Shadowing Practice: Why did our friends start sharing their location? | BBC Global - Learn English Speaking with YouTube
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Location sharing started out as a safety tool, but somewhere along the line it turned into something more of a social test.
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Location sharing started out as a safety tool, but somewhere along the line it turned into something more of a social test.
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Teenagers started sharing their locations with friends on Snapchat and Instagram.
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Romantic partners did it too.
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One survey even found that 20% of adults think that a partner who won't share their location is a deal breaker.
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But how did we get to this point?
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Because if you told me 20 years ago that all of my family
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and half of my friends would know my exact location at every moment, I would have been absolutely horrified.
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I recently put those questions to Thomas Germain.
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He's co-host of the BBC podcast The Interface and author of the weekly column Keeping Tabs.
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I mean, the only way we could go farther than this is like
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if you were keeping a diary and sharing your thoughts.
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It can't be a mistake that there's this social pressure built in that when you turn off location sharing, the other person gets a notification.
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Cady stopped sharing her location with me.
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Now I'm like, well, what happened?
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Like, did her feelings change?
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Like, what was it?
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The thing with all of these technologies is we're living through
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a natural experiment where we will find out what the consequences are.
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But at that point, it's baked into our lives and it's too late.
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are we at risk of conflating visibility with trust i mean
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you can see all of the kind of intimate details of where somebody is it doesn't actually necessarily mean you're
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that much closer to them no you now have a whole bunch of teenagers
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and young adults who treat it as
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if it was like likes on social media that
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if you don't like me you're not my friend if you don't like me you're not close to me enough.
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So when did you see that shift happening?
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Yeah, there's definitely been a really interesting change here.
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Apple introduced location sharing, I think it was about 15 years ago.
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But I would say over the past 10 years, and especially in the last five, there's been this change in families now,
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very common for everyone to have their location on, but also in like friend groups, I've seen this a lot,
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where the fact that you're sharing your location with someone is a sign
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that you've reached some level of intimacy or in romantic relationships that sharing a location is like a sign of trust,
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a sign that you've got nothing to hide, that you're on the same page and you can always be in touch with each other.
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But it's also created all of these weird pressures, both because some people don't want to share their location
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and people often don't realize what it is they're revealing when they give this information away.
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But saying no, or even worse,
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revoking it once you've given it to another person can create kind of a conflict in some cases
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that makes this like an issue of peer pressure that can be really difficult to navigate.
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You're so right in romantic relationships.
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I was stunned when I sort of this stat that showed me that for 21% of people in romantic relationships, not sharing their location is a deal breaker.
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It's like the kind of tech equivalents.
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You're like a phone equivalent of a prenup.
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I don't know where that came from and what it does to a relationship, but I'm going to be honest, I find it slightly creepy.
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Yeah.
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I mean, I try to not pass judgment about this sort of thing.
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You're a better man than me.
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Well, I try.
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I'm not saying I succeed.
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But, you know, I've been writing about privacy for almost 10 years now, and I find this pretty alarming.
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On the one hand, maybe it's like, oh, well, it's a sign that me and my partner, we trust each other and everything's fine.
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And we don't have anything to worry about.
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That's the question is that you need the sign.
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You need the proof.
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You need the sign.
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You need the proof.
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I think for some people, not giving that level of information is a sign that you're hiding something,
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which is pretty shocking when we think about just how intimate and how much information you're sharing with another person.
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This is where I am at all times.
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So like there's no moment of your life that's just for you.
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They need constant 24-7 access to you.
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And I think that's kind of a problem.
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Okay, so now I'm going to ask you to play psychologist.
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Okay, can't wait.
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And having sounded a little judgy about this, I have four kids.
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Of the four of them, three of them I share, and I love seeing where they are.
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One of them, my daughter, Maya, who's 29, always said, I find this kind of creepy.
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Even my boyfriend, who I've been living with for 10 years, he doesn't share.
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I don't really want you to know where I am at all times.
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And so I have a sort of control sample, which is that it never occurs to me to even look or wonder where Maya is.
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I don't even have that.
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It's almost like knowing that I can look feeds a sort of addiction that I have now developed.
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Are the companies, as well as it being great businesses, are they giving us something that we need or did they make this happen?
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I mean, are they tapping into some need of ours that was already there
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or have they created this need in us, Dr. Thomas?
