Many Dutch parents track their children’s location, survey finds

Around two-thirds of Dutch parents use an app or device to track where their children are, according to a survey by broadcaster RTL Nieuws – a habit that child development experts warn can give a false sense of security.

In the survey of RTL’s viewer panel, 65% of parents with children aged between 6 and 18 said they used some form of location tracking. Just under half (49%) did so through the child’s own phone, using apps such as Find My or Life360; younger children were more often tracked through a smartwatch.

Most parents said they rarely looked. Of those who track, 62% said they almost never checked their child’s location, turning to it mainly when a child was home later than expected.

Another 37% looked regularly or often, particularly when children were travelling to or from school. Some used it for logistics rather than worry – to judge when to start cooking, for instance.

Safety concerns

Safety was the main reason parents gave: 72% considered tracking sensible on those grounds. But 40% also worried that children would be slower to become independent if their parents could always see where they were.

Most said their child knew they were being tracked, and support for always telling them rose with age, from 60% for a child of 8 to 77% for a 15-year-old.

Vivian den Blanken, a child development expert at the Netherlands Youth Institute (Nederlands Jeugdinstituut, NJi), said tracking offered “a false sense of security.”

A location does not guarantee a child comes to no harm, she said, and learning to sit with that discomfort is part of raising children. A tracker can also convey distrust toward children, she said, potentially isolating them.