With the introduction of advanced digital technology, teen tracking apps are becoming an inseparable part of parenting. There is a continuous argument regarding whether it is wrong, fine, sound, or a must measure to be taken by the parents in this digital era.

We all know, the translation period from childhood to adulthood has always been challenging. Especially, whom we call ‘teens of the 21st century are more vulnerable, fragile as they are introduced to fancy devices, gadgets, and the internet at an early age.

Looking at the scenario around, we feel it is a compulsion to spy or track your teen to protect them but do you think it is the best idea? I mean, there are a lot of risks and cons associated with teen tracking apps. Confused?? Well, I will try to clear all your doubts regarding ” Teen tracking apps: Good parenting or risky?”

Today, monitoring software like MobileSpy has helped in better parenting; you can be up to date about your kid’s whereabouts, social media activity, browsing history, and many more which will surely help you in one way or another like help in teens upbringing, protect them, know more about what they want, their emotion and feeling, etc. 

But we often hear from psychologists, researchers, and experts that tracking your kid is an indirect way to make them feel that you have a trust issue with them, their decision, and their judgment.

What can make use of teen tracking apps in a good way?

Here I will list a few things that you can do to maintain trust in your parent-child relationship while using the parental control app to track your kids:

Have a conversation with your kid on topics associated with the cons of the digital world without any hesitation.

Make your teen clear that you are spying on them just for security purposes and not with the intent of spying on their every move.

Do whatever it takes to build confidence in your kid as once your kid is confident, they can take care of themselves in every twist and turn of life.

Tell the kids clearly that they can use social media, but as a parent, you have the authority to check their online activity until they are in their teens.

Rather than keeping your teen entirely away from all the pros of intelligent devices, you can set time limits and teach them to prioritize their work more.

Tell your kid to give you updates about their location or discuss the importance of location tracking.

When not to spy or track your teenage child?

If you’re a responsible teenager who knows and follows their curfew & limit, is always where they said she mentions and is truthful with you, then I think you should wait outside her private space. If you trust your kid, tell them you feel proud about them and not break your trust.

Doing so will develop closeness in your parent-child relationship. Your teenage kid will think twice about breaking your trust or hurting you as they want to be in your good books. When teens think they are being rewarded for speaking the truth, they will feel good about themselves.

If you do minor invasions in their personal space, they can make their own decision and make you proud of their vision and judgment without supervision. So, what do you think about not tracking but guiding your teenage child? I feel it is a better way to maintain relationships and trust.

However, I cannot say spying on your kid is always wrong because sometimes, even if you trust your kid, you must spy on them for their safety and protection. Learn more about Online Monitoring Helps Your Teen Get Rid of Online Scams.

 Online Monitoring Helps Your Teen Get Rid of Online Scams

Reasons supporting teen tracking apps

As tracking apps are the most convenient way to know about your kid’s online activities, location, app logs, it justifies the use of tracking, monitoring apps. Everyone loves their kid and is concerned about their safety, which makes teen tracking apps more reasonable. Reasons supporting teen tracking apps include:

Cyberbullying

The concept of cyberbullying in the virtual world, similar to the bullying that kids face in school, yard, playground. It is as scary as bullying in the real world because cyberbullying affects kids very traumatic. Teens who have to face cyberbullying are affected very badly. In many cases, they are not comfortable sharing the problem with their parents and decide to suffer alone until they enter the phase of complete emotional breakdown.

To avoid such a situation, you should install tracking software on your teen’s device and monitor their phone activities. If you find traces of your kid being a victim of cyberbullying, you can protect them, and also, you can collect evidence and deal with the person bullying legally.

Online predators

Imagine your teen falling into the trap of an online predator with evil intentions. The digital world is not as safe as you think; it is full of abusers and predators searching for easy prey. I know it is scary, but what can you do to avoid such dark interactions of your kid with online predators?

The simple answer is to use a remote monitoring system. With such a system, you can easily keep track of your teen’s activities. You can take immediate action if you feel something suspicious about the behavior of your kid.

Suicidal tendencies

Being traumatized by various negative aspects of the internet and the digital world, some valuable teens might attempt suicide. The internet can affect the kid in various ways; kids might encounter some bullying, absurdity, or even play online suicide games like the blue whale. Teens are very emotional; if they get exposed to violence, abuse, sextortion, body-shaming, they will have thought of committing.

So instead of thinking about whether or not your kid is being traumatized, you can install a parental control app and start monitoring your teen.

Read More: How Can Parents Help To Prevent Teens From Suicide?

Bad influence

Close-up with bad influence is just like entering the space with an entrance but no escape. If involved with the circle’s lousy influence, your kids could get lost inside themselves and neglect the way home. Parents must be accountable for familiarizing themselves with the community of their kid’s friends to save this sort of event from occurring. In these circumstances, parental control apps can be of great use.

Pornography

Early exposure to pornography could disrupt these children’s young minds by depicting a lack of intimate relationships between couples. They will modify how kids perceive the world, increase high-risk behaviors, even impact their established interpersonal relationships.

To control such incidents, you can install a tracking device on your kid’s devices, limit their screen time, and block inappropriate sites.

