Families currently use a range of technologies to locate, track, and inform each other of their physical location and activities. These include GPS-enabled devices and dedicated location-based software applications such as Life360. To date, Whilst research has focused on perceptions and uses of these tracking technologies within private family contexts. To date, however, there is no research into how these technologies are received in the wider public imagination. This paper contributes to knowledge about family location tracking technologies by investigating public representation and debate around their uses, meanings, and impacts. The study offers a topic-based and thematic content analysis of public conversations about Life360 and family tracking apps on three key social media platforms – Twitter, YouTube and TikTok. The study offers both a platform-specific and cross-platform analysis to understand how these technologies are publicly perceived and contested. The themes identified across the three platforms align with their varied cultures of use and platform vernaculars, with Twitter emphasizing newsworthy topics and events, YouTube focusing on commercial product reviews and tutorials, and TikTok posts using humor and memes to express everyday experiences and political expressions. Finally, the cross-platform analysis highlights the power of an antagonist and ambivalent platform vernacular found within the younger user community on TikTok to influence wider public topics of discussion across other social and mainstream media.