Is Life360 bad? Brief evaluation and alternatives

Life360 is a family tracking application that allows users to share their real-time location with their friends and family and keep everyone connected.

The app also offers crash detection, roadside assistance, ID theft protection, and more features. You can see each other’s location on the map and get notified when someone arrives or leaves a place you have marked, such as home, school, or work. You can also communicate with your circle members through the app and send help alerts in an emergency.

Life360 also offers premium features for paid members, such as:

30 days of location history
Individual driver reports
Crash detection and dispatch
24/7 roadside assistance
ID theft protection
Disaster response
Medical assistance

Life360 claims its app is designed to protect and connect your loved ones, pets, and important stuff with advanced driving, location, and digital safety features.

But is Life360 harmful to your privacy, family relationships, and mental health? In this article, we’ll explore the pros and cons of using a family tracking app like Life360 and provide some alternatives for those looking for a less invasive way to stay in touch with their loved ones.

Is Life360 bad: Evaluating the app

Life360 has been criticized by many users, especially teenagers, for being too invasive and harmful to their privacy and autonomy.

Some of the reasons that critics of the app point out are as follows:

It violates your privacy by constantly tracking and sharing your location with others.
It erodes your trust and communication with your family members by replacing them with an app that monitors your every move.
It might create anxiety and stress by making you feel watched and judged by your parents and peers for your driving habits, phone usage, or whereabouts.
It limits your freedom and independence by restricting your choices and activities based on location.
It exposes you to potential security risks by storing sensitive data on servers that could be hacked or sold to their parties.

In December 2021, it was found that Life360 was selling the location data of its millions of customers.

There can be two points of view when evaluating the app — one of the parents and the other of children or teenagers. If you’re a parent, no doubt, you will be worried about the location of your children, given the violence and other bad things happening all over the place. And if you are a teenager, you will certainly feel suffocated and can also develop anxiety and depression.

However, the path is somewhere in the middle. Parents and children should have open communication with each other without any judgement from either side. You should discuss your life and future vision with each other.

As a parent, you must understand that your children need space to grow and blossom. Keeping the children under you will hamper their growth and development.

And as a teenager, you should also try and understand your parent’s point of view. They are only trying to protect you. But this does not mean you shouldn’t set boundaries and tell them what you don’t like.

Also read: Why is Life360 not working? Quick Fix

What are some alternatives to Life360?

In this section, we’ll talk about a few alternatives to the Life360 app that are less intrusive:

Find My

This app comes pre-installed on Apple devices and combines Find My iPhone and Find My Friends into a single app. You can use this app to share your location with friends and family members with an iOS device.

You have greater control over your information. For example, you can choose who can see your location and for how long. You can also request or share your location with someone temporarily.

Moreover, you can share your location via satellite if you have an iPhone 14 or iPhone 14 Pro with iOS 16.1 or later. This is also a great feature that lets you share your location if you happen to be in a place with no mobile network coverage.

Also read: Does Find My iPhone work when phone is dead?

Google Maps

You probably already have used this application for navigation purposes. But do you know this app also lets you share your real-time location with anyone with a Google account?

You can also stop sharing your location at any time. Google Maps do not offer crash detection or roadside assistance, but you can find almost anything on the application with the power of Google’s data.

Head to this article to learn how to share live locations in Google Maps.

Life360 is an app for family tracking, providing useful safety and coordination features. However, it has certain drawbacks concerning privacy and potential effects on mental health.

You might explore alternative options that prioritize personal space and privacy, depending on your priorities. Remember, the most effective way to stay connected with your loved ones is through open and honest communication, trusting them to make their own decisions.

Also read: How to stop navigation in Google Maps?

Third-party apps

Several apps let you only share the location with your contacts when you want to. You can also create geofences around places you visit frequently and get notified when someone enters or leaves them.

You can chat with your contacts through the app and send SOS alerts if you need help. There are several alternatives available that could help you keep tabs on your loved ones without hampering your family’s data privacy.