Australian parents are using smartphones and smartwatches to spy on their children

WORRIED parents are turning to technology to ensure their children are safe, using apps to check on their journeys to school, outings with friends, and their social media updates.

Parents are giving their kids smartphones but using apps to track them, in the latest effort to ensure they're safe. Picture: Sarah Matray

WORRIED parents are increasingly turning to technology to ensure their children are safe, using everything from smartphone apps to smartwatches to check on their journeys to school, outings with friends, and even their every social media update or text message.

But parenting experts warned some apps overstepped boundaries into spying behaviour, and parents should be careful not cause resentment by taking oversight too far.

More than one in five children under 12 years of age owns their own smartphone, according to Finder.com.au, and parents are also buying younger children smartwatches designed to track their location by GPS and let them call pre-programmed phone numbers.

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Georgia Clarkson’s (pictured) mum is a strong advocate for the new safety trip tracking app that ensures parents always know where their kids are.

Cyber safety educator Leonie Smith said parents were even investing in expensive Apple Watches to track their children’s whereabouts during school days.

“There is an elevated fear about children’s welfare in this generation of parents compared to the last,” she said.

“In my generation, parents would ring the bell and you had to be home by 6pm and that was it. That’s very much changed.”

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While many Australian parents use apps such as Apple’s Find My Friends, which shares the location of both parents and children using iPhones, there are many other child-tracking options including Safetrip that shares the real-time location of children on a bus or train, Life360 that shares users’ locations across Apple and Android phones, and Google’s Find My Device feature that can be used to pinpoint a handset on a map from any web browser.

But there are also more invasive apps available to monitor children’s locations and smartphone use.

Parents are giving their kids smartphones but using apps to track them, in the latest effort to ensure they're safe. Picture: Sarah Matray

The MamaBear app reports on the speed of the vehicle in which a child is travelling, for example, mSpy lets parents see every text message, phone call, or Snapchat update their child sends or receives, and Spyzie also exposes their photos, notes, and internet use.

Ms Smith said while it was understandable for parents to ensure children were safe on public transport, secretly peering at every message to friends was over-the-top unless they were “in real physical danger,” and should at least stop when a child was old enough to demand greater independence.

“One father said to me, ‘how can I look at my 17-year-old’s messages?’ I had to say to him it would be like your dad hanging out behind you at the beach and saying, ‘just ignore me, talk to your friends like you normally would’,” she said.

Find My Friends is just one of the phone apps parents are using to spy on their kids.

Best Programs 4 Kids director Claire Orange recommended an alternative strategy, instead setting guidelines early, and keeping children’s social media usernames and passwords until the age of 15 so they could be monitored and were aware a parent could monitor their activities.

Ms Orange said parents didn’t need to read every message a child sent, but should periodically scan through a child’s phone for “inappropriate language or content,” and should not let smartphone use get out of control before taking action.

“Start as you mean to continue,” she said. “You can’t say to a 14-year-old, ‘you’re out of control on social media’ and ban it. You need to train children early and think about how they are going to start this digital journey.”

Originally published as Australian parents are using smartphones and smartwatches to spy on their children