Should Parents Track Their Kids With Letstrak Tracking App?

Gone are the days when a teen could tell her parents that she’s going to the movies when she’s really sneaking away to a keg party.

GPS has moved into the realm of parenting, and today’s moms and dads can know exactly where their children are at all times.

Parents can download a program such as Letstrak onto their teen’s cell phone or they can install a device into their teen’s car. Letstrak collects data on the time and date for each car trip, distance, speed, hard accelerations and decelerations. The Letstrak tracker allows you to monitor your child in the car in real-time; the exact location of the car can be sent to your computer every 1, 2, or 5 minutes.

For younger children, there are small GPS units such as Letstrak GPS Child Tracker that you can stuff into backpacks and lunchboxes. The Little Letstrak will send you an alert when your little tyke leaves a designated area.

The new Letstrak GPS Child Locator Watch for kids ages 3 to 12 is designed to look like a real watch so a kidnapper doesn’t think to rip it off your child’s wrist. And if the watch is forcibly removed, an alert is sent to the parents’ cell phones detailing the child’s location. Parents can set up “safe zones”, and if kids stray, the watch will then automatically switch to “live track” mode and the child’s location is continuously monitored, updated and sent to the designated email as an address with postcode and a link to Google maps.

With many of these GPS child-tracking programs and gadgets, you can watch your child’s movement on a map on a screen, whether it’s your computer, iPhone and Android. Most often you’re watching a little icon your child–moving around on a Google Map.

These parents are concerned about kidnappers snatching their preschoolers or they don’t trust their teenagers. They want to know when their kid who is playing outside leaves the driveway or walks across the street.