In the Best Families: Tracking and Relationships

Proceedings of the 12th ACM …, 2010

We present a qualitative study examining Location-Based Service (LBS) usage by families and how it is integrated into everyday life. We establish that LBS, when used for tracking purposes, affords a means of digital nurturing; that said, we discuss how LBS surveillance has the potential to undermine trust and serve as a detriment to nurturing.

Surveillance & Society

Families are increasingly using new apps and devices that provide detailed information about the location and activities of children and other family members. While typically performed for benevolent reasons such as maintaining child safety, tracking technologies like Life360 and Find My iPhone raise concerns about snooping and surveillance. This paper examines parental behaviours and attitudes towards this controversial practice via an online survey that collected 112 responses from parents of children aged 5–18. A significant number of parents reported using tracking tools. Parents’ views about the practice were sometimes ambivalent and in disagreement. Perspectives variously included: defending geo-tracking as conducive to child wellbeing and family management and logistics, contesting the language of surveillance used to describe it, and opposing the use of these technologies as antithetical to child independence and choice. After exploring such themes, the paper identifies and ...

Proceedings of the 2011 annual conference on Human factors in computing systems - CHI '11, 2011

A growing body of research has been exploring the use of control mechanisms to address the privacy concerns raised by location-tracking technology. We report on a qualitative study of two family groups who used a custom-built tracking application for an extended period of time. Akin to sociological breaching experiments, the study focuses on the interferences between location tracking and relationship management. We analyze the tensions that can arise between affordances of the technology and uses that the contracts between family members legitimize. We describe how, by fostering misperceptions and 'nudging' behaviors, location-tracking technology can generate anxieties and conflicts even in close relationships. We discuss their vulnerability to the overreaching effects of tracking, against which the use of mechanisms such as location-sharing preferences and feedback may not be socially viable.

2010

2000

We report the results of a long-term, multi-site field trial of a situated awareness device for families called the "Whereabouts Clock". The Clock displayed family members' current location as one of four privacy-preserving, deliberately coarse-grained categories (HOME, WORK, SCHOOL or ELSEWHERE). In use, the Clock supported not only family co-ordination but also more emotive aspects of family life such as

2010

Due to the ability of cell phone providers to use cell phone towers to pinpoint users' locations, federal E911 requirements, the increasing popularity of GPS-capabilities in cellular phones, and the rise of cellular phones for Internet use, a plethora of new applications have been developed that share users' real-time location information online . This paper evaluates users' risk and benefit perceptions related to the use of these technologies and the privacy controls of existing location-sharing applications. We conducted an online survey of American Internet users (n = 587) to evaluate users' perceptions of the likelihood of several location-sharing use scenarios along with the magnitude of the benefit or harm of each scenario (e.g. being stalked or finding people in an emergency). We find that although the majority of our respondents had heard of location-sharing technologies (72.4%), they do not yet understand the potential value of these applications, and they have concerns about sharing their location information online. Most importantly, participants are extremely concerned about controlling who has access to their location. Generally, respondents feel the risks of using location-sharing technologies outweigh the benefits. Respondents felt that the most likely harms would stem from revealing the location of their home to others or being stalked. People felt the strongest benefit were being able to find people in an emergency and being able to track their children. We then analyzed existing commercial location-sharing applications' privacy controls (n = 89). We find that while location-sharing applications do not offer their users a diverse set of rules to control the disclosure of their location, they offer a modicum of privacy.

2018

Smartphones have ushered in new forms of locative media through the overlay of global positioning system digital media onto physical places. Whereas mobile communication research has focused on corporate, hierarchical, or government surveillance, emerging studies examine the ways locative media practices relate to privacy and surveillance in everyday, intimate contexts. Studies of same-sex forms of intimacy in and through locative media practices have largely attended to the growth and use of male hook-up apps, but have overlooked same-sex female relationships. Beyond hook-up apps, mundane forms of intimacy in same-sex relationships have also received scant attention. This article draws from a broader ethnographic study in Australia over three years exploring the use (and nonuse) of locative media in households as part of their management of privacy, connection, and intimacy with family and friends. By moving the discussion about intimacy beyond hook-up apps, this article focuses on...

Real-time location tracking of individuals has become relatively easy with the widespread availability of commercial wearable devices that use geographical positioning information to provide location-based services. One application of this technology is to allow parents to monitor the location of their children. This paper investigates child location tracking technology in the US and the UK and compares its privacy implications. Although overall the price levels and the technical capabilities are the same, we find that the features of the technology are different depending on the social context. This can be attributed to national regulations and law that shape how a technology can be used. These laws and regulations, influenced by cultural frameworks, values, and morality, differ considerably between the countries. Clarifying the expected impacts of technology on the lives of users and other stakeholders in terms of these contextual factors will help to inform public debate about technical possibilities and societal needs.

New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia, 2024

This paper contributes to research on family location tracking technologies by investigating public discussion about the uses, meanings, and impacts of location tracking apps. The study offers a topic-based qualitative content analysis of public posts about the most popular location tracking app Life360 across three key social media platforms-X (formerly Twitter), YouTube and TikTok. It adopts a crossplatform perspective to gather and analyse varied viewpoints from these platforms, which differ in their social media content, user demographics, and technical affordances. The analysis reveals an extensive range of public discussion topics, which are categorised into three themes: Family Experiences, Views and Values; News, Commerce and Information; and Critique, Subversion, and Humour. The themes align with the different platform vernaculars of each platform, with X posts spread across family experience, news and criticial commentary, whilst YouTube emphasises more commercial and informational topics, and TikTok surfaces more humour, subversive or critical posts, especially from younger users. Furthermore, the cross-platform analysis highlights how the personal, political, and subversive posts from teenage users on TikTok influences the wider news and public discussions about family location tracking and surveillance across other social and legacy media.

UbiComp 2007: …, 2007