As Sofia, a 17-year-old Ivy League freshman, goes about her day at a university a 10-hour drive from her hometown, her mom tracks her location. She watches as Sofia (not her real name) leaves her dorm and heads to the dining hall, then leaves the dining hall to go to class. When Sofia spends hours at the library, her mom can watch the little blue blinking dot on “Find My Friends” and see just how much studying she’s getting in. On weekdays, Sofia’s mom calls around 10:30 p.m. to confirm she’s in bed.
Helicopter parenting often doesn’t end when a child graduates from high school. Today’s parents have more tools than ever at their disposal to stay involved (or overinvolved) in their children’s lives and keep track of their whereabouts, habits, and activities, from tracking services like Life360 to Facebook groups specifically for parents of college students. If college is historically meant to be a time of self-exploration, complete with bad decisions and murky mistakes, an increasing number of parents seem to be attempting to curtail that growth.
Tess, a 19-year-old student at Purdue University, recently went viral on TikTok for posting screenshots from the Purdue parents group. In the screenshots, parents ask how to find the phone number of their child’s dorm’s resident adviser, vent about interpersonal skirmishes their college student is having with roommates, and wonder if other kids are having gastrointestinal issues from dining hall food. Tess’ mom is in the group, and would often send her screenshots of posts she found funny or cringey, and Tess had the idea to compile the posts into a series on TikTok. “I think it’s also a lot of people who are needing to let go of their kids,” Tess says. In her own life, she’s thankful that her parents have let her find her own way.
But not every parent takes a step back when their kid goes to college. When I ask Sofia about her mom tracking her location, she answers, “You know what they say—strict parents raise sneaky kids.” It’s easy to get around her mother’s location-based surveillance, she says, and all her friends whose parents track them employ similar tricks. If you pause the data on your phone, she explains, your location will show up as the place you were when you paused it—so if Sofia wants to go out, but make sure her mom thinks she’s in her dorm, she’ll pause her data in her dorm and then leave (she can still make phone calls with her data off but texting doesn’t work).Other times, she transfers the location services to her iPad and leaves that in her dorm room. Either way: her mom can watch the blue blinking dot on the map all she wants without really knowing where Sofia is.
Besides the location tracking, there are also constant phone calls. Sofia’s mother calls in the morning to ask if she’s started studying yet. She calls in the afternoon to check if Sofia is in the library. She calls at night to make sure Sofia is in bed. And if the calls go unanswered, they stack up, with Sofia’s phone flashing up to 15 missed calls. The texts come in too, telling Sofia she’s at school to study, that she’s wasting money, that her mother is going to stop paying her tuition.
It’s not that Sofia wants to sneak around and be dishonest, but there’s a disconnect between her and her mother, who is a Chinese immigrant. “There’s this cultural barrier with understanding how important it is to be very social and to make connections,” Sofia says. “I’m very conflicted, but I think that taking advantage of [being at an Ivy League school] is not just getting a degree. The people you meet here are absolutely insane” when it comes to their wealth and privilege. ”You’re not going to make those connections in class.”
The social consequences of the overinvolvement of parents in kids’ lives at school aren’t always contained to the parent-child relationship. Take Elise (not her real name), who graduated from a large state school a few years ago. Once, while working a shift at her part-time job during college, she confided in a co-worker and fellow student that she was struggling with her mental health—but the co-worker already knew Elise was struggling, because she had seen a post Elise’s mom made in the school’s parent Facebook group about her daughter’s mental health. “That was something that was really embarrassing for me,” Elise says. “I felt like my trust had been violated a little bit.”
Looking back at the incident is complicated for Elise, because two things are true. She both felt embarrassed by her mother’s post and understands what compelled her to make it. “She was looking to find other people who were going through the same issues, and trying to find a good therapist or solutions in the area,” she says. “I understand why she did that.” When Elise found out about the post, she didn’t say anything to her mother. The next time she was struggling with her mental health, her mom mentioned that she might post in the Facebook group to look for resources. “I was like, ‘No, don’t do that,’ ” Elise says. “Sometimes I’m just bummed out and it doesn’t have to be a public issue.” She told her mother that her co-worker had seen the Facebook post, and her mother was apologetic, but Elise wonders if this situation changed their relationship. Now, if she’s struggling mentally, she’s more likely to go to her father for support. “I think it definitely affected the way that I am open and honest with her about my mental health issues,” she says.
Jessi Gold, a psychiatrist and chief wellness officer of the University of Tennessee system, says that the overinvolvement of a parental figure can lead to increased stress for a child who is trying to gain their own independence. “There’s a healthy level of checking in that can help someone’s mental health,” Gold says. “It’s really about: How do you find the medium to be that support for your kid and help them transition and help be there for them, but at the same time, give them space to grow and develop on their own?” It’s natural for college students to attempt to differentiate themselves from their family and be more independent, Gold says. To prepare for that transition, parents can focus on fostering concrete skills like teaching their child how to make appointments, or do laundry, or refill medication.
When Anna (not her real name), 21, was a freshman at a college about 1,000 miles away from her hometown, her parents constantly monitored her location and called her to ask why she was where she was. Once, she overslept by 20 minutes and missed her parents’ check-in call. When Anna woke up, it was to the campus police knocking on her door: Her parents had called in a wellness check because she hadn’t answered their phone call. Anna wasn’t surprised by her parents’ overinvolvement—in high school, they had an app on her phone that would forward all her text messages to them and they read each one—but after the false alarm and wellness check, she set down a boundary. “I was like, ‘You can’t do this,’ basically,” she says. “I revoked their access to [my location] and didn’t let them have it anymore.” For a week, the relationship between Anna, who is an only child, and her parents was strained. They kept asking her to turn her location back on, but she held firm and they came around. Now, they don’t track her or intrude on her life, which has changed the way they interact with each other. “I actually really enjoy talking to them now and I value their feedback,” she says. “Our relationship has actually really improved.”