Social Media

Selfie culture cults throughout Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat are prevalent among teenagers. It creates a sense of competitiveness who can take a better selfie and get more compliments and likes. They get irritated by fewer likes and fewer fans, and they feel embarrassed of themselves. Teens think about being noticed on social media by everyone, which drives them in the wrong direction.

You can use parental control apps like MobileSpy to track and limit their social media activity.

Risks associated with teen tracking apps

As I have mentioned, tracking your kid is an indirect way to make them feel that you have a trust issue with them, their decision, and their judgment. Some of the Risks associated with teen tracking apps are :

 Companies established for-profit

The tracking app companies have their profit motive and do not always care about your privacy and security concerns. Alone in the US, it is a business worth 65 billion dollars till 20202. Data is an integral part of the digital world. Your data may provide countless profits to some companies who sell them.  No one can guarantee your kid’s information will not fall into the wrong hands.

Risks private data

There is a significant risk associated with the leakage of private data from so-called tracking or parental control apps. Private data has a lot of importance, as it is directly related to dignity and security. Online predators may use your pictures on many adult sites and make money. In the worst condition, your information, such as credit card, bank details, may get revealed, or someone could track your kid’s location and plan to kidnap them.

Break trust

Your kid might feel that you have a trust issue with them, their decision, and their judgment, so you have started to spy on them. The most disturbing thing to track your teen is that doing so might break their trust in you, and they might stop sharing problems with you. After all, kids or adults, no one wants that they are spied on their every step.

Kid’s Intelligence

You will agree with me that today’s generation is much brighter than the previous one. Kids nowadays can find loophole for any controls. They might hack and crack so that false information reaches you, and trusts me, false information is way worse than no information. You cannot underestimate the tech knowledge of your teen.

Costly

A good parental control software might cost you up to 3$ per day for too many devices. To monitor kids, each parent cannot spend so much money.  The most required and essential features are in the premium subscription. Only some features are freely available to you. 

Fake software

Some free parental control software found on the internet might be malware. They do not provide service as they mention on the website. Also, some premium software out there is a fraud. Fake software uses your data for illegal purposes. Stay aware of data leakage and breakage. 

MobileSpy; A teen tracking App for Good Parenting

Today, with the help of monitoring software; MobileSpy, you can be up to date about your kid’s whereabouts, social media activity, browsing history, and many more. Let’s see how MobileSpy helps for good parenting :

Block inappropriate content

Using the MobileSpy app, you can easily find inappropriate content. The inappropriate content includes Violence sites, Drug dealer sites, Sexting sites, Alcohol-related sites, Pornography content, etc.

Kids discover these sites accidentally in most scenarios, so you can take precautions and block such sites with MobileSpy before your teen encounters them.

Track  activity

You Spy Any Android And iOS Smartphones Discreetly From Anywhere At Any Time with MobileSpy. One of the prominent features of MobileSpy is tracking every activity of the target phone. Some of the tracking features of MobileSpy are Social media activities, calls and SMS tracking, mobile application spy, track browsing history, and many more.

Track location

There is parental control software like MobileSpy, which can track the location of your kid easily. Engineers of  MobileSpy software have worked very hard to embed sophisticated software technology like SIM and GPS tracking. MobileSpy GPS tracker can track and give a precise location and location history. 

Not only tracking location, but you can also set geofence and get alert whenever your teen enters some restricted region. Looking at the location history of your kid, you can easily trace what your teen is up to; you will know if they are at school or at the location they should be.

Control screen time

Control the internet usage of your kid. Use the app to set time limits or control your kid’s screen time remotely. If you don’t do so, your kid will most likely spend a lot of time online.

Monitor social media activity

Social media platforms are a popular place where cyberbullying, abuse happens. You can protect your kid by monitoring their social media account. With MobileSpy, you can spy on your kid’s Facebook, WhatsApp, Snapchat, Instagram, Viber, Skype and get information such as every call and text along with its date, time, duration, sent and received messages, photos, videos, and other multimedia files shared, contact information.

Read More: Parenting in the digital age: How to improve your parenting style

List of other teen tracking apps

TeenSafe

TeenSafe is one of the best teen tracking applications which is available on Android, iPhone, Windows, and Mac. It helps you to monitor the social media account of your teen. You can restrict the inappropriate content, track web history, text messages, call logs, and real-time location and its history. Since we can install this application on multiple devices, it is helpful for those parents who have more than one child. It gives a one-week free trial, and after that, you have to pay according to your plan.

TeenOrbit

Compatible with iOS devices, TeenOrbit is very easy to use. Use your Apple credentials to download the application TeenOrbit from the AppStore. Once you log in to the app, you have to provide your child’s Apple ID credentials in this application. And then, the application starts to fetch logs straight from your child’s iCloud backup. You can keep track of call history, web browser history, text messages, GPS location, and so on. One thing that makes TeenOrbit different from others is that you don’t need to install these applications on the target device.

SecureTeen

SecureTeen is compatible with Android, Windows, and iOS devices. It provides you with a detailed report of your child’s activity. It enables you to monitor who is their texting partner,  whom they are calling, and where they are. In addition to that, you can spy on different social media of your child, restrict inappropriate content and block unwanted applications. Its price is 39.99 per year for three devices.