Location sharing- I think I’m worryingly in the minority

[PomPomHead]

I am seriously worried that I’m in the minority here and the world’s gone mad. Why would you share your location All The Time with every member of your family ( even, as in the case of my friends, with your
married 30 year old daughter!)? Why does nobody feel able to be independent and unwatched ? It baffles me and nobody has been able to persuade me of the so-called safety benefits?
Is checking your location now the new showing me you love me?

Quite! My nieces can't get their heads round the idea that, well within living memory, if you needed to speak to someone when you were out, you had to:

a) find a working phone box,
b) have the requisite combination of change, and
c) the person you were calling had to be at home and in their house.

They find it completely mind-boggling. They're also horrified that as kids, my DB and I were often out of the house for hours on end, allowed to play in nearby woods with our mates and no adult supervision, allowed to go into London from the suburbs without adult supervision once we were secondary age etc.

Yeah, that’s one way.
Some people use a location app. You do what works for you.

It's just me and DH at our house and his office is 5-10 minutes walk away. He texts me when he's on his way home and on an average day, that's all the contact we need.

Location sharing would be weird and unnecessary for us, but that doesn't mean it would be for others; household and family formations come in so many varieties that I don't think you can say that the use of a technology is excessive across the board. For children in yrs 6/7, especially those with complicated journeys to and from school, location sharing might be more practical than chauffeuring them about and will certainly do more to promote their independence. Of course, not all children can be left to get on with it; I was (probably) ND and there was no lightbulb moment for me when getting around under my own steam suddenly fell into place.

The important thing is that everybody using location sharing knows it's on their device. Consent would be ideal, but when you've got a freewheeling twelve or thirteen year old who just wants to do their own thing, heedless of the parent who wants to get dinner on for everybody, you might have to settle for telling them they either text/message you or you location share.

I don't have it but if it was useful for me to know where DH was and he couldn't phone to let me know because he's driving long distances then I would have it without a second thought.

It doesn't bother me if someone in my family could find out where I was if they wanted to, why would it?

I'm really not sure what you're 'seriously worried' about.

DSD Mum has this on DSD phone. She uses it with DSD is with us and tracks where we go. Very intrusive!

No. I track my 13 year old as she is unreliable keeping in touch. But no I will not be tracked.

We don’t have it but I wish DH and I did. He comes home at varying times, can be 30-40 mins late. It’s helpful to know when he’s back so I can plan with dinner. He does message but sometimes he forgets. I don’t really need to know where he is (as he’s only ever at work or at the gym) but just whether he’s on the way back or not.

So both of you would allow your own children to do the same then? As it’s absolutely fine?

I have this on my phone and so have my two teenagers. I only ever look if they don’t reply to texts. Once so far this year with my youngest.
They find it easier to drop a pin where they need picking up from instead of texting an address.
I can’t imagine they’d look at my location since they don’t think I have a life when they’re not with me 😂 They’re wrong and they could find that out easily if they ever checked.

I'm with you on this. Think it's really weird as an adult to want to be tracked all the time.

Me, my husband and three children don't and I've never asked my children to. The reason I didn't is because a family member told me she tracked her adult children and wouldn't go to sleep till they got in after a night out abroad, even if that was at 5am. I thought fuck that I'm not even starting that shit if it makes you that obsessive.

🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️ we have it enabled on our iPhones immediate family. Never look at it, in normal daily life, but it’s there should we need it. No big deal.

I do it but I don’t feel watched. Neither do the others. My dh uses it to see when I’m due to arrive home so he can have a cup of tea ready. My dd travels a lot with work so I just glance at night to see if she’s reached her destination safely. Or she’ll see if I’m out shopping and put in a request. My ds doesn’t bother with it so no sweat. Maybe because we’re not in each other’s pockets all the time, it feels fine to us. But if you’ve got controlling and anxious parents, for example, I can see why it would be a nuisance.

See I don't even get this argument.
Say he's usually back at 6pm. If you have dinner ready for then, then if he's late for any reason he can whack it in the microwave/oven and warm it up again when he gets in, surely?!

I use share location on WhatsApp for 15 mins or so at a time if needed but I find it drains my phone battery much faster than normal. For those who use location tracking all the time, don’t you find it drains your batteries too?

Right. Of course you can do it that way. It's a lot more effort and faff, but you do you.

Personally I find it easier to just check where they are than look up timetables and send messages and wait for responses. I'll do me, if you wouldn't mind not being so controlling and judgemental.

I do love that those who are judgemental and controlling on other people's use of an app (which doesn't affect them in any way, shape or form) are the ones who are citing that they wouldn't use the app because of control! Yes, if you are controlling and judgemental or abusive or your family members are controlling and judgemental and abusive, you probably shouldn't use the app.

But in our family, where we have healthy relationships, we find the app a useful tool in certain circumstances, giving us quick, real time information in seconds. We don't use it for control, judgement or abuse, because we are not controlling, judgemental or abusive.

Of course, don't share your location with anyone you don't trust to not use it in a way that isn't reasonable. But in our family, we all trust each other to use it sensibly without control or abuse, so it's a really useful app to have.

@FreezeDriedStrawberries we like to have dinner together so if one of us is late, the other doesn’t eat until we get back. The kids heat it up when they get in but dh and I enjoy dinner together

Agree. Someone on here once implied you didn't care about your family if you don't all share locations. Mental. I don't share my location and I don't want to know where anyone else is all the time. Who the fuck cares if x person is in the Asda car park. It's in the same vein as being constantly contactable. No thanks.

There’s this.

But there’s also the fact I’ve just got a notification that my mum has left the house, so I can text her and piss her off, which is so funny 🤣

(and before people go mad - she does it to me too!)

some families just have different dynamics.

An interesting sidenote to this discussion is also how much people blindly trust these services. With absolutely no reason whatsoever to.

Which means what happens when an app says one thing, but the person says another ?

I am reminded of the similar blind faith in texts and emails (which may still persists) and people getting ready to file for divorce over a non-reply totally and utterly missing the point that neither is in anyway reliable in the true sense of the word.

Or, you can see exactly where they are on a map, at a glance, at your convenience, in real-time. It’s not that hard to understand, surely?

But we prefer to sit down and have dinner together as a family. So I'd rather time it so that we could do that. And I'd rather it was freshly cooked rather than kept warm or reheated.

OP the strong response to this just shows we are in the minority. 🤣

A few months ago I picked up my DS’s friend from school and took him back to our house for a play date. I got a notification on my phone that there was an AirTag with me, showing me a map of where we had been. Friend’s parents obviously track him. The problem with this system is that it tracks the adult with the phone, as the AirTag can’t work without an iPhone in close proximity, so other people get tracked even when they haven’t agreed to it.

I would class myself as an almost never checker. One exception would be if my DH was on a long journey, so I would be more likely to see if he had stopped at services, for example.

The last time was probably three or four months ago when I knew his car had a problem and he was having to nurse it home. Being able to see his progress gave me peace of mind.

This^
dont even start me, there are a lot of things I can call “ridiculous” which other people do but I don’t. Using air fresheners is one of them. Vaping is another. Taking dogs to shops is the third. I could continue endlessly.