As more parents require their teens to install Life360, it is causing more conflicts than one may believe. Life360 is causing a wide variety of issues in relationships, trust, and the safety of parents and teens through the invasion of privacy, suspicious behavior, and dangerous conflicts.

The app should be considered more carefully or even banned as they create unhealthy relationships with teens and parents. Life 360 may seem like the right choice for someone’s teen for keeping them safe, but utilizing this application does quite the opposite. As one of the main factors, Life360 or teen tracking apps cause an extreme break in trust between parents and teens.

Trust is an essential component and main foundation for a relationship between a child and his or her parents, so why is it to have an app constantly watching a teen when they are supposed to be thinking they have their parent’s trust?

If parents aren’t able to trust their children by just letting them know where they are, it is clear they haven’t built that bond with them and must create it. For some, it simply is not possible because they will never feel fully trusted with their teen and feel as if they always need the application on hand. Having teen tracking apps causes many privacy issues making users feel constantly watched and tense.

Because teens feel uncomfortable with the fact they are constantly being tracked by their parents, tracking apps lead to more suspicious behavior in teens than without. Teenagers’ relationships with their parents can be ruined and make them more reckless.

Being restrained while parents always have a child’s location, teens can feel the urge to want to sneak out or possibly go against their families’ rules to do activities they were originally not supposed to do. It causes teens to learn how to sneak around. This can lead to more tension in parent-teen relationships causing unhealthiness. Sneaking out without parental permission is unsafe and can easily lead to danger.

Many teens have found ways of getting around getting caught sneaking out or ‘beating the system’ with tracking applications. Said teens will leave their phones at home to prevent being tracked. If that teen is put into a dangerous situation such as a car wreck, kidnapping, or serious injury, they no longer have a way to call parents or emergency services for help since their phone is left behind.

Teens are forced to put themselves in that situation where they are unable to call in an emergency. Not having a way to communicate with a parent when away from home can break trust and result in an unhealthy relationship. Parents must take the time to reconsider using tracking apps for their children to prevent the risk of creating unhealthy relationships.