Monitoring your ex’s social media or excessively using Find My Friends? Welcome to the era of personal surveillance | Tatum Hunter

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recent incident involving a TikTok comedian who set up a fake ICE tip line highlights troubling trends in our increasingly surveilled social environment. He received numerous phone calls, strangely including one from a teacher suggesting that agents investigate a kindergartener in her class. This peculiar behaviour underscores a wider obsession with surveillance, which is perpetuated not only by governments and corporations but also by the very society we’re a part of. People are no longer just spying on perceived political adversaries; they are also turning their gaze toward friends, neighbors, partners, and even their children.

As both public and private institutions delve deeper into the digital footprints of individuals—gathering information about shopping habits, social circles, and personal beliefs—there’s a growing expectation for the same kind of access in our personal lives. We find ourselves comfortable utilizing various apps that log our locations throughout the day and then demanding that those within our social circle share their real-time whereabouts using features like Apple’s Find My. Furthermore, as companies like OpenAI utilize our chat logs for model training, we may be guilty of rummaging through our partner’s text messages as well. Even as Palantir analyses social media data to assist ICE in pinpointing targets, everyday people often record strangers in public without seeking consent.

Behaviours that might have horrified us a decade ago now barely raise eyebrows. Take, for instance, a conversation I had with a young man whose new co-worker requested indefinite access to his location, simply because he “liked to know where people were.” Or another incident involving a young woman who parked outside her boyfriend’s house to intercept his text messages through her car’s Bluetooth.

Such invasive acts may seem like personal flaws, but separating them from their cultural backdrop is challenging. Particularly when technology companies gather sensitive data about issues such as health and then share it with advertisers, it’s tough to delineate what constitutes acceptable behaviour. A recent report from Pew Research noted that a staggering 73% of American adults feel they possess little to no control over how companies handle their data. That percentage rises to 79% concerning government actions. It’s no surprise then that people find it easier to accept similar invasions of privacy in their personal environments—let’s call it the phenomenon of trickledown surveillance.

The most evident examples of waning privacy expectations are observable in romantic relationships where tracking and monitoring have become normalized replacements for open communication. A 2021 study published in the journal Children and Youth Services Review revealed that nearly 60% of young adults reported experiencing “digital monitoring or control” while dating. This refers to the use of technology or social media to scrutinize or control a partner’s activities. Today, it’s common to comb through a partner’s social media posts, on the lookout for signs of disloyalty—like an Instagram like on someone else’s photo or a tagged photo from an unexpected location. Some individuals even resort to hiring amateur online sleuths to dig into their partner’s digital footprint.

This tendency towards interpersonal surveillance extends into family dynamics as well. Many youngsters transition from childhood to young adulthood without the usual increases in privacy. Nowadays, it’s routine for parents to track their children’s locations, snoop through their messages, and monitor their social media accounts far into adulthood. The implications of these behaviours on kids’ sense of autonomy and self-respect often go unnoticed by parents, particularly if they themselves are preoccupied with digitally spying on their partners.

Leaving home and entering community spaces paints a similar picture. Committing a simple faux pas or facing an embarrassing public moment could mean your name and image are widely disseminated across platforms like TikTok. Engaging in conversation with another adult on an airplane while wearing a wedding ring, dancing with abandon at a party, or even expressing dissatisfaction to a restaurant employee—these actions can turn you into the latest internet “villain” overnight, leading bystanders to contact your employer or barrage your family with inflammatory messages.

One might argue that all this tracking and recording could enhance our relationships, but the opposite is often true. Instead of nurturing trust over time with friends, partners, and children, we shortcut the process, relying on technology to bridge gaps. At best, this dynamic results in superficial connections; at worst, the quest for constant visibility morphs into control and abuse. Organizations geared towards assisting victims of domestic abuse have continuously urged tech companies to reconsider features like Apple’s AirTags that allow for easy surveillance by abusers. Numerous cases of sextortion or non-consensual sharing of intimate images often begin with young individuals feeling compelled to provide online access to controlling partners.

Despite our growing desensitization to a surveillance-centric culture, there remain moments that cause us to take notice. When Ring, the smart doorbell company owned by Amazon, aired a Super Bowl advertisement claiming to employ AI to find lost dogs in front yards, it sparked a significant public backlash. Shortly thereafter, Ring declared its decision to end its partnership with surveillance technology firm Flock Safety.

However, incidents like the Ring controversy are anomalies in a landscape typically marked by apathy or acceptance towards invasive technologies. A recently leaked internal memo detailing Meta’s intentions to incorporate facial recognition features into its Ray-Ban smart glasses suggests the company views the chaotic political landscape in the U.S. as an opportunity, believing individuals’ attention will be diverted from privacy issues.

While political climate changes may obscure privacy dilemmas, they could also trigger renewed scrutiny. As government bodies like ICE and the UK’s NHS deepen their ties with surveillance firms, the public might find a newfound motivation to resist invasive practices—both publicly and privately.

We did not choose to inhabit this digital panopticon, but we hold the power to refuse our role as its observers. By opting out of both monitoring others and being monitored ourselves, we recapture a semblance of sovereignty that technology companies have gradually appropriated. In doing so, we may rediscover a quieter, more intimate space where love and trust can thrive.