Life 360

We've had it for several years now.
You can choose to turn off your individual location services in the app if you choose not to participate. I'm not hiding from anyone, so its not a big deal to me. I don't care if fam sees where I'm at. If my teen wants to search the "Spearmint Rhino" and find out dad's at the men's club, so be it.

My only advice is not to use it against your teens. For instance, Why did you stay at your friend's house for 30 mins and didn't go straight home? Why did you stop somewhere on the way home? They don't mind being tracked if they aren't getting penalized for small deviations that are inconsequential. Trust comes into play. Our kids generally ask permission to deviate, but also understand we are fine with short stops on the way home. Longer stops only require a quick text for approval (and more for general notification of whereabouts, in accordance with our house rules). To us, its a courtesy and respect to simply ask permission to stop. We rarely deny any request without good reason.

Our kids know its on their phones, and they also know we don't use it against them. It does yield good information, such as Your Child arrived at School. Your Child left School. Your Child arrived at Home. Etc. That's the type of info that gives us relief as parents. It gives us relief when our daughter sleeps at a friend's house and we know she got there safely and within curfew, and we can see this without her getting that "Parents Checking on Me" text that they don't want to tell their friends about.

We only chirped once about speed, as we observed our daughter riding with friends, and the vehicle was going 90 MPH. She heard from me, and I voiced my displeasure. That's a safety issue. The driver slowed down, and we had a convo when she got home about not being afraid to speak up when she is in an unsafe situation. We empowered her so it was a good event.

We are satisfied with what we get from the app, and our teens are not unhappy with it on their phones. Fortunately haven't needed the "crash notification" feature (Knocks on wood).

We even extended it to MIL, who is 82. We named that circle, "Where's Viv?" so we can see where she is in the event she goes missing or is delayed returning from an adventure in Lafayette.

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(boy not girl!)

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You may want to reconsider that. You've already had the "riding with friends" talk, you want to be able to nip it all in the bud and keep an eye on it. Your daughter may be smart, but you can guarantee at least 25% of her friends are not so much.

We never used it against the kids, but wanted it more for safety purposes. We still use it after many years and the kids use it now to see where WE are haha. Back when they were teens we required it on their phones. If we buy the phones and pay the plan, its not optional.

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You may want to reconsider that. You've already had the "riding with friends" talk, you want to be able to nip it all in the bud and keep an eye on it. Your daughter may be smart, but you can guarantee at least 25% of her friends are not so much.

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What I meant to say was the teen in question is a boy, and so the main function I'm concerned with is the speed thing.

Indeed, but Life 360 works across both platforms, so it's superior imo based on that alone.

I’ve posted before but Life360 saved my kids life when he got car jacked/kidnapped a few years ago in Nola.

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I’ve posted before but Life360 saved my kids life when he got car jacked/kidnapped a few years ago in Nola.
whoa. I don't need details of such a painful experience, but can you generically tell me how the app might do so?

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He was able to text us that he needed help... dude hopped up on drugs jumped in car and forced him to drive him around for 2 hours.

When we finally got his texts, was able to pull up his location on Life360, called I NOPD dispatch, who relayed real-time info (directions and streets) I was giving to an NOPD detective pulled them over.

Does Life 360 have screen time controls?

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the "Spearmint Rhino"

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Went on a bachelor party trip to Vegas and found ourselves there. A guy in the group was baffled that I had the life 360 app at all (he didn’t have kids at the time) and that I didn’t disable my location. I said the same thing. My wife knows where I am. Been married 18yrs and have nothing to hide. And if my 14y old wants to Google it, so be it.

To the OP. Really like the app now that we have 2 kids with phones and one driving.

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It can do logging of phone usage while driving but doesn’t actually lock it. I think ATT used to have a “Drive mode” feature. Don’t know if that’s still around.

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They stopped supporting it in 2021. If you have an old copy it theoretically works sometimes.

It was intended to activate automatically if the phone was moving at a certain speed, and it would text an autoreply to any calls or texts. But it was always hit or miss for both turning on and off. You'd have to do it manually.