Parents want kids to have freedom. AirTags are their compromise.

When Whitney Nelson Abuzeid’s 13- and 15-year-old sons ride their bikes to the neighborhood creek to go fishing, or to play basketball with friends, she wants them to enjoy their freedom. But she also wants to keep tabs on them.

Since neither has a smartphone, she slips AirTags into mounts on their bikes, so she can locate them if she needs to.

“It lets them have the ’90s childhood that I want, without them being addicted to screens, but then it gives me the modern reassurance,” Abuzeid, who lives in Fair Oaks Ranch, Texas, tells Yahoo.

Abuzeid also uses AirTags with her two younger sons. Her 9-year-old has one in his backpack, and she just purchased a pair of Skechers sneakers with a hidden compartment for a locator tag for her 11-year-old. It relieves her anxiety when they walk home alone from the bus stop.

Abuzeid is among parents grappling with the push-pull of wanting to give kids more freedom while also wanting to retain some control. Some parents, especially those whose kids don’t yet have smartphones (and the tracking capabilities that come with them), have found that Bluetooth trackers, such as Apple’s AirTags, are a useful tool.

Carrie Larson’s son began to walk to school by himself when he entered fourth grade. “We found it was pretty common practice to have an AirTag in your kid’s backpack,” Larson, who lives in Charleston, S.C., tells Yahoo. Around fifth and sixth grade, kids started getting smartphones or smartwatches, so the AirTags went away, she says. But in that “trust-building phase,” the AirTags “felt like a really great way for them to take a baby step toward building independence.”

AirTags as a tracking tool aren’t perfect. They work by sending out secure Bluetooth signals that can be detected by nearby devices in Apple’s Find My network; the devices then relay the location to the AirTag owner’s account — so if there aren’t any iPhones around, good luck getting a location update. They also don’t update in real-time. (I learned this firsthand when, out of curiosity, I tried to track my first-grader on his moving school bus. The location updated when he was at school, and then again when he was at home, but never while he was on the bus.)

There are other locator tags that work similarly: Life360’s Tile Trackers are a popular alternative, though all the parents who spoke to Yahoo for this story use AirTags. Apple’s anti-stalking feature has also caused confusion. Tori Davis, who lives in Portland, Ore., and occasionally uses AirTags to track her 8-year-old son, says that feature has been problematic on days when her son is with his dad, whose phone is not connected to the AirTag. “When he would pick my son up from school, [the AirTag] would start beeping and telling my ex-husband’s phone that someone is following him,” she tells Yahoo. Teachers have shared stories on social media of getting the same alerts while on field trips, unknowingly being trailed by a bunch of AirTagged children.

Parents use AirTags to track smaller kids, too. Yun Quinn, a mom in New York City, tells Yahoo that she sewed one into her 3-year-old’s stuffed animal to take to day care — less because she’s concerned about her daughter’s safety, and more because it’s helpful to be able to confirm she’s gotten home safely, if she isn’t the one doing pickup. Another parent says that she keeps an AirTag in her 18-month-old daughter’s diaper bag so she can see her location when her daughter is out with her nanny.

Other parents report turning to AirTags only on certain occasions, like field trips, visits to a busy aquarium or amusement park, or while traveling through airports. In these situations, parents often have kids wear bracelets designed for AirTags, though Apple has repeatedly stressed that the devices are designed to track items, not people. Nonetheless, brands are eager to meet parents’ needs when it comes to making locator tags wearable: In July, Skechers released the Where’s My Skechers line Abuzeid just purchased from, to mixed reviews. There are also keychain holders, necklace cases, shoe inserts and decorative shoe clips for AirTags.

Even for kids who do have phones, some parents might double up and use an AirTag too. In Washington, D.C., Lisa McCarty can track her 14-year-old daughter's location through her Apple Watch. But at school, the teen has to turn off the watch — that’s where the AirTag in her backpack comes in handy. In Texas, where a new law prohibits students from using phones during the school day, at least one school has even suggested AirTags as an option for parents who are concerned about not being able to keep tabs on their kids.

Striking the right balance

Whether parents should — or need to at all — track their children is a contentious topic, though.

“I am really conscious of the fact that parents are very, very anxious about their kids’ safety, and that seems to be more true as time goes on,” psychologist Lisa Damour tells Yahoo. “And it’s really hard to know how justified those fears are. Even if it’s a vanishing possibility that your child could go missing, if it’s a possibility at all, that’s terrifying. And I’m sympathetic to that.”

Damour sees value in tracking devices that allow kids more freedom or make parents’ busy lives easier — knowing when a kid has arrived at a location where they need to be picked up, for example. But she cautions against “just because” tracking, and encourages parents to be transparent and keep the dialogue open: “If you’re going to do it, the kid needs to know,” she says.

Psychologist Ken Wilgus tells Yahoo that once children turn 13, parents should “think very hard” about using AirTags or another tracking app or device because it could signal to teens that they’re not capable on their own, and inadvertently hinder their natural development into adulthood.

"You really need to think about: What's the potential value of tracking versus the damage that it does psychologically to continually give the message that you are not competent, you still need me as a parent to care for your needs,” he says.

In interviews with Yahoo, multiple parents used the phrase “peace of mind” to describe the benefits of slipping an AirTag into a lunchbox or a wristband. Many acknowledged the downsides openly — spotty location updates; tiny devices that are easy for kids to lose. But for many overburdened parents, any reassurance that our kids are OK is worth having. “It’s not a perfect plan, by any means,” Abuzeid says. “But my mom heart feels like this is a good compromise.”