How to talk to your kid about being tracked

A locator only works if the person wearing it wants it on. Kids who feel watched take it off. Kids who helped choose the colour, name the safe places, and can open the same privacy screen you can, tend to keep it on.

Say what it does, and what it does not

We see whether you got to school. We do not keep a film of your walk. At midnight the route is gone. You can turn your own places off, and the family sees that they are off — not a silent gap.

• Let them pick the colour. It never changes, and it is how the family reads the map.
• Show them the privacy screen. Kept vs not-kept, side by side.
• If they want a place off — the park, a friend's house — that is allowed, and the app says so.

Consent makes the difference between safety and surveillance.

— Family notes

A script that has worked

"This is so I know you got there. I am not watching you walk. If you want the park off, we turn the park off. You can open the same screen I can." Then stop talking. The families who tested with us said the second sentence mattered more than the first.