Locator: 49370APPLE.
Gen Zers are addicted to "location sharing."
Surveillance has become our default mode. You know you’re in a deep, committed relationship when someone pops the big question: share your location? My boyfriend and I share ours on Snapchat, and I’m not even really sure why. It could be because TikTok convinced us it’s what serious couples do—#relationshiprules posts frequently list location sharing as non-negotiable.
This habit didn’t come out of nowhere. On Foursquare, an app popular in the mid-2010s, users could tag themselves at specific locations. And people have casually tagged locations on Instagram for years—a bar, a restaurant or a beach halfway around the world. This is meant to brag about status, or to connect through shared places. Eventually, it became normal, even comforting, to be findable. Sharing our locations in real time, 24/7, just feels like the next step.
The first time location sharing entered my life was in 2017, when Snapchat launched its Snap Map, and users turned on their locations to allow dozens or hundreds of their connections to pinpoint where they were. If I went on Snap Maps right now, I would see hundreds of avatars spread over a global map. I’m lucky that my parents taught me about digital safety from a young age—I never shared my location publicly. But plenty of my peers did; as of 2022, 250 million users were using Snap Map each month.
Recent tools are more precise. Apple’s Find My Phone shows a user’s location down to the address. The user doesn’t need to have their app open—only their phone turned on. On Instagram’s recent location-sharing feature, meanwhile, users can show where they are through the app’s messaging tab.
Many of my friends treat location-tracking as entertainment. We openly stalk our friends’ dots on maps and joke about watching their “sims” move around. One person in my friend group is chronically late and, more than once, a group of us have been sitting in a bar waiting for her—only to check our maps, see she’s still at home and give her a call to tell her to get going. It only hit me later how invasive it was to do that without even thinking. Gone are the days when you could type “on the way” while still in bed, or flake with a vague excuse. Once, a friend texted me while I was out with my parents: “Are you at Starbucks? Sorry I was checking your location.” Another friend once texted, “Why are you at the mall?” (Look, sometimes I don’t want to admit that this is my fifth trip to Aritzia this week.)
What is most remarkable to me is that this surveillance doesn’t bother most of my friends. Many of us do it without considering why. I asked one of my friends who chronically checks locations why she does it, and she gave a few answers: tracking the progress of a bus her friend is on, or seeing if people she doesn’t like are at the same bar. The main reason: “I love knowing where my friends are!”
Much more at the link.
It seems a natural fit would be "Facebook" (Meta) and a "Find Me" app. Apparently "Meta/Facebook" has something along this line. I haven't seen it so I wouldn't know.
