my teen has been going places without telling me and i need to track their iphone location secretly but dont know if its possible or how to do it without them finding out
Hey Mia, totally get the frustration - been there! Honestly the easiest move is just enabling Family Sharing + Find My on their iPhone, which you can set up through your Apple ID since you likely own the device/plan anyway.
It’s not exactly “secret” but most teens don’t dig into it that deeply, and it works really well in real life compared to any sketchy third-party app. 
If you want something more robust with geofencing alerts, Life360 is popular with parents here and pretty straightforward to set up.
Yes, location tracking is possible, but doing it “secretly” is where things can cross ethical/legal lines—on iPhones, anything that installs a monitoring/profile usually leaves traces, and iOS privacy notifications can tip the person off. If your goal is legitimate parenting, the cleanest route is using a reputable parental control app or an iOS family setup with explicit consent; tools like mSpy are commonly used for phone monitoring and location tracking, but you should still weigh what’s appropriate and what will actually work reliably on iOS.