Conn. parents welcome tracking apps on their children’s cellphones

The ability to occasionally pick up her phone and know exactly where her kids are soothes Wendy Manemeit’s anxieties.

When the Groton resident was a child growing up in Florida, she said three of her schoolmates were kidnapped in separate instances. The incidents and the images of children on the back of milk cartons have stuck with her, she said.

Use of apps to track where kids are — and in some instances, their digital usage — is fairly common. Like Manemeit, other Connecticut parents said the use of such apps gives them peace of mind.

“It’s nice to be able to look at the phone and verify that she’s at school or at work, just not missing,” Manemeit said of her 17-year-old daughter. Her other two children, ages 6 and 4, don’t have phones yet.

Experts and app developers didn’t have definitive answers on whether tracking apps are becoming more popular, although some say there was a drop at the start of the pandemic, when children were home most of the time. But experts and parents did say the apps are being used differently — to make sure kids aren’t being bullied online, to limit screen time and for practical purposes.

“What I have seen an increase in is parents asking for help with specific issues,” said Titania Jordan, chief parent officer at Bark Technologies. Bark is an app that alerts parents to keywords, phrases or photos used in a child’s phone that may be concerning, including signs of bullying, self-harm or suicidal ideations.

Bark also provides parents with tips on how to talk to their kids about some of these issues and resources if their child is having mental health problems.

Connecticut parents said they also use tracking apps for practical and planning purposes — to see if their children’s buses are running late, and if so, what time they’ll be home, for example.

Some school districts such as New Haven, Hamden and Stamford also use location tracking apps so parents can see where the buses are on their routes.

Manemeit uses the Find My iPhone app and said it offers the features she needs.

Other apps tend to offer more features, ranging frommore detailed location tracking to limiting the use of certain programs and to providing parents a mirror image of what their children see on the screens.

Most of the apps, including Bark and Find My Kids, encourage parents to have conversations with their kids about the apps before installing them.

Part of the concern, if parents and kids aren’t on the same page about the apps, is that it could encourage kids to secretly uninstall the apps. That’s not difficult for most children, said Vahid Behzadan, an assistant professor in computer and data sciences at the University of New Haven.

“Any kid with a little bit of patience and access to Google is able to do it eventually,” Behzadan said.

Igor Lyubimov, the head of international growth at Find My Kids, said he’s found that children in the U.S. are typically more on board with use of apps to track their location than children in many other countries. His company has users in 140 countries.

The app offers location tracking, and parents can get notifications when their kids arrive at or leave from their destinations. It also allows parents to limit the amount of time children spend on certain apps.

“We always explain that spying will not work,” Lyubimov said. “You have to talk to your children, you have to explain that you want to install this application, not for spying, not for tracking them, but for peace of mind and for the children’s own safety.”

Children are also getting phones younger, which means parents tend to download the apps for younger kids.

Jennifer Abrams’ son just got his first phone for his 10th birthday. The Bridgeport resident, who also has a 15-year-old daughter, uses Google Family Link on both of her children’s phones.

The app blocks him frommaking purchases on the phone, from using certain apps and from searching the internet. She can also set “bedtimes” for the app to shut off and if he’s been grounded, certain settings only allow him to make calls or text with certain contacts.

“I wanted to give him a little bit of freedom, but not so much freedom,” Abrams said.