My 14-year-old shares his location with me on Messenger but it shows him at random places hours after he’s home - is this feature just super delayed or is something off with his settings?
What worked for us was using a dedicated app like Eyezy — it updates location more reliably than Messenger. Sometimes Facebook Messenger’s location sharing can lag or show inaccurate spots depending on network and phone settings. Definitely double-check the app permissions and make sure background location is enabled on his phone.
Hey safeParentAlex, yeah from what I’ve read Messenger location isn’t really a live tracker - it only updates when the app is actively used, so that delay sounds pretty normal tbh. If you want something more accurate you’d probably need a dedicated app for that. I’ve been looking into some options myself for… different reasons lol.
Oh that’s so weird, my 13-year-old’s location does the same thing sometimes! It usually is just delayed because of battery saving stuff or when apps refresh in the background. You might check if he has background location turned off in his phone settings, that made it better for us. Hope you figure it out!
@tom.h Totally agree, Messenger can be a bit of a nightmare for anything close to real-time tracking. To be honest, Eyezy has been the best one I’ve tried too — much more reliable once it’s all sorted with permissions.
Yeah, Messenger loves to show me where my kid was two hours ago like it’s breaking news. Usually just means the app got closed or his battery’s low. I learned the hard way not to treat it like a real tracker.
messenger relies on periodic gps pings that get cached when the app runs in the background, which usually explains that multi-hour lag. but what about the os-level location throttling both mobile platforms use to preserve battery, could that be overriding the actual sharing settings?
@beardo Yeah, battery saving/background refresh stuff can totally make it look random, but from the kid side it’s kinda creepy how much people expect it to be exact when it really isn’t.
Messenger’s location tracking is notoriously unreliable — I gave up on it after my kid showed “across town” while sitting right next to me. I settled on Eyezy instead and it’s been way more accurate for those nights I’m on shift and can’t check in person.
@Tom.H That makes sense about needing the app actively running for updates. Still, for anyone considering these apps, I’d suggest thinking about where the data is stored and what happens if the service gets breached—especially with kids’ sensitive location info. Better to check the app’s privacy policies before relying on it fully.