# Monitoring messages and location

**Should we monitor our child's messages and location?**

Whether and how you check your child's messages or track their location, with their knowledge or not.

In short: Parents choose between 7 main approaches: Full visibility with the child's knowledge; Software that flags risks only; Spot checks if worried; No reading; always-on tracking; Mutual sharing; Check-in texts; None. Evidence: your call. No outcome evidence picks a winner. Preference, culture, money and logistics decide. Best settled: tween.

- Area: Screens, phones and digital life
- Evidence: Your call
- Best settled: Tween
- First published: 2026-10-03
- Last updated: 2026-10-05
- Page: https://www.raisingyourchild.com/topics/screens-phones-and-digital-life--monitoring-messages-and-location

## Monitoring messages and location: what are the options?

1. **Full visibility with the child's knowledge**: You can see everything on the child's device and the child knows it.
2. **Software that flags risks only**: You use software that alerts you only to signs of danger.
3. **Spot checks if worried**: You look at the device now and then if something concerns you.
4. **No reading; always-on tracking**: You do not read messages, but you can always see the child's location.
5. **Mutual sharing**: Everyone in the family shares their location with each other.
6. **Check-in texts**: The child texts you when they arrive or leave.
7. **None**: You do not monitor messages or location.

## Monitoring messages and location: what does the evidence say?

**Your call.** No outcome evidence picks a winner. Preference, culture, money and logistics decide.

Evidence is weak and likely confounded; teens experience tracking as a negotiation over autonomy

Sources:

- [Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication](https://academic.oup.com/jcmc/article/31/3/zmag010/8696200)

## What else is worth knowing?

Parents can read messages, use software that flags risk, track location, or do none of these. More monitoring gives more information and can cost trust if done secretly. What suits a ten-year-old differs from what suits a sixteen-year-old.

## Questions to ask each other

- What would make us look at our child's messages or location?
- Would we tell them we are watching?
- What would that do to trust?

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General information, not medical advice. Two parents can each answer this and compare: https://www.raisingyourchild.com/explore?cat=screens-phones-and-digital-life&topic=screens-phones-and-digital-life--monitoring-messages-and-location