Is location-sharing actually making teens less safe?
When a romantic relationship becomes unhealthy, the location-sharing apps teenagers use for safety can put them at risk of psychological abuse, says a Spanish researcher.
For teens who've grown up with their precise location made available to family members and friends via apps like Life360 and Find My Friends, tracking or being tracked by someone you’re dating is now the norm.
But when a romantic relationship sours or ends, many find it very difficult to “opt out” with a person who may then use location-sharing as a tool for harm, says academic María Atiénzar Prieto.
To equip kids with the skills to negotiate digital boundaries with people they date, it helps for parents to start a conversation about the benefits and risks of location-sharing as early as possible, she tells Nine to Noon.
Tina Miroshnichenko
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The Australian teenagers Prieto spoke to for her recent academic review of young people's perceptions of tech-facilitated coercive control told her location-sharing technology seemed to offer them a lot of benefits.
Young women, especially, told her it helped them have a sense of personal safety, if they were going home alone after a party, for example.
Location-sharing with a romantic partner was something all the teens Prieto spoke to had either done themselves or knew of someone else doing, she says, and many viewed it as "an act of care or love or a sign of trust".
“Some of them even mentioned that they will use this type of technology to get insight into the interests of the partner."
Yet because location-sharing technology can also facilitate manipulative or threatening behaviour, its safety benefits for young people dating can be too easily overridden by risks, Prieto says.
“The safety capacity [of location-sharing apps] is very limited, especially in the physical realm, so they offer more risks than safety.”
The time to start talking to a child about safe digital boundaries in relationships is when they get their first smartphone, Prieto says.
For parents who want to use location-sharing apps within the family, she recommends being transparent with kids from the outset about why you feel they're safe within this context but can be risky beyond that.
“Have discussions on the rules around this digital behaviour, so young people can start learning about the importance of discussing their own digital boundaries.”
Spanish academic María Atiénzar Prieto is a PhD candidate at Griffith University in Queensland.
@MAtienzarPrieto
