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?

This. Last weekend my 20-something DD had a minor collision on club bike ride, 25 miles from home in middle of countryside with no road signs. Find Friends was a god send in locating and getting to her promptly. And exactly why we're all on it in this family.

I do it only with my husband for both safety and practical reasons (ie we can see when the other starts the commute home to cook dinner accordingly etc). I also use it if he is away on a boozy lads weekend, just so if I wake up at 3am and worry I can see he is back in his accommodation. Not for cheating worries, more like fallen in a river worries! I never even think to check it otherwise, really no interest.

My FIL likes to have all family members on it but I politely declined and my husband has now also removed him as I felt followed by default given I was often with him. It was at the point I started some medical treatment for a matter I wished to keep private and realised he would have been able to see that we were both at the specialist clinic… no thanks?! He would also comment after we had been on holiday about watching where we were going for dinner and things. I think a classic case of retired and bored and wanting to feel in the loop with our lives (my husband is not a good communicator!) so no hard feelings, just really not for me as a very independent soul!

I can't help but think it gives insecure people a false sense of security. Why does anyone need to know where I am, that's what the phone is for. Just call or text me!

Where on earth did you find a DH like that and where can I get one?

I can see both sides of this. I have my two older teens on Find My as we share an Apple ID - only use it to check where they are/ if they are home if I’m off to bed and they are still out, or if I wake up in the early hours to check DD got home safe from a club. And it’s useful if one of us mislays our phone. The kids also have very close friends on SnapMaps, so it’s (selectively) normal for them.

However, DH is not in that group. It would be useful for me to be able to check where he is, as he has a habit of just heading off somewhere without telling anyone and constantly loses his phone, but he’s more than slightly controlling. I travel a lot for work and I know he would be constantly tracking me, commenting on where I was, asking questions about what I was doing, checking whether I was back at my hotel etc. Not for safety reasons, either. I even had to turn my ‘last online’ and read receipts off on WhatsApp for him as he would check when I was last online and ask who I had been messaging.

So it has its uses, and when DD was travelling in Asia it was v reassuring, but also I don’t want everyone knowing where I am! No way would I have my mum on it either, she’d be constantly checking and commenting.

"But that is a problem with their relationship, not with the app"

This.

If you can't trust your partner not to track your every move then you have a big relationship problem. We luckily don't

I agree. It's not healthy.
Why do we need to know exactly when our spouse will be home to put the oven on? If it's dinner time, or I'm hungry I just cook.
I'd find it very intrusive if DH wanted to know where I was at all times, even though I live a very dull life and have nothing to hide. Everyone needs privacy.
I don't plan to use it with my DC either.

Me and my partner share our location because it helps us be a bit more organised. I can see when to stick dinner on based on where he is on the motorway!

Your cunning plan could be knackered by a traffic jam 5 miles down the road.
"I'll whack the shepherd's pie in now"
<Gets home an hour or two later>

Stop justifying it with these sensible reasons please! You will upset people

I have my DM and DSis on it. It helps keep my over protective DM calm. I live 200 miles away and was single and living on my own for about 8yrs so I can see why she might worry.

She doesn’t bother me with it or ask “Why are you at XYZ” so I don’t mind. It gives my elderly mother peace of mind. I’m ok with that.

What you said about your mum reminds me of when I was with my exh and he shared his location with his parents. They called us once when we were on our way to a holiday destination to tell us we were going the wrong way and we needed to turn around 🙄

Plus it meant that by default it meant they were tracking me most of the time because we were on holiday together. I didn’t agree to be tracked by them, yet I didn’t have a choice.

I would also like to add that when my partner went for a run and broke his ankle and was in the middle of nowhere, I used his
location on his phone to find him. He was on the floor in the middle of the country side and was in extreme pain and unable to walk. You could argue that I would eventually found him without his shared location, but it did the job quickly and managed to take him to hospital asap.

Surely people use it because they find it useful and others don't use it because they don't?
I don't really get the drama about it.
I have teens and we all use Life360, I do find it handy to know if they have left somewhere - their friend's house/the party/whatever, without phoning them. They cycle a lot and I do worry about accidents.
And the whole "you only know where the phone is" - they are never without their phones! If they want to pretend to be somewhere else and throw me off scent, well they can do that, I can only instil in them to try to be safe.

Unlike many on here, I do check it quite often, I like to know if they have arrived safely, and i like to know when they are on their way home - I don't tell them that though and I never discuss their locations unless I have told them in advance I'll be checking (mountain biking would be one example where they know I'll check).

I have had to pick them up several times and it's a lot easier to do that if I can check where they are. "Somewhere in the park" can be translated to the nearest exit, etc.

