Weekend Special
Location sharing is a digital blessing. My daughter studies outside home and whenever she travels we take advantage of the tech. It is so useful.
Problem is when I travel and wife tracks me occassionally online.
Top of that she often asks -- did you eat something -- how is your headache.
I say - my headache is back home and she does not understand it immediately. Fallout is -- bigger and louder headache when my journey ends and I am back home.
SMILE PLEASE !!
In today’s hyper-connected world, technology shapes how young people form relationships.
But there is another story.
Some digital behaviours that look like care and connection are actually signs of coercive control – a form of abuse that manipulates, isolates and traps people in unhealthy relationships.
A recent Australian survey found that nearly one in five young people (18-24 years old) think it’s OK to track their partner whenever they want.
Young people are especially vulnerable – and many don’t recognise coercive control when it’s happening. For example, only 2 in 5 Australian young people (18-24 years) understand the term ‘coercive control’. At the same time, many believe controlling digital behaviours – such as constant texting or location tracking – are seen as signs of love and care.
This lack of knowledge and confusion makes it easier for abuse to hide in plain sight. And as technology becomes more embedded in relationships, it’s helping coercive control evolve in new and dangerous ways, says a report in esafety.gov.au/newsroom/blogs.
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| snap: American Psychological Association |
How coercive control takes hold
Coercive control usually develops in stages:
Love bombing:
The relationship starts with over-the-top affection, praise or gifts. It feels intense and exciting – especially for young people new to relationships.
Isolation:
The person slowly pulls their boyfriend or girlfriend away from friends, family or other supports. They may say things like, ‘I just want you to myself’ or criticise other people in the victim’s life.
Manipulation:
The boyfriend or girlfriend starts controlling their boyfriend’s or girlfriend’s behaviour — such as what their partner wears and who they talk to — and uses emotional pressure, threats or confusion to maintain power.
Each step makes it harder to leave, especially when the abuse isn’t physical or obvious.
Having grown up with the internet, gen Z are, generally, more comfortable sharing their data online; Snapchat, the social media platform notoriously most popular with younger users, has long incorporated location sharing with its Snap Maps feature.
But Joanna Harrison, a couple therapist and the author of Five Arguments All Couples (Need to) Have, believes location sharing can threaten the “balance between independence and togetherness” that is important in all relationships, particularly romantic ones.
“It would be a shame if these apps took away an opportunity to share the details of each other’s independent lives because they already knew them,” she says.
“There’s also a part of me that feels that a bit of romance is lost when you know, to the second, where someone is. What about the satisfying feeling of longing to be met when you know someone is arriving, but you don’t quite know when?”
The tech itself is not infallible.
“My husband and I share our locations with each other,” says Emily, 33, from London, “and mostly it isn’t an issue – although he did once message me, panicking, when I was heavily pregnant and my location showed me being in a hospital.” She was, in fact, on a train, travelling past the hospital as reported in The Guardian newspaper.
Equally, a partner is usually notified that he/she is home when he/she still almost five minutes’ walk away – close to being safely through front door....
but what's the guarantee ?
Then again, the alternative is perhaps no more reliable: after a night out, a friend messages to check I got home safely, as is standard procedure.
Yes, can be a reply ... all good. !!
Some research suggests that online surveillance “could support intimacy in couples with limited interactions, due to geographical separation or psychological reasons” – although this was not limited to location tracking specifically.
in 2019, 72% of women accessing its services said they had been subjected to technology-facilitated abuse. This was not limited to location tracking, however, and, as the digital rights advocate Samantha Floreani points out, other research suggests that “the notion of careful surveillance can form intimacy in ways that complicates typical ideas of privacy”.
On a recent episode of the Modern Love podcast, the host, Anna Martin, likened being able to see someone’s location to having a superpower.
“But like any superpower,” she said, “it must be used responsibly. And sometimes, that means just turning it off.”
In India - location sharing is still at its infancy.
I am told it is being abundantly among marketing people and they are on leash.
Ends
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