Why tracking your parents is about to be the next big thing

When Sue Easton’s 84-year-old father with dementia got lost for over two hours while driving to her house, she was understandably distressed.

“I knew they were only 20 minutes away, but then they just didn’t arrive,” she said.

However, she was able to locate him and bring him back to safety with family tracking app Life360.

“I checked on the app and saw that he had gotten himself lost. I was trying to direct my parents back to my house because I saw exactly where they were. Eventually, I told them to pull over so my husband could go and fetch them.”

Robyn Holland tracks her 95-year-old stepmother Val Harvey using the FindMy app on their iPhones for added peace of mind.Credit: Paul Harris

It’s a slightly different story for 95-year-old Val Harvey, who is still living an active, independent lifestyle. For reassurance, her stepdaughter Robyn Holland checks her location a few times a day on Apple’s Find My GPS app to see if she’s out and about.

“If I see her at the local shops, or the church, or wherever she’s going, then I know she’s fine. But if she doesn’t move for a few days, then I might give her a call to say, ‘Hey, how are you going?’,” Holland said.

Although they keep tabs on their elderly relatives for different reasons, Easton and Holland are part of a growing demographic of adult children who track the locations of their elderly parents for safety reasons – and a new device to hit the shelves next year could make this much more common.

Tracking loved ones: Creepy or not?

It is not uncommon to hear of overprotective, anxious parents who track their children’s whereabouts. The biggest pitch for Silicon Valley tech company Life360, which is listed on the Australian sharemarket, has always been to these users. And it has been a hit: the app has amassed 80 million global users since launching in 2008.

Tracking your friends and family has become more normalised, according to Life360 chief executive Chris Hulls, who said: “Apple has helped make location sharing not creepy, which it once was.”

“If you look at where we are now versus even three years ago or two years ago in terms of attitudes to location devices, they are becoming ubiquitous.”

Life360 is now shifting gears in a bid to appeal to more people. It plans to launch a wearable gadget in 2026 that could prompt more adults to make the switch from tracking their children to tracking their parents and grandparents.

Some of the features on the gadget include being able to detect when an elderly person falls and automatically notifying family members, as well as an SOS button they can press. Users will also be able to see when somebody last used their phone, as well as how many steps they have taken.

Life360 chief executive Chris Hulls is working on an elder care wearable gadget to be launched in 2026.Credit: Louie Douvis

Hulls is personally invested in bringing the product to fruition – he wants it to be great enough to give to his mum, who has dementia.

“Everyone has a family. Doesn’t always have to be having teenage kids. I have an ageing parent right now who I really need the elder care product for,” he said. “It’s very different from having them use a product they haven’t already used. We have millions of people who’ve already been customers of Life360 and now need a little extra help.

“Grandparents are the ones that want to be in the app. Seniors can really struggle with loneliness. My mum would just ask, ‘Hey, I see you’re here. What are you doing?’, to kind of annoy me a little bit,” Hulls said.

What could trackers do?

When Easton’s parents started showing signs of gradual cognitive decline, she decided to start tracking them as she became concerned they would get lost more frequently.

Six in 10 people with dementia will wander at least once, and such risks weigh heavily on their family and caregivers. Each year, about 35,000 Australians are reported missing, and it is an even more acute issue for older people with dementia.

Another paramount issue for elderly Australians is the risk of falling. It is the leading cause of hospitalised injuries and injury deaths among the elderly, making up 77 per cent and 71 per cent of incidents in this age group, respectively.

35,000 Australians are reported missing each year. It is a particularly thorny issue for older people with dementia.Credit: Paul Harris

One big problem with wearable trackers already on the market is where they send inaccurate fall detection or SOS alarms as a result of unsophisticated sensors that have not been rigorously tested.

“The more false alarms you get, the more you think, ‘Maybe I won’t wear that because it’s just not working, and I don’t want to worry my family’,” said University of Sydney digital health expert Associate Professor Jessica Orchard.

Other indicators of a good wearable gadget include how light and unobtrusive it is, a long battery life and sturdy, long-lasting hardware.

According to Life360’s Hulls, creating a better product than what’s already out there “should be the easiest lay-up in the world”.

“They all suck; they are low quality. Nobody likes them, and they’re exorbitantly priced.”

The privacy paradox

However, it hasn’t been a completely peachy ride for tracking apps. There have been privacy concerns raised over the apps’ birthing a wave of “helicopter parents” who obsessively keep tabs on their kids’ whereabouts 24 hours a day, on top of the mishandling of user data and breaches of privacy.

Furthermore, the complex nature of privacy policies means consumers typically had little knowledge about how tech companies were using their information, Orchard said.

“You can’t negotiate with the app developer. It’s very much take it or leave it. I would bet that most people don’t read the fine print. You scroll to the bottom and agree because that’s what most people do,” she said.

Holland and Easton brushed off concerns that tracking apps had limited the autonomy of their parents.

“They knew that it was very much from a position of care. It’s not trying to micromanage them. We’ve always, and we still are, trying to let them live with all their dignity as they can,” Easton said.

Holland and her stepmother believe frequent, but low-interference monitoring of her whereabouts has allowed Harvey to live independently for longer.

“I’ve been on my own for years, and I just find it suits me. I don’t really want to go into care. I do value my independence,” Harvey said.

“It’s really given me great comfort. I think it’s great that Robyn cares enough to do it.”

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