Popular tracking app makes changes to appease teenager complaints
Life 360 updates app after teens complain about being tracked by parents
The update to Life360 is intended to satisfy teens, who've complained about losing their privacy under the watchful eye of parents tracking their every move.
HOUSTON - Changes are coming to a popular tracking-app used by families. The update to Life360 is intended to satisfy teens, who've complained about losing their privacy under the watchful eye of parents tracking their every move.
The app was developed after Hurricane Katrina, as a tool for families and friends to be able to find each other, and now boasts tens of millions of users.
For those who are not users, the app does a remarkable job pinpointing user positions and has evolved to identify where users go and when they do it; monitor driving habits; and enable emergency response.
For teens hungry for a little freedom, it was all a little too 'big brother' for them. Since last summer, the TikTok social media app has been a forum for Life360 complaints and 'hacks' to defeat the tracking-app, including a notable campaign to rate the service so low that the Apple and Google app-stores would drop it.
Psychotherapist MaryJo Rapini says she understands the sentiment and suggests parents ask themselves why they're looking-in on their kids.
"Are you after the information that you just want to know where your child is, so you can locate them in an emergency?" asks Rapini, "Or are you following them because, in your heart, you just don't trust them?"
For its part, Life360 acknowledges the friction in a parody rap-video that works to lighten the conflict between parents and kids. But, in an email to users, company CEO Chris Hull takes note of the 'organized campaign by teens on TikTok' and offers a solution, apparently, developed with teen input. It's called 'Bubbles', which will allow users to generalize their location within a temporary 10-mile bubble that parents could 'burst' if they need to identify an exact location. Life360 says it hopes the change provides an opportunity to talk about trust and personal space.
For now, Bubbles is in demo-mode for select teens and will go live, for everyone, in October.