Zack (left) and Suzanne (right) were both glad of the app when Zack went to Thorpe Park and had difficulty getting home, because of a rail strikeĪfra says she will consider this but questions why, if they have nothing to hide, her teenagers would be concerned about her knowing their whereabouts. Both children say they feel safer being aware that their mum knows where they are, but would like her to stop when they reach 16. The irony is not lost on Afra that, instead of assuaging her fears, on this occasion the tracking app caused her to fret unnecessarily.Īlthough Maya does not have an iPhone, she has an iPod through which Afra is able to keep an eye on her movements with the help of the same app. ‘But it turned out there was something wrong with his phone that meant the power was rapidly draining from the battery. ‘I was really cross because I thought he’d been using up the battery texting friends,’ says Afra. She spotted him about a mile from home on the dark country road, his phone out of charge. She texted him and, when he didn’t respond, became so panicked that she set off in search in the car. One evening before Christmas, Lucas was making his way home when the GPS connection broke down and Afra could no longer pinpoint his location.
While Maya catches a school bus home, Lucas has an evening job cleaning the school and often ends up walking home alone. Their nearest town, where Lucas and Maya attend secondary school, is a few miles away, along unlit lanes with no footpaths. ‘Tracking apps are the modern equivalent of popping your head out the door to make sure your children are playing safely in the street and it stops me bothering them with texts asking for updates.’Īfra, 45, a social network consultant, and husband Ray, 52, a self-employed scaffolder, have seven children, aged from six to 20, and live in a small village.
‘Tracking them might sound like helicopter parenting, but I’ve always lived in fear of my children being abducted,’ says Afra. Instead, she says, it is a way of knowing they have not come to harm. ‘And relationships between parents and their children should be built on trust, so if you need a spying device to reassure you of their whereabouts you might need to question what that says about your relationship with your child.’Īfra Willmore from Hertfordshire insists her use of the iPhone Find My Phone facility - designed to help owners locate lost or stolen handsets - to keep tabs on her 14-year-old daughter, Maya, and 15-year-old son, Lucas, in no way reflects on her trust in them. Zack (pictured) sometimes deletes the app and doesn’t always press the button to let his mum know where he is She plans on keeping track of her eldest son until he’s around 17, and will eventually use the app with her other children, too. Without it, she says, she wouldn’t have let him travel the 30 miles from their North London home to the theme park on his own. She argues that Zack is allowed more freedom because of the app. Zack had to change trains five times and Suzanne was able to track his progress and make sure he was still on course. However, both mother and son were glad of the app in October when Zack and some friends went to Thorpe Park Resort in Surrey and had difficulty getting home, because of a rail strike. ‘If Mum notices that I’ve gone to Starbucks after school, she might call me, but by then I’m usually ready to leave anyway,’ he says. Even so, Zack doesn’t always press the button to let his mum know where he is - he prefers her to find out for herself, rather than risk being ordered straight home.
#How to turn off life360 app download#
Whenever Zack deletes the app, Suzanne makes him download it again before he’s allowed out. The one failing of these apps is that either party can remove them at any given time. However, it’s not foolproof - an embarrassed and annoyed Zack regularly deletes the app from his phone.
#How to turn off life360 app plus#
‘There’s also a button for Zack to press when he arrives at his destination and my phone beeps to let me know, plus an emergency button he can press if he’s in danger - a message will flash up on my phone telling me exactly where he is.
0 kommentar(er)
