When Alan and his partner got together, they were “both in failing marriages”. “If location tracking had been an option for our ex-spouses in those days, things would have been rather different,” he says. Alan, from north Oxfordshire, is still a fan of location sharing, despite the fact it would have once thwarted his romantic indiscretions. “I’m sure we would have still ended up together, but navigating the clandestine meetings would have been trickier.”
The ability to share your location on your mobile phone has become a common way to keep tabs on friends, family and romantic partners. For some, it has become the signifier of a serious relationship: last year, the New York Times called location sharing “the final frontier in digital expressions of coupledom” and likened it to the Instagram “hard launch” (effectively announcing that you’re in a relationship by posting a photo of your partner for the first time). Others location-share on a whim and find themselves able to track the whereabouts of people they haven’t seen in person for years.
