Location sharing apps may blur the line between safety and surveillance, complicating relationships and personal boundaries. Photo / 123rf
24/7 location sharing invaded our friendships and romances. Is it too late to go back?
Saying “yes” to sharing your location with someone is as easy as tapping your phone screen. Saying “no,” however, may save your relationship. Or even your personal safety.
Ashley Wragge, 26, had a friendship go bad after location sharing spiralled out of control, with both parties checking the other’s location dozens of times a day.
“I had to tell her, ‘No, I actually don’t want to know where you are, and I don’t want you to know where I am,’” Wragge said. “I want to go back to how we were before, where if you wanted to know where someone is, you have to actually ask them.”
Location sharing is the privacy problem that crept into our lives when we were too busy to notice its costs. While we work multiple jobs, juggle family commitments and drive for hours every day, location sharing helps hold things together. People increasingly rely on apps like Find My Friends, Snapchat or Life360 to keep track of their inner circles - or even acquaintances. What’s the harm of a little surveillance among friends?
But you wouldn’t hand over access to your text messages or Google search history. Location sharing puts the same sort of intimate information - your daily movements - on display.
Relationships turn sour, and so does location sharing. Domestic abusers use GPS tracking to control victims - a problem Apple and other tech companies have been slow to address. Mundane location sharing can turn toxic, as well, in the hands of a demanding friend, over-involved parent or insecure partner, users say.
The pressure to participate in location sharing is straining our relationships and, at times, our mental health. It’s awkward to decline when someone asks for your location. It’s easy to overstep when you’re watching someone’s every move. And all the while, the nagging thought: Aren’t I entitled to some privacy?
It’s time to claw back our privacy in relationships by setting location-sharing limits or opting out.
Location sharing is so common, saying “no” can feel like an overreaction. Declining someone’s location request feels like accusing them of being creepy - or admitting you have something to hide.
When 25-year-old Aidan Walker showed up to a bar to hang out with a new friend from work, he was expecting beers and some light conversation. But a few minutes in, the friend reached for his phone: Could he have access, indefinitely, to Walker’s location?
“He was like, ‘Oh, it’s nothing weird,’” Walker recalled. “‘I just like to know where everyone is.’”
The man flipped open Apple’s Find My Friends app to show a cluster of blue dots scattered around Northern Virginia where they lived - Walker guessed more than 30 locations, all representing a friend or acquaintance.
Nervous to offend, Walker wasn’t sure what to do. So he tapped “share indefinitely.”
Location-sharing horror stories often start like that, said Kelli Owens, executive director of New York’s Office for the Prevention of Domestic Violence. We grant location access figuring it’s no big deal, but we can’t predict how a friendship or relationship will pan out.
“Nobody enters into a relationship thinking that this is going to go bad or this person’s going to use power and control over me,” Owens said.
Location sharing and other tracking features are now a common denominator in many cases of domestic abuse, and advocates are still figuring out how to build effective safety plans when abusers have access to a victim’s digital trail, she said.
Ideally, location sharing should be saved for relationships with a long, stable history, according to Owens. But sometimes even our closest connections overstep, and the etiquette on cutting off location access is unclear.
Nyiko Rikhotso, a 25-year-old teacher, always shared her location with her parents while she was away at college. But after graduating and coming home for the summer, Rikhotso realised she was in a bind. If her little blue dot was hovering at a known hangout, everything was fine. But the moment she travelled to an unfamiliar location, such as a new friend’s house, she would get a phone call: Who was she with, and why?
This constant visibility made her uncomfortable, she said. But cutting off the location feature felt cruel - maybe her parents were just trying to connect?
“It was an uncomfortable conversation,” Rikhotso said. But she held her ground, and the three stood in the kitchen together as she tapped “stop sharing location”.
Location sharing should be an ongoing negotiation, not a baked-in part of friendships or relationships, sex educator Justine Ang Fonte said.
Fonte, who shares “boundary scripts” on Instagram to help people navigate tricky conversations, said location sharing has become so expected that many people don’t realise they are allowed to say “no” to these requests. Our moment-to-moment movements fall under the umbrella of “bodily autonomy,” she said, and once we’re adults, no one is entitled to our whereabouts.
A healthy location-sharing conversation would go like this, according to Fonte: One person asks for the other’s location, explaining why they want it. Maybe they’re concerned about safety, logistics or emotional security.
Then the invitee grants the location for a limited time or suggests an alternative that’s less invasive. Here’s the script Fonte suggested: “I love that you want to be involved in my life because it shows that you care. I think I can meet your needs in a way that also allows me my independence.”
Maybe a regular check-in over text or a shared photo album would serve the same purpose, Fonte said. Consent isn’t indefinite because relationships change with time, she added, so your approach to location sharing should reflect that.
Giving up our privacy in exchange for trust or convenience is part of modern life, from work to school to the airport security line, said Shoshana Zuboff, a Harvard Business School professor and author of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. But when we let a tool like Find My Friends start managing our relationships, we normalise that surveillance in our personal lives, too, she said.
“To be able to experience sanctuary, to have one’s privacy even as one shares other things, these are the balances that create rich individuals and personalities, ” Zuboff said.
Discussing which parts of our lives we’re willing to share is part of real intimacy, Zuboff said, and she worries that by laying bare our every movement, we’re eroding our ability to connect and communicate.
“By relying on this technology, we’re hollowing out our families, our friendships and our romances,” she said.
Saying “no” to location sharing, then, might be an act of love.
To review and change whom you’re sharing your location with: On an iPhone, go to Settings, Privacy and Security, Safety Check, Manage Sharing and Access. For Android users, go to myaccount.google.com, Data & Privacy, Info you can share with others.
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