Life360: Safety or Stalking
Alcohol. Drugs. Vaping. There are a lot of things that teenagers can do to get into trouble these days, especially with the constant need to “do something fun.” Many parents spend their nights worrying about their kids and wondering if they are safe and if they are actually where they said they are. There have been a variety of family tracking applications that have been advertised throughout the years to help reduce the stress of parents, but there is one that seems to check all the boxes that parents want when it comes to keeping track of their child, Life360.
Life360 is a San Fran California based company, founded in 2008, that was created with the purpose of being a location sharing application, advertising itself as a way for parents to keep track of their kids without the constant text messaging and annoying calls. It also recently bought The Tile App to ensure that its tracking services can be translated over to object tracking, instead of simply devices that need a cellular or wi-fi connection. Over 33 million people use the app on a daily basis. Life360 calls itself a family social networking app, providing location-based services that include sharing and instant notification based on specific data points that have been flagged by the account owner. And while “family sharing” might have been a true description when the application initially launched in 2008, nowadays Life360 does many things that the user might not even know about once it has been installed on their phone.
With every improvement to phones and other mobile devices, high-level GPS-enablers have continued to be better and better integrated into applications and different softwares. With that, the argument that Life360 has become too overbearing and invading a person’s privacy has also become louder and louder. Life360 basically ensures that nearly every movement and data point of a person can be tracked to an extremely detailed level. Parents can keep track of their children to a degree that has never been seen before, but, at what point is this tracking crossing a line?
I surveyed a variety of parents that use the application as well as teenagers and people in their early 20’s that have the application installed on their phone or simply knew the name of the app. Most of the people I surveyed had a general understanding of what the application was and how a majority of the services within it are managed. There were a couple people that did not know what the application was at all, and their reaction furthers the argument that as a society, we have crossed the line into digital stalking when it comes to location tracking.
Mike and Jean, two parents, thought it is a worthwhile sacrifice that their kids have to make in order for them to have a peaceful state of mind. Their argument was in today’s world, with the constant things that happen on the streets, especially in big cities, knowing where their kids are is a peace of mind that is needed, regardless of their age. They use the location tracking as well as the driver summary features and place alerts features. With all these combined, they are pretty much able to track their children from the moment they leave home and nearly every second until they get back. And these features are just some of the more “tame” ones when it comes to the capabilities of Life360.
The below table showcases the top features that Life360 provides to its users. It ranges from something as simple and straightforward as roadside assistance, but also some features that start to cross the privacy line like place alerts, an ability where the account manager can be notified whenever someone leaves a place and arrives at a different location. And while this might not seem like a new concept, with Ray Bradbury referencing a similar tracking idea using Happylife Homes in his story, The Veldt, it doesn’t dissuade from the fact that people’s privacy is still being invaded. Whether it is on the phone with Life360 or throughout someone’s house like what Bradbury referenced with Happylife Homes, people are still being tracked whether they consent to it or not.
Both Christina and Maria, two college girls, saw place alerts, location history, and a majority of the location tracking features that Life360 provides as a huge invasion of privacy. There is little to no need for someone to know a person’s location 24/7. In today’s society, where everyone usually will have their phone on them if anything did happen, needing all that additional tracking information is unneeded and provided to such a degree that the person that is being tracked can’t do much to have their own life outside the application.
Mark, a father of three, agreed with their assessment but also mentioned there is some merit to having a version of location tracking, more similar to the FindMyiPhone application rather than the constant monitoring that Life360 does. Should something horrible happen, at least there will be some version of location tracking to help guide people in the right direction. Mark’s logic was that this would still help people feel at ease, without giving the impression that they are constantly being tracked.
Amy and Denise, two mothers who worry about their teenage sons, thought that the features are extremely helpful, but understood where privacy could be invaded. The fact that all these features are even offered, and to see how many people actually use some of the more advanced tracking features is slightly scary. “It should be more so for our sense of mind, rather than tracking every minute of our kids’ day.”
As more people were interviewed, the general impressions can be broken down into three categories. There are the people that will do anything to track their child, the people that just want Life360 for general location tracking, and the people that think it is a huge invasion of privacy and society has crossed a line when it comes to the technological integration of GPS features in our life.
While all three opinions are valid and understood, when a person remembers that it is parents that mainly use this application, one must also remember the reliance this app can create, especially when Life360 can track a person every second of every day. The app can give parents less peace of mind and more of a fear that kids are in constant danger. Life happens and while most people will usually have their phone on them, what happens when someone forgets it, or it gets dropped and all of a sudden everything stops working?
When we normalize constant contact, the second that contact is interrupted, full blown panic takes over. So while it might be nice to be able to keep track of your children, family, or friends without having to bug them 24/7 with phone calls and texts, consider using FindMyiPhone or a less invasive location tracking service. There is no need for anyone to know how many times you slammed on the breaks when driving to work and the exact speed you were traveling every second of that trip.
Technology has nearly become the parents, and the users have slowly become restricted by the presence itself. People who lived under 24/7 surveillance used to only be people in prison or on work-release, and now we can include people who have Life360 installed on their phone as well.
Any names mentioned were changed for anonymity
