I slipped into the Apple Store furtively, not quite sure what I was doing was right. My child would soon be walking to school on her own, I said. And I wanted to track her.

The shop assistant met my query with total approval. As though what I was seeking – to digitally surveille my own kid – was perfectly normal. So I bought the AirTag, which would nestle into her school backpack and assure me that she had arrived at school safely.

Electronic stalking of children by their parents is increasingly common. And it’s a controversial topic. Is it a valid and respectful way to ensure our children’s safety? Or is it an invasion of privacy which is contributing to the anxiety epidemic among kids who have only ever known a world dominated by the smartphone?

The phenomenon brings to mind comedian Tina Fey’s quip about using Photoshop to digitally alter images: “it is appalling and a tragic reflection on the moral decay of our society … unless I need it, in which case, everybody be cool”.

Whether it’s right or wrong, a bias towards surveillance is clearly the prevailing parental sentiment – this week the California-based family tracking app Life360 reported its half-yearly earnings, which showed record revenue growth. The business is worth $9.5 billion, and is expanding into the tracking of ageing relatives and family pets.

In Australia, use of Life360 has surged from 1.9 million monthly active users in 2023 to 2.7 million in 2024.

“We’re seeing the rise of what we call the anxiety economy – a shift where families are making more values-based decisions and prioritising peace of mind in how they spend,” said the company’s newly announced chief executive, Lauren Antonoff. “I think of us as the antidote for the anxiety. We’re not telling people that there’s danger around every corner, but we know that people think about this stuff.”

The company recently released an advertisement that went viral, which satirised the very parental anxiety it monetises. The ad featured a mother singing a Disney-style song to her teenage daughter called I think of you (dying) in which the mother voices her catastrophic thoughts about the fatal disasters that could befall her child while she’s out of sight. They include getting stuck in a mine, being kidnapped by bandits and bleeding out on the street.

The ad concludes with the teen girl introducing her mother to the tracking app.

“There,” she says, handing her mum the phone. “No more freaking out.”

Applying reason to formless fear is precisely what we must teach our children, especially if they are to escape the global trend of rising clinical anxiety, linked to smartphone use and social media, that is claiming our girls in particular.

But how can we teach them something we can’t model ourselves?

I know that it is statistically unlikely for a child to be snatched off the street. I know that she is more likely to be at risk online, and that, in general, children are more likely to be harmed by someone they know, than a stranger. And yet, the little red backpack icon on the “Find my” app map soothes me.

Of course, a contemporary parent can never win – that’s one of the reasons we are so anxious. Soon after I began my surveillance, a friend alerted me to the warnings of e-safety and family violence experts. The use of location-sharing apps is linked to an increased risk of digital coercive control.

A survey of 2000 adults from the eSafety Commissioner found that one in five men and one in ten women agreed that constantly texting to ask who their partner was with, or what they were doing, was a sign of care. Almost 14 per cent of survey participants said using a location-sharing app to track a romantic partner whenever they wanted to, was reasonable, but the figure jumped to almost 19 per cent among 18 to 24-year-olds.

Separate research reported in this masthead, by Griffith University PhD student Maria Atienzar-Prieto, found young people misinterpreted being followed by a partner on a tracking app as a protective behaviour borne of care and trust.

“One of the findings that really highlighted how this behaviour was normalised, was that the behaviour starts in the family home,” Atienzar-Prieto said. “Parents need to be aware of the associated risks that can come with this type of technology.”

Overhearing my hand-wringing about whether location-tracking was good parenting or terrible parenting, another friend, and father of three, suggested a compromise route – couldn’t we track our kids and not tell them?

“Covert parental surveillance is surely better for them?” he ventured.

Experts disagree. It erodes trust and is a breach of the child’s privacy and dignity, apparently.

The tracking can go both ways – many children and young people are now used to knowing where their parents are at all times. This is not something my generation (X) would have ever cared to know. There even exists a TikTok trend called “fambushing” where teens track their parents’ location and turn up unannounced, to surprise them.

I don’t know whether this is sweet or sad – surely the point of parenting is to prepare your kids for independence from you.

When I was 19 and backpacking with my best friend, we lost each other in Bangkok. We both rang our mums in Sydney (at huge expense) and passed messages through them about a meet-up place and time. When we reunited, we never bothered to let our mothers back home know. We had more travel to do. We were untraceable, and we wanted to keep it that way.

Now I am hypocritically helicopter-ish. But perhaps the most telling detail of my ignoble descent into AirTagging, is that I needed to get my child to install the thing on my phone and set it all up for me.

Jacqueline Maley is a senior writer and columnist.

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