Parents force to 19-year-old college student daughter to keep her Life360 tracking app turned on, she tells them that she is turning it off after they track her every movement: 'It's uncomfortable knowing that wherever I am, they're probably looking'

• The treatment of Gen X children represented a relative improvement from that of the Boomers and their forebears. Whereas Boomers had straight up been told to "get lost," Xers were simply locked out of the house and told to be home before dinner, but still allowed on their parents' property itself. And, as long as they showed up on time, they were guaranteed that their parents would show them just as little attention at the dinner table as they did the rest of the time. This is the point where we actually started caring as a society if kids went missing, but missing limbs and eyes was still an acceptable right of passage.

  Now I'm biased here, but I think we millennials had it right in the "goldilocks zone," and that is, things were just right. Our parents cared about what happened to us, but also weren't able to have complete control over what we did and how we did it. Sure, they might have thought that they were limiting our screen time, but by the age of 7, we were more technically literate than they were, having not grown up with computers and the internet themselves, so there were always workarounds.

  Still, after a certain amount of time spent sitting in front of our "evil" computer and gaming console, we were shoved outside and told to go play in the woods and to "Be home before dinner." At this point, the loss of limbs and light-sensitive organs was deemed an unacceptable tragedy, and thus began the rise of the "helicopter parent."

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• The worst oversight I remember my parents instating was when they started clocking the mileage on my car using the crude data of how far the car had traveled to recreate a scene from CSI where they would try to determine the radius of my comings and goings, when it became clear that my friends and I weren't always going where we claimed to be. This, too, was simply fooled by parking my car where I said I was going and hopping in a friend's instead.

  When we were sitting inside, the video games themselves were better, too. Games of this time presented an actual challenge and were made with a level of care and love that almost isn't seen today.  There is a reason the period until the mid-00s is now known as the "golden age" of video games. They were free from microtransactions, unnecessary DLC, patches, and subscriptions. And games where a subscription-based or freemium model actually made sense were still actually good and not whatever they are today.

  Gen Z and the burgeoning Gen Alpha, on the other hand, never even got to go outside. The rest of us aren't even sure if they know where or when the "outside" is or how to even get there.

  But to be fair here, the forest up the street from where I lived, where I played as a child, was gone and turned into a row of houses before the next generation came along anyway, so even if they did free themselves from the constant stimulation and neurochemical drama provided by their screens, there wouldn't be anywhere for them to go to.
  
  Thanks to the technology available, even when Gen Z have had the chance to strike out on their own, they have been closely monitored by their parents. One can’t help but wonder how this will affect their individuality and ability to thrive, or at least subsist, on their own. But at some point, the training wheels have to come off. And it would be a pretty easy case to argue that this point should come well before your child is a legal adult and has left the house.

  No college student needs their parent helicoptering over their shoulder while they’re figuring things out in the adulthood simulator that is university, which is what this 19-year-old shared having happen with her parents, who were monitoring her through a popular app called Life360 that allows family members to track your whereabouts for safety purposes. 

  When it comes to safety and oversight, how far is too far? And how far is far enough?

• "I threatened to turn of my Life360"

  
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  _{Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.}

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