Digital Peek-a-Boo: New Study Says 80% of Parents Track Their Kids’ Locations And The Majority Do It Without Them Knowing

Parenting is never easy and when we think about the modern tech world of today, things keep getting more advanced.

Keeping a check on who your child is talking to and what activities they’re engaged in online and offline is quintessential. Thanks to the constantly evolving tech landscape and kids getting more tech-savvy, it’s hard for parents to keep tabs on everything.

A new survey by All About Cookies shed light on how many parents spy on their kids. And the results are quite interesting. Therefore, we’ve broken down the key findings for you below so let’s take a look!

80% of all parents are sure to track their kids’ location and a whopping 54% do it very frequently. Meanwhile, 1 in 3 do it without letting kids know about what’s going on behind the scenes.

Similarly, the results showed that 54% of all parents were busy monitoring their child’s text messages and 76% had access to their devices’ passwords. The majority of parents also spoke about catching kids engaged in activities that were not appropriate and that’s all thanks to tracking.

Also, 76% of parents state how tracking kids both on the web and offline has forced them into making better decisions. But the question remains, how exactly are parents playing digital peek-a-boo?

The survey asked parents what and how exactly they monitor their children online. Based on the survey of 1000 adults, most of them resorted to texts and messaging platforms to get a better idea of what the child was doing and with whom. Next came social media profiles, while another leading factor was keeping tabs on screen time.

Financial accounts and browsing history were next while emails and gaming history were another way to monitor their children online. Hence, we can conclude that most parents do feel tracking is necessary. They similarly felt that telling kids that they were doing it was not at all necessary and could come back to bite them as kids are smart and therefore would be mindful.

The study also showed that another key way to track kids is knowing what passwords they keep. More than 50% spoke about knowing passwords to all social media apps while 68% admitted to knowing email passwords. 76% spoke about knowing how kids’ cell phones can be unlocked.

Take a look at the charts below for more insights:

Read next: Meta Fined $101M For Storing Millions of User Passwords In Plaintext And Sharing With Employees
by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World