Adrian Chiles on the anxiety of tracking

Guardian columnist and broadcaster Adrian Chiles says location-tracking apps have made him a 'gibbering wreck'. He details a compulsive habit of monitoring his adult daughters and mother when they travel, despite knowing it worsens his anxiety.

Chiles calls his behavior 'compassionate surveillance'. He tracks his highly competent adult daughters during long car journeys with their consent. His mother is also tracked, though Chiles notes she has largely given up trying to understand the technology. He swears he only does this when they are in transit, never during a night out, because that would be 'weirder'.

The cycle of fear and relief

When a journey begins, so does his catastrophizing. He describes a world full of other vehicles and a small car, with his imagination supplying a stream of ghastly possibilities. The rational answer, he admits, is to stop thinking about it. He often fails. He resists checking the app but invariably gives in, whether at a football match or in a radio studio, until a sick feeling strikes and he wonders if his loved ones are all right.

He acknowledges the irony. Without the means to check, he would barely dwell on it, much like in the 'olden days' of one weekly phone call. 'Ignorance was bliss,' he writes. 'Information can be the opposite.' Yet he continues. On screen, his family becomes an avatar moving at alarming speed along familiar routes, allowing him to worry about specific road hazards.

The peculiar terror of flight tracking

Tracking flights is worse, Chiles states. He uses an app to see the plane and its details, which provides new fodder for worry. He questions the age of a ten-year-old aircraft and frets over a plane that has already flown to Nice and back in one day, wondering if it needs to rest.

The takeoff into crowded skies is alarming. Zooming out on the app shows a sky dense with planes. Zooming in to track the specific 'metal tube' at over thirty thousand feet is scarier still. He describes frantically checking the altitude of other planes that appear to be on a collision course, only to realize they will miss. 'Probably couldn’t have informed air traffic control in time anyway,' he notes.

Eventually, the plane lands. The relief leads him to a darker introspection. He wonders if the cycle is as much about slaking a thirst for tension and subsequent release as it is about genuine concern. 'Thrill-seeking, in other words; needing the endless cycle of fear and relief just to feel alive,' he writes. 'It can’t be good for you.'