Why Does Everyone Need To Know Where I am?

  There I am driving home from work when my phone rings, it’s one of my kids,

“Why are you going to Walmart?”

As if as an adult I must check in with my kids about where I am going and why.  I guess something as simple as going to the grocery store now requires an explanation.

With apps like Life 360 or sharing locations with others, now multiple people can see where we are always.  With these apps my kids can open the app and know my location at any given moment. Sometimes it is funny when she is overprotective and wants to know why her dad is someplace and not where she thinks he should be. Now they know when we are leaving work, going to the store and driving home. There isn’t any privacy anymore with locations, she is going to know when I get home and sit in my car to avoid going into the house or having to unload the millions of dollars’ worth of groceries I just bought.

                It’s funny how I thought sharing locations was going to mean I could keep track of them and have peace of mind now that they are driving. The tables have turned and they track me more than I do them.

                I miss the days when I was a teenager and you could say you were going to one place and then going wherever you wanted and no one knew any difference. When I was young and my parents said they were going somewhere, we knew the general place and time they would return. They would come back when they came back. There wasn’t a map with a dot showing me there every move.

When did this become normal?

It’s appealing as a parent to be able to see where my kids are at. I could see if they made it to their destination safely, if they are running late coming home and I don’t have to call them constantly to see what is going on. It is comforting to have access to them on a map.

                I am not the only parent that feels this way. 1 in 4 parents of young adults track their children’s location occasionally, according to Pew Research Center’s research on parents and their young children, “parents answering about a child age 18 to 24, 42% say they track their location”. (Pew Research Center)

                I guess becoming an adult doesn’t lessen parents from tracking their children. The hard part is when do we stop and draw the line. It seems that constant access has replaced just tracking someone for safety reasons. Nowadays, friends and extended family are now sharing locations. Apps such as Snapchat let many kids share their locations with multiple people. I even have one with work colleagues (for safety reasons). Now it almost seems suspicious if people turn their location off. The better question is “Why did you need it in the first place?”.

                Our phones collect a large amount of data already about where we go. The Federal Trade Commission warns about privacy risks that happen with location data. It can show very sensitive personal data. It can show all the places that you go on a daily and weekly basis. This is more than just our children wanting to know where we are or why we are taking so long.

                Tracking doesn’t even happen just on the apps that we use intentionally, our cell phones act as powerful tracking devices according to the ACLU. It can reveal where we spend all our time, who we spend it with, where we sleep, eat and worship. I often wonder how much information my phone has already collected about me or my children and the thought can drive one mad if you let it.

                I am for sure not going to delete Life360, it is super convenient for my family. It brings me peace of mind knowing that they arrive at their destination safely. It can be incredibly useful for families. We no longer view sharing locations or knowing where everyone is always as something weird and it has now become the new normal.