Parents love these apps. So do violent criminals

The Age

14-05-2025

One of the most popular tracking apps is Life360, which allows users to invite family and friends to have their location shown live on a private map. Its use has surged in Australia from 1.9 million monthly active users in the June quarter of 2023 to 2.7 million in the same period the following year. Another is Snap Map, which lets selected friends see the user's location.
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Research from the eSafety Commissioner, involving a survey of 2000 adults, shows the extent to which this has become normalised. It found men (one in five) were more likely than women (one in 10) to agree that constantly texting to ask who their partner was with or what they were doing was usually a sign of care.
Men were also more likely (26.3 per cent) than women (11.8 per cent) to think that wanting their partner to be constantly available to respond to texts, calls or video chat was a sign of care in a partnership.
Almost 14 per cent of the 2000 survey participants said using a location-sharing app to track an intimate partner whenever they wanted to would be reasonable, but that jumped to almost 19 per cent for 18- to 24-year-olds.
'When this is happening to young people in, say, their first relationships, I don't think they would self-identify as being a victim survivor of coercive control or domestic violence,' said Inman Grant.
Griffith University student Maria Atienzar-Prieto has researched technology-facilitated coercive control in relationships for her PhD thesis, and held focus groups with young people who had used location sharing apps in relationships.
She, too, found most young people misinterpreted following a partner via a tracking app as a protective behaviour, and a sign of care and trust. Often, they had been tracked as teens by their parents.
'One of the findings that really highlighted how this behaviour was normalised, was that the behaviour starts in the family home,' Atienzar-Prieto said. '[They said], 'I felt very comfortable using this app with my friends and partners because my parents tracked me while I was growing up.' Parents need to be aware of the associated risks that can come with this type of technology.'
The focus groups told Atienzar-Prieto that location sharing was regarded as a demonstration of commitment in young relationships, so if someone in the relationship tried to stop sharing it can be seen as a sign of distrust or a breach of dating etiquette.
'A lot willingly opt in because everyone around them does it – their family, their friends, it's very easy to opt in,' she said. 'But when a young person doesn't want to share their location, opting out is very difficult.'
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Some children track their parents too. One discussion on a Facebook mother's group talked about young people finding the tracking of their parents reassuring, after hearing a group of teens discussing it on a train. 'I get notifications that Mum has left home, or Mum has returned home,' one said. 'I don't know how to turn it off, but I actually like it.'
Yet even when used as a safety precaution, tracking apps don't necessarily work. Audrey Griffin used such an app, and reportedly sent friends details of her location when she walked home in the early hours of Sunday, March 23. Her friends lost track of her at around 3am and reported her disappearance to police. She was allegedly murdered by a stranger that night.
'A lot of the girls and young women mention, 'Well, I feel safer, if I'm going alone – I would prefer someone knowing where my location is',' said Atienzar-Prieto. 'That can also create a false sense of safety.'
Inman Grant urged parents to discuss boundaries around surveillance and tracking apps with their children, and to never watch them without their knowledge. 'To say, 'I'm turning this on because I'm concerned about your safety and need to know where you are',' she said.
'Where it becomes problematic is when a child is being monitored, called several times at school, followed after school. We don't want this sense of being surveilled or monitored to be normalised as they start to embark on intimate and romantic relationships.'