It was 11pm in August 2021 and I was walking home alone after dinner with a chronically late friend.
This time, she’d been late by an hour and, since we both have a sweet tooth and had impulsively ordered dessert, we’d stayed out longer than planned.
Walking out of the station, I crossed the road.
I took a deep breath and counted to 10 to distract my mind and calm my nerves. Before I even reached three, I began to worry: What if I was attacked and assaulted?
My street was dark and quiet – almost sleepy – which made me feel more uneasy. An occasional car whizzed by, but not frequently enough to make me feel safe.
Then, I had the sudden realisation that I had forgotten my keys.
Normally, I interlace my fingers with my keys in my pocket, with the biggest one between my knuckles. It’s become automatic – a way to prepare myself in case someone tries to attack me.
As paranoia set in, my chest tightened and a feeling of dread settled in my stomach.
In the next moment, however, I remembered: my mum and sister at home knew my exact location in real time. They could see the journey I was taking – when I had left the station and how many minutes away I was from our front door – all because of an app.
I breathed a sigh of relief.
This Is Not Right
On November 25, 2024 Metro launched This Is Not Right, a year-long campaign to address the relentless epidemic of violence against women.
With the help of our partners at Women's Aid, This Is Not Right aims to shine a light on the sheer scale of this national emergency.
You can find more articles here, and if you want to share your story with us, you can send us an email at vaw@metro.co.uk.
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A week previously, my mum and I had agreed to download Life360, a location tracking app suggested by my sister, who’d been using it with her husband for years.
Tired of texting each other when they’d finish work and be getting home, they started using the app to save time and coordinate dinner plans. She could see when he was on the way back from work, and he’d know when she had left the office.
This Is Not Right
On November 25, 2024 Metro launched This Is Not Right, a year-long campaign to address the relentless epidemic of violence against women.
With the help of our partners at Women's Aid, This Is Not Right aims to shine a light on the sheer scale of this national emergency.
You can find more articles here, and if you want to share your story with us, you can send us an email at vaw@metro.co.uk.
Read more:
When my mum suggested I join, I was sceptical. Was this a way to monitor what I did – and if so, what had aroused her suspicion?
I was in my late-twenties, quite a way from my teens, which was when my mum had started being so fiercely overprotective. I wasn’t allowed to go to sleepovers with friends; she called me about my whereabouts every five minutes and she’d panic if I was ever home later than 5pm.
After school, she eased up and began to trust me more. I was highly independent and had lived abroad in China and solo travelled across Asia in 2016 when I was 23.
Even after moving back to London in May, 2023, I was no longer tied at the hip to my mother and I wanted to keep things that way.
But I also saw the safety benefits of the app – because I’m sad to admit I have never felt safe in London, my home.
It feels like every time I switch on the news, another young woman has been murdered viciously by a man while going about their daily lives.
Just a month before Mum suggested Life360, Sabina Nessa was murdered while walking through a park.
Not long before that, Sarah Everard was abducted and murdered by police detective Wayne Couzens.
Violence against women and girls is still, without a doubt, a national emergency in the UK. Since these high-profile cases, it’s been chilling to learn that on average, a woman is killed by a man every three days.
As I pondered my mum’s suggestion, I thought: What made me any different from those women? Who am I to say something similar could never happen to me?
This isn’t to say that men don’t suffer from violence, but the numbers continue to show these crimes disproportionately affect women. Crimes against women and girls made up 20% of all crimes logged by police in England and Wales in 2023, and even that figure is misleading, as many offences go unreported.
As we look towards 2025, things don’t seem to be getting better when it comes to safety in the UK and as a woman of colour, I feel especially vulnerable.
Recently, a surge of far-right riots saw people of colour targeted. Shops, cars, and public spaces in local communities were damaged in multiple towns across the UK.
The combination of gender-based violence and racial tensions makes navigating daily life feel even more precarious.
I feel an urgent need to use every available tool to ensure my safety – whether that means carrying pepper spray, personal alarms, holding my keys between my knuckle. Or, I realised after mulling over my mum’s suggestion, using a location-tracking app.
My initial experience was positive – it almost felt like I was part of some virtual world. I liked being able to see details like how long it took my mum to walk to the supermarket, my sister’s driving speed and exactly what time I reached the office.
On holiday, it was fascinating to track how much of the city we’d explored just by glancing at the map.
It was useful from my perspective, too. If I was going to stay out late, I didn’t need to take extra precautions by informing my family – they could just check the app.
Life360 works by asking users to create a ‘circle’ of trusted contacts, each represented by a photo pin on a shared map. When you open the app, you can see your own location along with real-time locations of everyone in your circle, as well as how long someone has been there, if they’re moving, and their distance from you.
You can invite people to join your circle, making it easy to keep track of each other’s whereabouts at a glance.
My family can see the places I visit regularly, like work or the gym, which gives them an idea of my routine. While I was living in France last year, it reassured them to see I was safe, even from miles away.
And it’s not just about my safety. I find it comforting to know exactly when my mum is on her way or how far she is from home, even when we can’t message.
Having your family knowing your every move isn’t without its challenges. I remember a particularly tense evening when my sister’s app location indicated that she had been at a random location for over 20 hours.
My mum started to imagine all sorts of worst-case scenarios, hyper-fixating on the app, checking it every five minutes.
It wasn’t until we finally got a reply from my sister – who had accidentally left her phone at her in-laws’ house – that we could breathe a sigh of relief.
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And every so often, my mum nags me for spending hours in Selfridges or getting to work late. But I’m willing to sacrifice a few minutes of annoyance to give my family – and myself – some comfort.
I wish we lived in a world where women didn’t have to rely on apps to feel safe. But with the way things are, knowing my family can track my location gives me some peace of mind, especially on nights when I’m walking home alone.
As I walked through my dark, quiet street that night in 2021, I was grateful for that small reassurance. My family was watching out for me.
And in a city like London, where safety feels more and more uncertain, that makes all the difference.
Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing James.Besanvalle@metro.co.uk.
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