Should parents track adult children by phone or let go?

Is it caring or overbearing? Many parents are turning to their phones to keep tabs on their adult children – but is this OK (if they agree to it) or is it a sign of mums and dads struggling to let go?

Dad-of-two Steven Medway, 53, has his whole family set up on a tracking app and couldn’t understand why it was such a divisive subject among fellow parents.

He said it became particularly useful when his daughter Martha, moved 100 miles away from home for university.

“She feels a little less distant when you’ve got that,” he said.

Research by Unite Students, which surveyed 1,027 parents of first-year university students across the UK, found 67 per cent of parents use an app to track their child’s location, but just 17 per cent contact them daily.

Martin Brunet, a GP and author who posts mental health content on social media, said while it was “a personal choice”, he strongly advised parents to “let them fly the nest”, for their own wellbeing.

“One of the hardest parts of parenting is letting go, and our modern world has made it easier for us not to, and I’m not sure that’s a good thing,” he added.

Steven, from Michaelston-y-Fedw, near Cardiff, has been using the Life 360 app for years, first prompted when his daughter Martha, now 19, started spending time away from their village with friends.

“We live quite rurally [and] we thought it was a good idea because if she needs to be picked up or anything… it will give you directions to Martha, wherever she happens to be.”

It therefore felt natural, when Martha started at the University of Reading in September, for them to keep using the app.

“She goes to parties, she won’t turn up to her halls until 3:30. But it’s not a problem, I’m not ringing her saying ‘what’s going on?’

“It’s just, when I wake up in the morning, I can see she’s back at the halls. If she wasn’t, if she was still in the middle of Reading, or her phone was there, maybe I’d give her a call.

“It’s not that I don’t want her to do anything, I just like to know she’s got back.”

Steven added that Martha was “quite an independent girl” who had spent a month travelling around Japan alone, as well as interrailing across Europe with friends, so he was used to her being away from home.

He said Martha had “never once” turned the app off, but he would respect her choice if she did.

“A lot of people have thought, falsely, that I’m forcing her to be tracked. Any time, if Martha doesn’t want to be tracked, she can just switch it off. I wouldn’t tell her off.”

He is my baby

Pub landlady Maria Connolly’s son, Owain, 19, also recently moved away from his Swansea home to go to university in Hertfordshire.

As Owain is autistic, Maria, 56, said he could be “quite naive”, and sometimes struggled to mix with others his age, so the app offered “peace of mind”.

She checks it a couple of times a day to make sure Owain is getting out and to keep an eye on his phone battery so she can remind him to charge it if needed.

“He was a bit reluctant at first, but I was like, ‘I pay your mobile phone bill, so if you want me to continue to pay the bill, you’ll put this app on your phone’.

“I say, ‘I see you’re in Wetherspoons, what table, and I’ll send you some drinks?’ So we keep it fun, but it is in the back of mind that it’s for safety.”

She said she would be “disappointed” if Owain didn’t want to use the app anymore, but would “go with it” while admitting she would text and call him more often.

“I’ve let him go; he’s got his independence. I’m not constantly checking it, it’s just knowing there’s that little bit of a safety net.

“He’s not a child, but he’s my child. He’s my baby.”