'I Don’t Have Time to Watch Everybody': Location-Based Monitoring, Timescapes, and Family Life in Germany

This chapter explores how location-based monitoring apps are used within households in Munich when caring and watching out for each other. Drawing on Adam’s (2004) as well as Kitchin’s (2023) conceptualization of ‘timescapes’, it shows how parents check app information as a way of temporally controlling the duration of their children going to various locations, or their screen time use. This is motivated by convenience, such as timing various activities, but also due to fears about children’s safety. Some parents are more sceptical of tracking technologies due to concerns about data protection, and children’s independence. This chapter also examines particular gendered aspects of monitoring and suggests that tracking might be perceived as a form of temporal care work. Children, on the other hand, are less interested in the surveillance apps used by their parents, and preferred monitoring their friends’ locations in real time, or their own temporal routines.