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You know, as a licensed psychologist, no of course i did
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but uh i that's a really interesting question i think of it less as a need that's being fulfilled
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and more of uh something that's playing into a natural human
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desire once these tools are available it creates a new opportunity to worry and because it's there
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because you can check it i think addiction is a useful framework i don't know
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that this kind of thing is literally addictive but the fact
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that you can check makes you want to do it the fact
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that it's always there that you can always feed
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that it's like oh do i need to be worried about
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my daughter well i'll just check where she is you weren't there was no opportunity to do
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that in the past so that anxiety maybe wouldn't have developed there
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so i think it creates maybe more problems than it's solving i'm sure it's comforting for some people
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and maybe slightly sort of infantilizing as well i mean i think of how
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when i grew up i traveled all over the world without
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my parents having any idea where i was in a crinky little airmail letter and you turned out fine well ish
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More or less.
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Ish.
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Okay, so let me just kind of throw this forward before we close.
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20 years ago, the idea to you
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that you would have been tracked every minute by your family or by your friends would have seemed anathema.
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It was just kind of unthinkable and you might have been a bit appalled even at the idea of it.
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You watch technology, Thomas, very closely.
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You follow all of this.
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Where do you see this going in the tea leaves?
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What else is there that's emerging in terms of tech features that today would seem weird,
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which in 10 years time may be totally normalized in terms
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of how we interact with other people well you know there's a there's a factor
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that i think people don't consider
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that makes this sort of thing very difficult to predict and
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that is that so much of it is based on not just what's normal
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but what's cool right if we think about the history of social media for example
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when i was in high school everyone was on myspace it was a particular kind of interacting
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that is dead it used to be
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that everyone was watching cable it was impossible to imagine
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that would go away i think you can look at a
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lot of this stuff as generational trends there could be shifts in the you know public sentiment about what's normal
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and what we want that people do that just this becomes icky
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or it becomes lame
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or it's like oh you're sharing a location that's what my grandma did what like come on who does
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that but i think the one thing that i'm paying the most attention to
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and this is i think different in a lot of ways uh there's been a lot of discussion about
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the ways the technology has made our lives frictionless you can
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get food delivered without talking to a human being you don't
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have to go to the grocery store anymore you don't need
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to go to you don't have to buy toilet paper they'll bring it to you
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if you want to look something up it takes no effort
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but i think that kind of
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that lack of friction is starting to bleed into our social relationships
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and raise the expectation of how much attention you're expected to give somebody
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It could reach a breaking point where it's too much and people get tired of this and they go, I'm done, I'm not sharing my location, I'm not responding to your text,
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or it could become an expectation and we'll all just start doing this
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so we're not the weird one in the friend group that doesn't share our location.
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It's hard to predict where things are going to go, but there's a lot of easy problems you can spot from a distance.
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Thomas, Jermaine, thank you very much.
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That was super.
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Thanks for having me on.
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Why practice speaking with this video?
Practicing your speaking skills with this video titled "Why did our friends start sharing their location?" from BBC Global offers a rich context for understanding modern social dynamics and technology's impact on relationships. The discussion around location sharing provides valuable insights into how language reflects cultural shifts. By engaging with this material, learners can practice expressing their opinions on trust and privacy in relationships, essential topics in both personal and social conversations.
Additionally, using a shadowing app or shadowing site allows learners to mimic the speaker, enhancing fluency and intonation. This method encourages active learning through the shadowing technique, where you repeat phrases and sentences, helping to build confidence in conversing about complex themes.
Grammar & Expressions in Context
Analyzing the language used in the transcript reveals several key expressions and grammatical structures that can enhance your English proficiency:
- Conditional statements: The phrase "if you told me 20 years ago that..." exemplifies how conditional structures can express hypothetical scenarios, a crucial aspect of nuanced conversation.
- Passive voice: The expression "location sharing started out as a safety tool" uses passive construction, which can shift the focus from the subject to the action. Understanding when to use the passive voice can add variety to your speaking.
- Present perfect tense: The speaker mentions, "I've seen this a lot," showcasing the present perfect tense for discussing experiences that have relevance in the present moment. This structure is important for discussing ongoing or recent events.
- Colloquial expressions: Phrases like "keeping tabs" illustrate informal language that learners might encounter in everyday conversations.
Common Pronunciation Traps
As you practice with this video, pay attention to some common pronunciation challenges that may arise:
- Contraction sounds: The phrase "you’re not my friend" can become tricky, especially in rapid speech. Focus on the flow and reduce carefully to improve your pronunciation.
- Intonation in questions: Questions like "did her feelings change?" should have a rising intonation at the end. This is a subtle yet vital part of English pronunciation that enhances comprehension.
- Word stress: Emphasizing important words, such as "trust" or "location," can dramatically change the meaning of your sentences. Pay special attention to which words the speaker emphasizes to master their nuances.
By leveraging the techniques discussed and practicing through a shadow speech approach, learners can significantly improve English pronunciation while gaining valuable insights into contemporary issues.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.
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