“Let me see where my minions are,” my friend says, as she casually checks her friends’ locations on the Find My app. She scrolls through their icons lined up on her feed, her list of upwards of 20 names scattered across the globe.
These location-sharing moments aren’t uncommon. Personally, I find that there’s an entertainment appeal to it. I have friends who go to school all over the country, and I can see what their pseudo-Sim character is up to. I can also look on campus to see where my friends might be to join them.
Yet, all of this, to me, toggles the line of invasion. There’s an assumption that just because your friend shared their location with you, they want you to know where they are at all times, and I don’t necessarily think this is the case.
I had a friend tell me that she was annoyed that her other friend came and joined her to study. “She said she looked at my location, saw that I was working at CDS, and just popped over.” She continued by saying that sharing her location was not an implicit invitation, as she was rigorously studying. Obviously, my naive and perhaps socially unaware self responded with, “Why don’t you just unshare your location?” to which I got the “No, I don’t need to make this into an even bigger deal than it was” response in return, insinuating that unsharing a location could be seen as an informal friendship breakup. Perhaps even a way of saying, “No, I actually don’t like hanging out with you,” rather than, “I think you using my location without my conscious knowledge makes me uncomfortable.”
However, the entertainment and connectivity that location sharing allows doesn’t diminish the safety advantages that I’ve experienced when using it firsthand. Earlier this year, a friend of mine based in Washington, D.C. saw that I was in New York, just a couple blocks away from her friend in need. Her ability to track both of our locations in a moment’s notice and direct me to her friend gave her the ability to help her friend from more than 200 miles away.
In a study conducted by Life360 in 2024, they found that 72% of Gen Z women believe their physical well-being benefits from location sharing. However, in the same study, Life360 also found just how much location sharing is becoming synonymous with Gen Z social life, with Gen Z being 70% more likely than other respondents to share their location with a best friend.
This evolution of location sharing being a sign of social connectivity — beyond safety and parental oversight — comes as a result of “The Social Wave” in 2017, when Snapchat introduced Snap Map. As a result, location sharing slowly became a method of visual, gamified fun. Additionally, in 2019, Apple merged its tracking tools into a unified Find My app, with the ability to provide the exact address of contacts. Pre-installed and neatly functioning within the Apple ecosystem, location sharing became even more effortless and efficient, creating what’s called the “The Passive/ Normative Wave” of the tracking ecosystem.
While location sharing feels like a broader product of Gen Z’s need for constant connectivity, at what point does connectivity turn into an invasion of information?
I realize it sounds like I’m coming from a place of judgment, but I don’t think I am. In all honesty, I find myself very conflicted. I think there’s an admirable element of trust and respect that’s demanded when having a friend’s location: an expectation that this information will not be abused, that the presence is welcomed, and that you’re simply curious about their whereabouts.
Alternatively, I can’t help but question if this connectivity and vulnerability take away elements of our autonomy. For instance, not sharing your location is increasingly seen as a personal offense, removing a sense of comfort in doing something for yourself instead of doing it for your friends.
Even if I have my friends’ locations, I still often find myself sending the “where are you” text. Sure, it takes away the discretion and introduces the old-school information lag, but I also personally see it as a weird 21st-century form of respect. Almost like the subtext of this message says, “I’m curious to know where you are but also respect your boundaries enough to only know the information you want me to have in this given moment.” That respect is also a symptom of me reading too closely into things, but alas.
These moments of alone time being attacked also make me question what modern loneliness means for Gen Z. We have more access to each other than ever before, and yet, I wonder if our constant connectivity comes at the expense of our ability to just be alone. There’s something comforting about knowing where your friends are if you need them and feeling like you’re always just a few taps away from the people you care about. However, I think there’s also something to be said about being able to exist without being seen, to do something without someone else seeing your mini icon hovering above your location.
Maybe the issue isn’t location sharing itself, but the assumption that because we have access to this information, then we’re entitled to use it.
I wonder if in our attempt to always be connected to each other, we’re losing some of the comfort of just being by ourselves.
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