Adrian Chiles, a broadcaster and Guardian columnist, has confessed to a habit he calls "compassionate surveillance": tracking the real-time location of loved ones whenever they travel by plane, train, or automobile. He describes the practice as a source of intense anxiety, yet one he cannot resist, even though he knows the constant checking only worsens his worry.
The urge to track: a father's confession
Chiles explains that when his adult daughters make long car journeys, he uses smartphone location-sharing apps to monitor their progress. He stresses this is done with their consent—"they know that I know where they are." In his mother's case, consent is less explicit, as she has "long given up trying to make head or tail of location sharing and other such sorcery."
He insists he only checks when they are in transit, never on nights out, admitting, "That would be weird—or weirder, anyway." The trigger is the car journey itself, which sets off a cascade of catastrophic thinking. "It's a big world and their car is small," he writes. "A million other cars, buses and lorries share the roads on which they are motoring."
The paradox of information
Chiles acknowledges the irony: "if I had no means of checking, I'd barely be dwelling on it." He recalls the "olden days" before mobile phones, when a weekly phone call home meant worries had to be parked aside. "Ignorance was bliss. Information can be the opposite."
Despite knowing this, he gives in to temptation. "They're reduced to an avatar on my phone screen, moving, it seems to me, with alarming speed," he says. He often finds himself mentally in the car with them, worrying about narrow roads and nasty bends, before checking again and again.
Flight tracking: a new level of fear
Flights are worse. Chiles uses an app to see the plane's details, fretting over its age ("Ten years old? Eh?! Is that even legal?") and its busy schedule ("Doesn't it need to have a rest, cool down, or something?"). Once airborne, he zooms out to see crowded skies, then zooms in on the "metal tube" carrying his loved ones at "thirtysomething thousand feet," frantically checking the altitudes of incoming planes.
When the plane lands, he feels relief—but wonders if the whole exercise is about more than just worry. "Perhaps I'm just slaking a thirst for tension and the subsequent release from it," he muses. "Thrill-seeking, in other words; needing the endless cycle of fear and relief just to feel alive. It can't be good for you."
