The impact of family location tracking on relationships

Will family location tracking app build or break down trust in our relationship? Positive use of tracking app demands trust, respect and ground rule. While negative use can lead to privacy leakage even damage the relationship. Before you install the family locator app, it’s necessary to consider and discuss the impact of family location tracking on relationships. Keep reading and you may find answers in the following guide.

Impact of family location tracking

There’s a lot of debate about the pros and cons of tracking spouses, friends and family members. From a psychological perspective, these tracking apps forces us to address issues like desirable levels of privacy versus feeling spied on and the relational costs versus benefits of tracking. It all comes down to trust and ground rules.

Apps like Life360, Find My Kids and Trackmobi have the potential to track GPS location of the phone, location history, battery life. Using such services, you can track the live location of family members and find out where they are. They claim to keep us safe and bring the whole family closer. However, they don’t address the core issue that are at risk in the act of monitoring: trust and consent.

It’s obviously that we can benefit from family location tracking app under certain circumstances, such as in crowded place, at airports, in meseum, or when you’re coordinating kid’s activities and pick-ups. They can give you peace of mind to know your little ones get home safely or your partner is late because he’s stuck in a traffic jam. But before you access to such apps, it should be noted that you can call or text to know the location, or you should get prior consent to perfrom location tracking. There is a need to consider and discuss if such apps are positive contributors to your relationships and your mental health.

Should we locate a family member?

Being tracked can have a full range of psychological impact depending upon if we agree to be tracked or if someone demands us to do so. Location tracking can expose the assumptions that people have about certain roles and behaviros. For instance:

• Do parents have the right to track their kids? If so, what’s the purpose and how long? Does it lead to trust issue?
• Does a romantic relationship means partners have the right to track each other’s location?
• If you are uncomfortable being tracked, does your partner see that as a lack of love and commitment? If your significant other wants to track location, do you interpret that as caring or a lack of trust?
• Does being tracked by a spouse make you feel cared or monitored or not trusted?
• Does being tracked make you feel anxious like I’m nit keeping up or doing enough?

With advanced and new tech, we rarely talk about what it means to use it. Why not consider how you attribute meaning to the length of time it takes soemone to return your text, message or email? If you decide to use a family locator app to locate a family member, one of the critical things that need to be addressed is how we make meaning out of these events, so we can positively use these apps.

Trackmobi – Positive use of location tracking

If you can clarify the things that contributes to your relationship, such as concerns over safety or seeing someone stuck at work, and the things that feel invasive and violate the sense of trust, you will be able to use family locator app in positive ways. Take a specific example, Trackmobi acts as a GPS tracker as well as family locator app that enables you to find the location of any family member. The requirement is that it’s a invite-only family group, it means that you should get prior consent of the person.

You won’t interfere with the family’s activities and it provides you with real-time and accurate location. You also can see where your partner or kid has been to. If you kid did not arrive home at scheduled time, your partner is stuck in a traffic jam, or your aging parents get lost in a familiar place, you can easily know the current location and provide timely help. This app can be effective when use is agreed upon collaboratively and transparently and is seen by all parties as caring and support.

Wrapping up

Before you get started, try to consider whether or not the family location tracking app gives kids the support they need to be an independent adult, gives partner a sense of peace or benefits your relationships. It can work well if location tracking is an agreed act betwen family members and they realize that it’s for safety reason. Hope this guide can be useful on your decision to location tracking.