AirTagging wasn't healthy for me or my children

I'd chuck an Apple AirTag tracking device into my two children's backpacks, along with their PE kit and water bottle, thinking it was the right thing to do. They were just six and four. If I kept a constant eye on them 24/7, I felt in control. Nothing could happen to them - could it?

- CHARLOTTE CRIPPS

Everybody else was doing it. The idea that we are living in an unsafe world, which requires parents like me to spy on our kids with an AirTag, a smartphone, or by using a live location sharing app like Life360, is the new normal. Last year, the shoe company Skechers even launched a children's shoe with a hidden space to handily slot in a tracking tag, and I've heard of other parents buying silicone holders that clip onto laces to keep the AirTag secure on different types of trainers.

Originally, AirTags were launched by Apple in 2021 to track belongings, but it didn't take long before parents realised they could use them to keep tabs on their children. Parents such as Mike and Zara Tindall, whose eldest daughter Mia, 11, was spotted racing around the Burghley Horse Trials in Lincolnshire in 2024 with an AirTag attached to the belt loop of her shorts.

I thought using trackers would give me peace of mind - but it did the opposite. It turned me into a neurotic and paranoid mother, as I started to check my phone regularly for updates on their location. If I couldn't find Lola, now nine, and Liberty, seven, for a second in the park, I'd catastrophise it as a kidnapping and ping the AirTag. As I tracked their movements during outings without me, scenes flashed momentarily in my mind from missing child thrillers like All Her Fault, when Sarah Snook's character picks her child up from a playdate, but her son is not there (and, I might add, his online tracker is found smashed in the school car park).

I started to question the philosophy behind my life as a CCTV parent: what the hell was I doing? I had been perfectly relaxed until I got addicted to stalking my kids.