Air Tags Cause Anxiety
You get into your car after a long day of school. Before driving away, you check your phone, and you notice a notification from Apple. It says there is an Air Tag near, asking if it belongs to you. You look around your car, and the Air Tag is nowhere to be found.
Senior Raegan Huffman had seen this problem on social media, but never thought it would happen to her in this small town. She never realized that it was so easy for someone to track her every move. “Getting the find my iphone notification saying that an Air Tag was tracking me was shocking,” Huffman said. “That was the last thing on my mind as I left school that day, and I wasn’t really sure how to react. It was scary seeing that the Air Tag had followed me from school to work and then home. When I told my parents, they looked through my car with me, but we never found an Air Tag. Fast forward a day or two, we found out that it ended up being hidden in a bag that I had in my car to return to someone, but those two days wondering where it could’ve been were terrifying.”
Apple Air Tags were made to act as a key finder for your personal belongings. It connects to Find My iPhone, where you can track whatever objects you have chosen to keep watch of. But this device is grabbing attention in the human trafficking realm. Many women on TikTok have found these Air Tags on their license plates, floor boards of their cars or on their wheels. The question is still up in the “Air” on what we can do to stop this.
Girls in this day in age have to have their head on a swivel wherever they go, whatever they do, no matter who they’re with. It is a positive thing that people are realizing this threat and taking initiative to be the change. Apple does have the safety precautions to where it will alert you if it detects something suspicious. They also have a warning that says to contact local law enforcement if you feel the unwanted device is unsafe. Although this is great advice, in one of the TikToks below, a victim’s local law enforcement told her to call them if she gets hurt. Contacting local police may help, but they will not solve the problem unless there is a clear threat.
As technology advances, it is easier and easier to track someone, and sex trafficking cases are continuing to increase. Children should be taught at a young age to be aware of their surroundings and recognize any possible threats nearby.
In a video we watched the other day on TikTok, there is a bar that has Fentanyl test strips in the women’s bathroom for women to take and test their drinks for possible roofies. It is little gestures like this that actually have a large impact on society and the overall safety for young adults.
The more people realize that unknown tracking is a major problem and make it known to others, the sooner we can bring a solution and, eventually, an end to human trafficking.
