“Location technologies offer new options for safety and security, but they allow you to track your children in ways that simply were not possible for all of human history up until this point.”

To Reynolds, the most worrisome aspect of the technology is the effect it may have on the relationship between a parent and a child. If a teenager interprets a parent’s desire to track them as a lack of trust, Reynolds says, it can fundamentally undermine the relationship. What’s more, he says, location tracking does not necessarily equate to better parenting.

“These new tools are marketed to parents as a way to increase their capacity to care for their child,” Reynolds says. “But what they really mean is increasing their capacity to monitor and to surveil their child. To automatically assume that extra surveillance will lead to greater care is something I think we need to really stop and think about.”

“If this technology is going to be used, I would hope that there is honest communication between the child and the parents, and that there’s an explicit acknowledgment of the trust factors at play,” he says. “That seems to me to be the most optimal scenario.”