Life Under the Parental Eye of Sauron

To track and be tracked is no way to live.

When I was a teenager, I spent one year living in another country with a woman who expected to know where I was at all times. No doubt the woman was well-meaning, but I was obliged to inform her every time I left the house, where I was going, with whom, and when I’d be home, even if I didn’t know for sure. If I returned even a few minutes later than what discussed, I was punished.

On one occasion, I went to a sandwich shop with my friends after school (which the woman knew about), but my order took a long time to come. I remember getting more anxious as the minutes passed. My friends told me to relax, that it wasn’t a big deal, but I knew it was. I inhaled my sandwich, then ran home, only to arrive 20 minutes late; I was grounded for two weeks. It wasn’t worth it.

I adapted throughout that year. I became compulsively meticulous, if not borderline paranoid, about accounting for every movement and minute of my time. What the woman did with all that information, or why she cared so much, is beyond my comprehension; sometimes I wonder if she truly thought she was keeping me safe, or if she just liked the control. But I do know that I hated being under scrutiny, and I resented her for it, and something inside me was damaged by it.

Eventually, I returned home to my own parents, except that I proceeded to inform my mother of my movements in the same way that I had been conditioned to do the previous year—until one day my mother looked up from her painting and said, “Why are you telling me this? Just go! I’ll see you when you get back.” Relief flooded through me. Finally, an adult trusted me to take care of myself and make good decisions. No longer did I have to live in fear of arbitrary admonishment.

It took a while to recalibrate my behaviour, but once I unlearned the habit of narrating my comings and goings, I developed a staunch intolerance for surveillance of any kind. I knew how horrible it felt to be watched so closely. I never wanted to feel that way again, nor did I wish to inflict that on anyone else. My husband and I did not share our locations with each other, and I do not require my oldest son to share his location with me, now that he has a phone. He does have to tell me generally what he’s up to, but I know that we can reach each other in an emergency, and that is what matters.

I am disturbed by how normal it has become to keep tabs on everyone’s whereabouts, all the time. Parents track kids, kids track parents, spouses track each other; even close friends and adult siblings share locations. Full disclaimer: My younger Gen Z brothers (both in their late 20s) asked unprompted to share their locations with me, which I accepted with a clear caveat that the gesture would not be reciprocated. They didn’t care. Apparently, this is what many young people do, and it seems to be a sign of affection and trust. I am not immune to the appeal; my inner snoop enjoys occasionally checking where my adult brothers are (usually at work) and speculating about what they might be doing (probably working)—and sure, there are moments when I am tempted to demand that my son do the same—but still I resist, because deep down I find it incredibly creepy.

Problems With Surveillance

There is alarming research that shows that teens who know their parents are tracking them tend to make poorer decisions when it comes to personal safety. It’s as if they abdicate responsibility for themselves, assuming that their parent can always find them and get them out of any sticky situation. I don’t like that. I want my adolescent kids to take full responsibility for themselves and not get into cars with questionable people, go to sketchy places, or engage in dubious activities. The last thing I want is for them to assume I’ll always be able to find them and bail them out.

Another problem with tracking is that it conveys a powerful message to kids—that they cannot be trusted to have full autonomy. One survey in the Netherlands found that teens whose parents tracked them were more likely to engage in secretive behaviours and provide fewer details about their friends, activities, and social lives than teens whose parents did not track them. It suggests that the more a teen feels their privacy is being invaded, the more they want to hide information, which ultimately backfires on the parent.

Then there’s the big obvious question, that if a child is never allowed to experience true autonomy in the real world, where will they go in search of it? The online world! And that is far scarier than anything that might befall them in the real world. That’s where many criminals and predators have shifted their efforts; why lurk in parks and playgrounds when children are unsupervised and vulnerable online? Meanwhile, the real world is safer than it’s ever been, with violent crime trending downward since the 1990s, and the U.S. murder rate now on par with that of 1967. Unfortunately, parental perceptions of risk do not align with actual data, and many people think things are worse than they are, according to the Marshall Project.

I understand how easily tracking starts, but when and how does it stop? Pew Research reported in 2024 that 42% of parents with adult children aged 18 to 24 track their location. Read that again: 42%. It’s astonishing! When I was 24, I was married with two kids and owned a small house. There is no universe in which it would have felt appropriate for my mother to track my location. My circumstances were unusual—parenthood started far earlier for me than planned, and the rest of life rushed to catch up—but my point is that most 24-year-olds, even if they’re not yet raising kids of their own, are capable of self-sufficiency and do not require surveillance by their own middle-aged parents. But when do you click that “stop sharing” button? It’s a scary step to take, severing a digital umbilical cord. I know I’d struggle to do it, which is why I haven’t started. As I wrote in my first book, it’s always easiest to begin as you mean to go on.

