tracking makes them any safer. By transferring our own parental fears onto them, we risk making them more anxious, whilst simultaneously depriving them of vital opportunities to develop autonomy and resilience.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The tracking of children by their parents has become so common that shoe companies are leaving slots for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":388234,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[49,48,61],"class_list":["post-388233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=388233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388233\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/388234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}