I have no reason to think they're impacted by me knowing where they are. They're confident, run around for hours, and are growing up just fine. So what if their parents can look up their location... big deal.
Pushing the alarmist argument, though: should I just take away their cell phones, to give them the same experience I had growing up? I didn't ever have even a dime for a phone booth.
It's easy to have no reason to think something (especially when you don't want to), but that's not evidence it's false.
Why not just ask them?
I do wonder how they will feel after the first time you ask them, "Hey, why were you at place X, I thought you told me you would be at place Y?" (even if there's an innocent, reasonable explanation). Sometimes kids don't recognize the negatives to agreeing to something until they experience them.
First, I have to say again that I'm not sitting there watching the map icon when they're running around.
But to your direct point, I'm very mindful not to call them out like that unless it was a very strong concern warranting a serious talk (which hasn't happened yet). I don't think that's wildly different than my parents not busting me for all shit they knew I was getting into, because they (more or less) trusted I knew right from wrong.
However, if the consequences are dire, you encourage them to feel oppressed.
Neither did I, but I knew how to place a collect call and my mom knew that if she got a collect call while I was away it was most likely me.
I was born in the mid 90s and remember some of my friends getting flip phones in the early 2000s. One friend was given a phone that would report its location to their parents, presumably through some web-portal. I vaguely remember the conversation where my friend told me about this phone and the location tracking, and I remember the uncomfortable feeling that new idea provoked. I believe that reaction is a natural one to the idea of being followed everywhere you go, but that reaction is only possible if the idea hasn't been normalized from birth.
Just because surveillance is largely ubiquitous and societally normalized doesn't mean it has no impact, and that impact is unlikely to be articulated by those experiencing it.
I wish more people in these threads would think about this and understand this point.
In an imaginary world where tracking tech isn't available, and it's feasible and affordable to do so, I worry that some of these parents would hire someone to follow their child around all day. Any parent who thinks that's absurd should agree that device tracking is similarly crazy. (And any parent who actually would make that hire... wow, I just don't know what to say, other than that I feel sorry for your children.)
I think it comes down to trust in whether your watcher provides dire consequences. The likelihood that parents are honest with their children that there is little consequence to avoiding the tracking is greater than the same being said of a (perceived) larger, distant group/organization/agency.
We must all remain vigilant against the latter. But trust in the former is where we must start.
I probably wouldn't try to evade surveillance but if I got into the wrong(?) company I would probably be instructed on how to fake location (give devices to someone or put them in place etc).
Everything must become better.