Young people often understand the technology better than we do – how to deny access once you have broken up with someone; freeze or pause your location; hide away for a bit. (This, of course, can be a red flag in a relationship – is your partner cheating or just out of Wi-Fi range?)

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The most important thing to teach kids is how to identify when affection – “Where are you? Did you get home OK? Are you hurt?” – turns to creeping control – “Where are you now? Why didn’t you return my calls? Why are you home so late? Who were you with?” on a loop.

Tracking kids can be reassuring if they are out late or travelling alone. But surely if we are to address how to protect kids from abusive lovers who follow them across digital maps, then we need to ask some hard questions of ourselves about when and how we need to track them too.

I only relatively recently linked up with my kids, now 16 and 18, on a tracking app. I’ve tried to be careful in using it for protection, not nosiness.

This is partly because of one cautionary Black Mirror episode – Arkangel – that has stuck with me for a long time. In it, a three-year-old girl, Sara, goes missing, and her mother Marie is terrified. After finding her, Marie, a single mother, decides to enrol Sara in a trial where a chip is planted in her brain. This technology allows Marie to see through her daughter’s eyes and hear through her ears, wherever she is, also providing location details. It was also designed to censor any stressful sights, preventing Sara from seeing anything that might elevate her pulse rate (a bit dangerous in case of emergency?).

The two clash over the use of the technology as Sara grows older, then it becomes intrusive – Marie eventually sees her daughter snorting cocaine and having sex with her drug-dealing boyfriend and freaks out. She begins to intervene, finding the boyfriend and telling him to back off, hiding contraceptives in smoothies. The episode ends with Sara hitchhiking out of town.

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In some ways, the story is crudely told, but the idea that there are obvious dangers to too closely monitoring (thereby controlling) your teenage children has stayed with me. It was directed by Jodie Foster and written by Charlie Brooker, who said becoming a father made him sympathetic to helicopter parenting.

Executive producer Annabel Jones said it was based on chip implants pets have, telling Variety: “I have heard that there are some children that are getting them now, so this is just an exaggeration of that. We wanted to find a really good idea of how that could go terribly wrong.” Is the message then, “if you love it, let it go?” Does a child have a right to privacy, or does a parent’s need for reassurance on safety trump it in all circumstances? And do we all agree on what safe is? Who assesses vulnerability?

It’s difficult for parents to stem the tsunami of images, videos and other content that kids can see when they are still too little to understand; porn, violence, predatory invitations, in a world where sexual assault is obscenely common. It’s understandable to feel inadequate and fearful.

But a lucrative industry has grown up to cater to, to fuel, both parental anxiety and stalkers in the eight years since Arkangel aired – wearable tracking devices, spyware for remote reading and controlling of phones, smartwatches, even clothing with trackers. AirTags, smart tags, tiles.

It’s the secretive stuff that worries me most. If someone is being harassed by an ex or acquaintance, the phone is one mechanism they can actually control – unless spyware is involved.

You can be tracked with hidden patches or pockets ironed or stuck on to clothes or items. One girl found a tracker sewn into overalls she ordered from Shein. A variety of trackers can be attached to cars – under number plates, in seatbelt buckles, in fuel caps.

Yes, educate your kids about phones. And let them educate you. But remember, the technology is a means, a mechanism, which will shift in form over time.

The problem, ultimately, is the controlling behaviour.

Julia Baird is a journalist, author and regular columnist.