Any time some new technological marvel comes along, we’re always told how many problems it will solve for us.
But of course, experience has taught us that for every problem a piece of tech solves , it seems to create a new one. And we’ve also seen that when our problems are with other people rather than the tech itself, a new app or platform is just as likely to amplify it as it is to alleviate it.
This is especially true in the case of tracking software. Because as we’re about to see, the kinds of products designed to give parents peace of mind can end up making life nightmarish for their kids.
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By the time that 19-year-old Reddit user xdhailey shared her story, she had been living on her own for about a year-and-a-half.
As she explained , when she lived with her mother all through high school, her mom would track her iPhone using the “Find My Friends” app to make sure she was going where she said she was.
By the time she moved out, they had a strained relationship with her mom apparently being verbally abusive.
Their problems came to a head when the daughter first moved out and said she’d turn off her phone’s GPS capabilities.
This led the mother to call her ungrateful and threaten to take away the car the daughter had received as a “gift,” while also later taking her daughter’s stimulus checks from her.
“Gift” is in quotes because the daughter later revealed that the car and its insurance were in her mother’s name because she told the daughter her credit score was zero when it was actually 690.
Despite the credibility of this threat, the daughter got herself a new phone after a recent job promotion and since it wasn’t an iPhone, “Find my Friends” was no longer usable.
The daughter described her mom’s reaction to this decision as a panic attack in which she tried to change her mind about getting a new phone.
As the daughter wrote, “She also told me i was out of control, and that I was crazy and that I was hiding something. This isn’t the case. At all. At this point, I was very frustrated and told her that I am a legal adult, and that it is very overbearing to act like that and that my friends parents don’t track their phones.”
Although she meant this and attributes her anxiety attacks to her mom’s “toxic” and “borderline controlling” behavior, she nonetheless wondered whether she had been too rough.
When the verdict came in, however, the Reddit community she shared this story with were overwhelmingly horrified by the mother’s behavior.
As one user said , “You are 19, living on your own and supporting yourself. Your mother has no right to even know what you’re doing all the time, much less track you. I think if all you did was call her overbearing, in no way were you over the top.”
And while most users agreed with this sentiment, they also considered it likely that the mother would be able to take the car away as she threatened to earlier. For this reason, some recommended simply surrendering it to her and getting one of her own.
As one user said, “If your credit score is 690 that is more than high enough to get your own car and give back the ‘Gift’ If you have enough then just buy a decent used car out right. This will allow you to be 100% on your own.”
It’s sad that it had to come to this but there’s only so much one can do when someone refuses to trust them.
h/t: Reddit | xdhailey
