As a single mom, I was an early adopter of tech
that let me know that my kids were
where they were supposed to be.
Because my kids are now in their mid-twenties,
we relied on the OG Find my Friends app on our iPhones.
But today there are a lot of options out there.
And that means that you don't have to give your kid a phone
earlier than you'd like to.
But no technology is without its flaws,
and GPS quirks can be real humdingers.
Just last week, I was testing the TikTok
for kids GPS smartwatch,
and during an hour-long family excursion to the park,
it showed that my little tracking tester
had hopped all the way across the country
to Boston for about 15 minutes.
Now, watching that map jump across the country
cracked me up and I had to ask her
if her bike sprouted wings and how she liked Boston.
So I thought you were going on a bike ride to the park,
but you flew to Boston real fast.
Did you go to Boston?
You did not go to Boston?
Oh, that's funny, huh?
Maybe your arm went to Boston.
I do know of other instances where a wacky GPS result
actually caused some parents some palpitations.
Before I share the most worrisome,
but yet still hilarious glitch that I know of,
I want to talk about why GPS can get it so wrong sometimes.
To thwart off unnecessary stress and panic,
let's look at the most common reason your GPS tracker
might be giving you bogus results.
The biggest thing is satellite issues.
An accurate GPS tracking result require signals
for up to eight satellites.
So if your device is only getting half of that,
it might tell you that there's no signal at all.
So the more satellites that your device
is pinging back and forth with,
the more likely you are to get a good result.
Just like your car in the middle of winter,
it takes a few minutes for your GPS device to warm up
and get all those signals connected.
Give your device 5 or 10 minutes
before you feel like you want to throw it out the window
because you're not getting an accurate result.
GPS satellite signals do their best work
when they can ping back and forth without obstruction.
So that means that GPS
is almost always less accurate indoors
and even outside things like trees and buildings
can cause interference,
and that's going to modify your results.
Now it is time for my favorite wacky GPS tracking story.
So I'm not sure if you have a person like this
in your life or not, but my bestie is the perfect storm
of being super gullible and highly paranoid.
And so it makes for some easy practical jokes,
and it also gives you some pretty funny overreactions
to things that you know absolutely cannot be real.
Case in point: my best friend was using Find my Friends,
(we're both very old)
to keep tabs on her junior-high-school son.
And one day she decided to take a peek at his whereabouts
in the middle of the morning classes and was pretty startled
to see that his location was smack dab
in the middle of the county jail.
Now, she may have simply shrugged that off as a weird quirk,
but the county juvenile facility
is also in that very same exact location.
So her paranoid tendencies flew into action,
and no matter how many times she tried to reset the result
like restarting in her phone or rebooting the app,
she kept seeing her darling firstborn
hanging out at the jail.
Ultimately, she sent her husband to physically verify
that her son was actually in school
and not, as she feared, in jail.
I still find that to be a pretty hilarious tale,
but nobody likes to be freaked out
when it comes to their kids' safety.
So here are a few ways
to keep your GPS as accurate as possible.
The more regularly you use your tracker,
the less time it takes to calibrate to the satellites
and the more quickly it will give you
accurate location data.
And you can also look for devices
that use something called A-GPS. It means assisted GPS.
And this tech is most often found in mobile phones.
It's using both satellite signal and cell phone tower pings
to work out the location of your kiddo
or whatever person or thing you're trying to track.
Luckily, many kids' GPS trackers also use cellular signals.
So it's not hard to find a tracker with A-GPS.
In fact, most of our top picks for kids GPS trackers
(it's linked below in the box)
use multiple tracking technologies.
So you can rely on those recommendations
for pretty accurate GPS reasons.
We love kids GPS trackers
and don't want to see anyone upset
about a bogus or wacky GPS location update.
So remember, it takes a lot of satellites
to get an accurate location.
Warming up your device is going to give you
more accurate information, and obstructions like trees
or being inside can hinder the GPS signal.
Finally, using a device with assisted GPS function
can increase your odds of reliable location results.
Now, you can find out more about GPS trackers
and the ones that we recommend in our videos
and articles that go into all the nitty-gritty details
you need to make the best choice for your family.
And don't miss out on all of the security and safety news
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and lifestyle advice to help you buy smart and live safe.
See you next time.
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