My friend recently shared a story that stuck with me. She has two friends, let’s call them Alice and Bob. They were inseparable, always sharing their lives together. They moved in quickly and had become a tight unit in their social circle.
One night, my friend noticed that Alice and Bob turned off their location sharing on the Find My app. A few weeks later, they confessed they were taking a break. They needed time to figure things out without the pressure of public scrutiny.
I’ve heard similar tales about the Find My app influencing relationships. One friend continued sharing locations with a partner after they broke up, hoping to avoid awkward encounters. Another tracked an ex while they were out, leading to an unexpected connection in a bar 100 miles away.
I use the app too. After moving to a remote island, I find comfort in seeing my friends’ locations. It helps bridge the distance, especially when a simple “thinking of you” text feels out of place across time zones.
I’m not alone in this. Many young people are moving away from traditional social media to apps like Find My. It’s a different kind of sharing—real-time, straightforward. In an informal poll among friends, responses ranged from sharing with a few to over 30 people. A survey from CivicScience found that about 40% of U.S. adults share their location with at least one other person. This suggests a growing trend in using location sharing as a social tool.
Rishi, a 22-year-old, checks the Find My app three to four times a day, often more than any social media. He uses it to gauge when friends will arrive or to find out if his roommates are home. At college, students even used it to decide which bar to hit based on where their friends were gathered.
This shift in how we connect comes at a time when traditional platforms struggle for relevance. Users are leaving Facebook, and Instagram has become a place for photo dumps rather than meaningful interaction. People are hungry for genuine connections, and the simplicity of location sharing offers that.
However, with this convenience come concerns. In a world where everyone can see our movements, privacy fades. It becomes harder to keep secrets. Some users worry about the safety implications of sharing too much; a lost phone could give unwelcome access to personal information.
Additionally, some feel left out when they see friends together without them. One person mentioned feeling lonely watching roommates out at dinner without her. The shared location can intensify feelings of isolation instead of connection.
While location-sharing apps like Find My allow us to feel closer, they also expose the distance between us in different ways. We all crave connections, but this form of sharing shows how far apart we can feel, even when we’re just a blue dot away on a screen.
For more insights on location-sharing trends, you can check out CivicScience’s survey on this topic.
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gen-z, apple, apps, social-media, internet-culture, slate-plus
