Over the past few weeks, I’ve been trying to wean myself off an app. It’s extremely addictive. I use it compulsively. It soothes my anxiety, and makes it a whole lot worse.

Life 360 is a location-sharing app, or what I think of as “my kids’ tracker”. It shows me, on a map, where my two daughters are at any given moment. From the time they were old enough to roam around alone, I made them install Life 360 on their phones. It was for their own safety, I told myself, and one time, it actually was.

Tracking app Life360 has about 50 million active monthly users.Credit: Paul Rovere

“I’m on my way!” my daughter texted me from a train. I looked at Life 360. She was heading in the opposite direction. “Get off,” I texted back. “You’re on the wrong line.”

Life 360 saved her life! (Or, at least, saved her from a long and futile train ride.) And it was the first and only time it has ever saved anyone.

In truth, Life 360 isn’t at all about my kids. Life 360 is all about me. I have become accustomed to being in constant contact with my children. I want to be able to phone them any time, and have them answer my call, and I want to know where they are, to reassure myself they are safe.

Is this surveillance healthy for them or me? I am starting to doubt it.

Tracking someone without their knowledge is covert surveillance.Credit: Dionne Gain

Life 360 has seriously undermined my tolerance for anxiety. On the rare occasions that my kids’ phones die, or the app fails to refresh, I panic. “Where are they?” I think. “How am I going to find them?”

I know, logically, that they are likely not in peril in suburban Sydney in one of the safest countries on Earth. But I am so used to having virtual access to my kids that the uncertainty of not knowing where they are is almost unbearable.

QOSHE - I track my daughters with an app. Good parenting or weird? - Kerri Sackville
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I track my daughters with an app. Good parenting or weird?

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02.12.2023

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been trying to wean myself off an app. It’s extremely addictive. I use it compulsively. It soothes my anxiety, and makes it a whole lot worse.

Life 360 is a location-sharing app, or what I think of as “my kids’ tracker”. It shows me, on a map, where my two daughters are at any given moment. From the time they were old enough to roam around alone, I made them install Life 360 on their phones. It was for their own........

© The Sydney Morning Herald


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