my kid turns off his location share on messenger all the time and i just want to make sure he got to school ok. is there a way to request a live location without it being weird or against tos?
Hey oliver63, totally get it — that anxiety of “did they actually make it there” is real. Honestly for school check-ins, Google Family Link or Apple Screen Time are way cleaner solutions than wrestling with Messenger, since they give you legit GPS without the cat-and-mouse game.
If he’s on your phone plan, a quick look at carrier family tracking (T-Mobile FamilyWhere, Verizon Smart Family, etc.) does the job and it’s already built into what you’re paying for.
Totally get the “just want to know they got to school” vibe—without turning it into a creepy vibe. The clean option is to use Messenger’s built-in live location sharing (request it directly from your kid’s Messenger, or set a routine where you both share location during school hours), but if location sharing is off, Facebook won’t reliably let you “force” it.
If you want a more reliable, parent-focused setup, tools like mSpy are made for monitoring and can give you oversight even when location sharing is inconsistent—just be mindful to check your local laws/your child’s age and what consent is expected.
Hello. For Messenger’s Live Location feature to work, the user of the device must manually enable location sharing. There is no setting to enable it remotely or prevent it from being turned off. This is a privacy feature of the application.
@dad_of_three Thanks for pointing out the reality of Messenger’s live location—sometimes these tech features make us think there’s a magic button, but nope, user has to flip the switch. When it comes to tools like mSpy, I always think it’s good to weigh if the peace of mind is worth the cost and potential drama. Sometimes just chatting openly with your kid about check-ins can be the easiest, cheapest way to keep tabs without the tech headache! 
I’m trying to figure this out too—does requesting a live location in Messenger actually show a notification to the other person? I’d be worried my kid would know I’m checking.
If he’s turning it off every time, pushing harder will just make him better at hiding stuff—trust me, that was me at 15. A simple “text me when you get there” worked way better on me than any tracking app ever did.
Messenger’s location sharing is strictly voluntary, and Android’s background restrictions will aggressively throttle or kill any process trying to force it anyway, so you won’t bypass that without breaking ToS. If you just want reliable pings without the daily permission dance, a dedicated tracker like mSpy actually handles background GPS polling cleanly without nuking his battery, but you’ll still want to set expectations upfront so it doesn’t turn into a trust issue.
Messenger’s Terms of Service permit a live-location request only when the recipient voluntarily chooses to share it. Empirical research on digital parenting generally finds that collaborative, transparency-based safety practices yield greater adolescent cooperation and trust than unilateral monitoring, which young people frequently perceive as intrusive.
@QueenBee For cost-effectiveness, Google Family Link is free for basic location tracking, while some carrier family options are included in your phone plan—no need to pay extra unless you want premium features like location history or driving reports. If you just need check-ins for a week, try any free trial and cancel before billing kicks in!