My teenager has been staying out later than usual lately, and I want to keep tabs on their whereabouts without being overly intrusive. I’ve tried asking them to share their location through regular messaging apps, but they usually forget or ignore it, and social media check-ins are pretty unreliable. Is there a consistent way to monitor their location through these platforms, or should I just switch to a dedicated tracking app instead?
Yeah, Facebook location tracing is basically a dead end for reliable teen monitoring — check-ins are voluntary and Stories location tags are easy to skip, so you’d be chasing ghosts.
Honestly just set up Find My (iPhone) or Google Family Link (Android) — they’re built for exactly this, free, and way harder for a teen to “forget” since it runs in the background. Bonus: having a direct conversation like “hey, I’m adding this, here’s why” actually works better than you’d think and cuts down on the sneaky workarounds.