The parental urge to snoop on our kids is strong, but should we just trust them and let them handle their own lives?

When you consider all the things that could possibly go wrong during the Irish rite of passage that is the post-Leaving Certificate holiday, well, it’s enough to make any parent reach for a Xanax.

After months of stress and study, thousands of 18-year-olds are jumping on planes and partying hard in the heaving heat of places like Magaluf, Ibiza, Majorca, Albufeira and Crete.

Thousands of kilometres away from home, packed into dodgy party strips and fuelled with hormones, cheap booze and the rest, with absolutely no supervision of any sort – it’s no wonder parents are terrified for their kids’ safety.

So much so that some parents have taken to tracking their teenagers’ antics from home, thanks to real-time location-sharing apps such as Family 360.

Earlier this week, an Irish Times article sparked debate in a report from Zakynthos, where an 18-year-old girl told reporter Niamh Browne that she could see that her family at home checked her location 150 times in three days. That’s impressive – and as a mum to two tweens, I also find it understandable.

That’s not all – apparently some parents have even taken to following their kids to their island of choice, staying close by should there by a emergency and their children need them.

And nightmarish scenarios are not simply the preserve of an over-anxious parental imagination. We have all heard the horror stories of holiday sexual assaults, violence, drink spiking, drug-taking, balconying (that’s leaping from balcony to balcony or into a swimming pool), and even drowning.

Some post-Leaving Cert holidays have been fatal – in July 2023, two Leaving Cert students from St Michael’s College in Dublin, Andrew O’Donnell and Max Wall, died in separate incidents on the Greek island of Ios.

And although his wasn’t a Leaving Cert holiday, there are heartbreaking parallels in the case of Jay Slater, a 19-year-old British tourist who tragically died in Tenerife after attending a music festival last June.

After a 29-day search, his body was found at the bottom of a ravine in a remote national park. An inquest into his death revealed he suffered severe head injuries consistent with a fall from a height.

So yes, I understand why some parents want to snoop on their kids from afar, to check that they are safe. Not to diminish the idea – far from it – but given the fact that I currently do this with my cat, I’m definitely a candidate to creep on my kids via tech in the very near future.

In fact, I have already tried it, with a PanPan Kids Smartwatch, a wearable device designed to keep children aged eight to 12 safe and parents connected without the need for a smartphone. I popped one on Lana Rose, my ten-year-old, and while I loved the sentiment, I still didn’t let her out of my sight (give me time).

It’s never been easier to keep tabs on our children, and while I completely see its safety merits when they are younger, it’s a trickier matter come Leaving Cert territory.

They are officially an adult – only just, but still – so there are some ethical issues around a possible violation of their privacy.

So obviously, I wouldn’t be lobbing a tracking device into their bags or hacking into their location-sharing settings on their phones without telling them.

It has to involve having an open, informed conversation about how they can maybe support their safety, along with other practical advice on staying with her friends and being vigilant about drink spiking.

Otherwise, that’s spying on kids without consent – and a serious breach of trust.

As it is, about half of parents in the US say they monitor their adolescents’ movements via location-tracking apps, according to a study published in June 2023 in the Journal of Family Psychology – but I wonder about the efficacy of this too.

Teenagers have always been smart in devising ways to evade their parents. They can turn off their phone, let their battery go dead or refuse to respond to text messages, and even if parents know where their teens are, they don’t know what they’re doing. I can’t speak from experience yet, but I think – as terrifying as it seems – at some point we have to let go, and allow our kids as young adults the freedom to live their lives and make mistakes.

That said, it’s doubtful I would be quite as permissive as Kirstie Allsopp, the TV presenter, who sparked widespread debate when she allowed her 15-year-old son Oscar to go on a three-week Interrail trip across Europe with a friend after his GCSE exams last summer.

Allsopp received a social services referral after the trip, and she defended her decision on Instagram, damning Britain’s ‘risk-averse’ culture.

As for my own post-Leaving Cert holiday, it would appear my parents were helicopters – cleverly offering to pay for a holiday to Turkey for me and my best pals’ holiday, while staying on the other side of the large resort.

The set-up had pros and cons; the bank of mum and dad was always close, but I was acutely aware of watchful eyes.

There’s no such thing as a free holiday.

Would you monitor your kids on their holiday?