A Troubling Precedent

Not only do I think parents should resist the urge to track their kids because it impedes opportunities for them to experience true autonomy and independence, and it risks becoming a crutch or obsession for the parent, but I also think it’s important to establish behavioural norms that children will carry forward throughout their lives. By tracking our kids, we’re essentially telling them that it is acceptable to surrender their privacy to anyone who claims to love them, whether it’s ourselves or their friends or future lovers. And that’s not OK! As Kathryn Jezer-Morton wrote for The Cut:

Now controlling behavior among intimate partners resembles nothing so much as just another day with a helicopter parent, with an expectation that location sharing and read receipts are turned on. Surveillance keeps us all safe, after all. “It’s for your own good!” It’s easy to see how parents’ behavior has paved the way for demands like these to seem reasonable rather than invasive.

If we parents are serious about granting our kids more freedom and independence, we should be striving to defend our children’s right to privacy, instead of contributing to its erosion through our own insecure demands.

How do we go about doing that?

Well, the obvious big one is to stop tracking your kids. Turn it off. If going cold turkey is too much, then wean yourself off it, having them share their location on weekend nights when they’re out with friends or driving somewhere, but generally striving to know less about their whereabouts at any given time. At the very least, set a hard rule for yourself that you’ll stop on their 18^th birthday. Trust them to handle themselves—unless they prove they can’t, in which case you have a different problem on your hands that won’t be resolved by location sharing. I’ve always told my kids that the level of independence they have correlates to their trustworthiness; the more reliable they are, the more leeway they will get.

Small tweaks like turning off read receipts in both directions helps because it reduces the pressure to respond immediately. It sends a clear message to friends and family that an individual has better things to do with their time than text back within minutes of receiving a message.

This extends even to the subtle and innocuous acts of surveillance that we do on a daily basis, like constantly asking little kids what they’re up to. I love how accurately Jezer-Morton captures this all-too-normal parental tendency, which she suggests starts out as “impression management around other people.” New parents fret about being perceived as neglectful if they’re not outwardly vigilant, but over time this “calcifies into a way of living”:

“Where ya goin’, bud?” asks a well-intentioned mom toiling under the specter of “not doing enough” as her toddler staggers into another room. “Whatcha doin?” a dad checks in for the 12th time on a single Sunday morning in the earnest spirit of caregiving but with an anxious edge to his voice.

It’s not always about perception. Sometimes we are genuinely trying to keep them safe, or just filling the awkward silence in the room, but it sends a clear message to the child that their actions must be accounted for, that the parental eye of Sauron is watching. You don’t have to do that. You can stop asking what they’re doing. You may allow them to get lost in their thoughts and games—and do the same for yourself. Surveillance is exhausting and futile for both the child and the parent. Do yourselves a favour and opt out of it.

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Food for Thought:

• I am currently reading Dr. Jared Cooney-Horvath’s book, The Digital Delusion: How Classroom Technology Harms Our Kids’ Learning—and How to Help Them Thrive Again. It’s really good, which is what I expected based on articles of his that I’ve read. Cooney-Horvath is a neuroscientist and teacher who thinks EdTech has destroyed the education system, and he presents compelling, succinct arguments for why that’s the case. I will likely be quoting him a lot in coming months!

• I enjoyed this discussion by Cal Newport and Derek Thompson on the Prof G Markets podcast, called “How AI Is Making Us All Dumber.” (Here it is on YouTube, though I listened to it while driving in the car.) Newport is honestly one of my favourite thinkers on this topic. I appreciated the analogy offered, that using AI is like taking a forklift into the gym. Why bother weightlifting ourselves if there’s a way to make it easier?! Definitely check it out.

• Fellow Substack writer Laura Fenton sent me this thought-provoking article to read: “Why Putting Down Phones Isn’t Enough,” written by Pamela Cantor. She’s an MD who delves into the human connection that is displaced by the time spent on our devices—and why that’s a serious problem. It ties in nicely to the section of Cooney-Horvath’s book I read just this morning about the need for empathy in a teacher-student relationship, and how there are some things that require biology to exist and that no technology can replace.

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Upcoming Talk:

If you are in the Stratford, ON, area, I will be giving a talk on May 25 at 7 PM. It is hosted by the Huron Perth Catholic and Avon Maitland District school boards, and the evening session is open to the public, though you should register in advance.