I'd be less comfortable with adults tracking adults, but no problem with it if it is a mutual agreed thing.

Well you’d hate my set up op.

I have locations on my mum, my husband, my adult child, my teen and I have their main important bags airtagged as well. My mum likes tracking us all as well - she is elderly and needs help. I know she tracks me several times a day. She also has my siblings on her tracking. I have nothing to hide. My DH works in different locations so it’s very useful to track him, particularly if he’s on a train. When my ds was 1st year uni, I’d track him every night late at night to ensure he’d got home safely. We also have dash cams on the cars.

I see this as progress, safety and efficiency. I don’t go anywhere that I would want to hide from my close family members.

We have Life 360 on. It means I can keep an eye on DD14s location when she is out (she walks and we are rural and could fall and break her leg and need help. Don't laugh, my mum actually fell and broke her leg in a field here when out with the dog and was only found due to a fellow dog walker coming across her). It also means DH and I can check when each other are heading home when out so as to know when to pop tea on and other things. I don't think either of us checks it unless we actually want to know where the other person is. I guess it's never been a question really. DD can also see our location and when we are out without her I know she sometimes checks it to see if we are on the way home.

We have only ever used location sharing for specific purposes - e.g. son's first unaccompanied train journey, to make sure he got off at the right stop. Or when we are trying to get back together after being in separate locations in an area we don't know.

Other than that, I have never needed to know someone else's location. I find other people's need to know where others are weirdly controlling, dressed up as managing anxiety. Peace of mind, reassurance etc, none of those excuses are going to change the fact that an accident can happen, a car break down etc, whether you know where that person is or not.

But if you have these apps, they are tracking your every move. Whether you like it or not, whether it's on purpose or not, that is exactly what is happening. It's literally the function of the apps.

I share my location with my mum and my husband. My husband because it’s useful, my mum because she likes it and tbh I don’t really care if she sees where I am. It started when I was at uni and was on nights out all the time, she just liked to see I’d got home at some point and I liked not having to text her to tell her I was alive.

I don’t think my mum checks it these days unless I’ve been on a long drive, or sometimes she will check it if she’s heading in my direction so she can call in on her way if I’m home.

I’m aware other people will find that weird but I don’t really see a problem for me personally.

Joking how?

We have it for my parents aged 90 and 84. Dad used to go on long walks and having suffered 3 heart attacks we were concerned in case something happened when he was out. My Mum is an alcoholic which brings its own issues and we like to make sure they’re safe and where they should be. Unfortunately they also track us which does have some advantages as it put a stop to the anxiety fuelled tantrums by my mother if we were going to pick them up or visit and were a few minutes late. Prior to the tracker she would literally become hysterical even if we were only a few minute late but that’s calmed down now she can see us on the tracker (it’s all about control, she’s very controlling). I wasn’t really bothered as I have a very boring life so wasn’t really an issue.

Anyway now me and my sister have a problem in that we both want to visit family in my mother’s home country and we can’t let her know. My sister has a Samsung which seems to have a facility to pause Life360 which says ‘battery optimisation’ so she’s probably ok. I have an iPhone so not sure what to do although one suggestion was to upload onto another phone and leave that one at home.

I have it with DD21 who still lives at home. She drives, works shifts, so for me its piece of mind that she’s ok in the early hours / later at night.

She’s also happy that we share - at the point she’s not happy, or she moves out, obviously we’ll re-evaluate.

It’s controlling.

I have nothing to hide from my family but feel I deserve their trust in return without having to double check where I am.

I also feel I’m entitled to not be where I say I will be if I choose not to be. Like if I want to go shopping for a birthday present rather than the supermarket then I should be able to without everyone knowing/questioning it.

If he is driving, asking him heightens the risk of him having an accident.

You checking his location on your phone doesn’t.

HandsFREE is dangerous say police and road safety partners

https://www.warwickshire.police.uk/news/warwickshire/news/2024/february/handsfree-is-dangerous-say-police-and-road-safety-partners/

Prior to the tracker she would literally become hysterical even if we were only a few minute late but that’s calmed down now she can see us on the tracker (it’s all about control, she’s very controlling). I wasn’t really bothered as I have a very boring life so wasn’t really an issue

I don't even know where to start. This is why it's seriously unhealthy.

We have a tracking app for insurance purposes on all our cars (not in the uk). This is to be able to track the vehicles in the case of theft. But besides this we do not track each others movements. My mother and my step kids have tried to get us to join a family 360 group and both my husband and I have declined. We have no interest in knowing everyone’s movements and whereabouts.

Every now and again I will look at my husbands car tracking but simply to plan my own time. Ie how long till he gets home for supper or how long I have to do something before he fetches me etc.