Can I ask you a personal question?

📍 When did this become a thing?

By now, you’re probably familiar with the now pervasive Find My app that allows you to find the live location of your shared Apple devices (e.g., iPhone, Mac), items (e.g., AirTags), and people who you opt into sharing your location with (known as Find My Friends). According to Apple support, the way this works is that nearby Apple devices send the location of your device to iCloud so that you (and others) can locate it. They assure users, “it’s all anonymous and encrypted to protect everyone's privacy.” Which is ironic considering the primary (albeit voluntary) usage of Find My Friends is anything but an act of preserving privacy. 

The Find My app launched in 2009, but according to Pew Research Center, geosocial service usage took a little while to catch on. In 2012, only 18% of smartphone users were engaging with geosocial apps, and in 2013, participation actually dropped to 12%. At the time, Find My didn’t even make the list of the top ten services Americans used. But in 2015, Find My became automatically installed in iPhones (paving the path to ubiquity) and two years later, Snap Maps launched, bringing location sharing as a method of social connection to the mainstream. But whereas Snap Maps only logs your location from the last time you opened the app, the Find My app never stops tracking (and sharing) your live location. Fast forward ~10 years, and location sharing is nearly inescapable with 69% of Gen Zs sharing their location with friends and 77% of millennials doing the same. 

Ask any teenager through thirty-something whether they share their live location with their friends, and you’re almost guaranteed to get an affirmative response. And while for many, the main argument for sharing and following friends’ locations might purportedly be for safety (especially for young women), it’s hard to deny that its primary usage (tracking your friends semi-unknowingly) is a little more questionable. 

Is it stalking if they OK it? 

When you no longer need to see an Instagram story reposted six times to confirm who was at the dinner you weren’t invited to, and you don’t need to inquire about a friend’s whereabouts to know what they’re up to, and you can’t say you’re busy when you just want to have a night in because your friends can see your location at all times, things are bound to get complicated. For many of us, sharing our location with our friends isn’t a guise - it’s really about safety and the comfort of knowing people are looking out for us. But it’s also become a sort of friendship status symbol. Because letting someone track your every move - literally - elicits the utmost level of trust. But at what point does it go from being caring to creepy? According to Amanda Lenhart, who studies the impact of technology on society, having this level of awareness in each other’s lives “can be troubling and emotionally difficult.” No kidding. In the age of social media, we already have to see when we’re not invited to a party or a birthday dinner. But now, with Find My Friends, we can know about even the smallest of exclusions. And without the context of a photo (or God forbid, a conversation), our minds race to the worst. We might wonder why we were left out, whether anyone even likes us, and if we have any real friends at all. 

Another facet of Find My Friends is that it’s become socially acceptable - even expected - to share your location, but unsharing is entirely taboo. Until recently, Apple even informed friends that you unshared your location with them, making it feel impossible to cut ties (and while they don’t alert them anymore, the “you stopped sharing your location with X” message still shows up in your text history on your end, making you feel paranoid). Louise Barkhuus, a researcher at Columbia University who has studied students who share their location found that the very act of location sharing can also stem from social awkwardness. Students might be trying to meet up with friends in a busy place, so they share their locations. But rather than sharing for an hour or so, which apparently sends a signal that you’re not “really friends”, they’ll share indefinitely to avoid the conversation. Then, they’ll just switch their locations off later on because they can’t bear the uncomfortable interaction that might come from removing anyone. So now, the benefit of having people know where they are for safety reasons is completely eliminated. And surprise, the app that makes us more digitally connected than ever before is also pushing us away from each other IRL. 

Katina Michael - a professor at Arizona State University who studies location-sharing technologies refers to the phenomenon of having access to someone’s every move as having “God knowledge.” And she’s not wrong. There is something that feels powerful about being able to know where someone is at every moment. But is it the kind of power we should have over our friends? 

The implications of literally always being online 

Scott Nover, a tech reporter and self-certified non-location sharer says that the location-sharing phenomenon  is a “natural conclusion of the digital-age expectation that we’re always online, always available, and have no reasonable expectation of a private, offline life.” By always sharing where you are and what you’re doing, it’s hard to let your guard down and just - relax. And now it feels impossible even to tell the smallest of butler lies*, causing us to overcommit or dial up our anxiety levels as we figure out the excuse gymnastics that are required to simply say “no thanks.” 

*the kind of white lie that offers a polite excuse for declining something, like when a butler tells you “I’m sorry, the head of the house is not available right now.”

And there are real mental health impacts as well. According to a 2023 NIH paper, more time spent on social media is associated with heightened feelings of loneliness. While the study didn’t dig into Find My Friends specifically, it probably can’t help from a loneliness perspective that Find My Friends confirms when your friends are hanging out without you. Further, a 2019 study published in the JAMA Psychiatry found that more time spent on social media is associated with higher rates of internalizing problems among youth. In other words, the more we’re consuming social media, the more we’re suppressing negative feelings. And finally, whether we want to admit it or not, social media consumption can get to a point where it’s considered an addiction. According to Dr. Ofir Turel, a researcher in technology addiction at California State University, up to 10% of the U.S. population ($33M people) were at risk of social media addiction in 2018. Six years and the introduction of TikTok later, I’m sure that number has risen dramatically. And the more you’re engaging with these apps, especially those like Find My Friends that do little to help your mental health and instead do a lot to reinforce feelings of FOMO and loneliness, the more your well-being is at risk of plummeting.

Let us know what you think by voting in our poll and leaving an anonymous comment.

💭Our two cents

To me, Find My Friends is the app that just never should’ve been. Rather than being used in a social media manner, it should’ve stayed something we use solely for emergency contacts. Just last month, I did a full Find My Friends cleanout. Before business school, I had a handful of friends plus my family on Find My Friends and it never felt like a big deal. But then, all of a sudden, I was introduced to 800 new people and my Find My Friends list ballooned. And I hated it. Yes, it was nice to have people’s locations on trips for logistics and safety, or when trying to locate people in busy NYC. In fact, I know I’ve been the first to share on occasion for those very reasons. But generally, I felt weird about the fact that I could see friends and they could see me at all times. And since we live in a society where saying no to social plans is frowned upon, I found myself over-committing socially because I felt like I had no choice since people would know my alternative was simply sitting at home. So as we neared graduation, I announced to my business school friends that I’d be severing ties with them on Find My Friends post-grad. And then, I took that opportunity to remove, well, almost everyone (so if you noticed that I removed you, I promise it wasn’t personal!). And while it felt like it might be a big deal leading up to it, I’ve honestly felt no anxiety or shame since (just relief that I can go about my life without being spied on!). 

💃The girls have spoken

See last week’s poll results from “So…how did AI girlfriends actually become a thing?” below. :)

💌Up Next

That’s all for today! If you liked this edition of Not That Personal, we think one of your friends probably will too – refer one (or two or three) below. ;)

Have something to say? We’d love to hear it – reply to this email or leave an anonymous comment here. :) 

Up next: So…are the dating apps dead?

💖 S & J