A few years ago, I only associated location sharing with first date safety precautions. The number of times a friend has texted me, “I’m going on a date tonight, here’s my location in case he’s a serial killer!” is alarming, but hey, finding love in the big city comes with its risks.
But somewhere in the last two years, that logic expanded, as did my participation. I became a full location-sharing convert, which is hardly unusual given that, according to NPR, four in 10 U.S. adults now share their location with at least one other person. On Find My, Apple’s integrated location-tracking service, I currently track 30 close friends and acquaintances across the globe, though their continued presence on my list feels harder to explain. Among the constellation of glowing blue dots is, unsurprisingly, my partner.
“In a lot of ways, it represents trust,” says Marissa Rodriguez, a 30 year-old ad tech account manager who also shares locations with her partner and friends. “It’s the easiest way to coordinate with the person you’re spending the most time with.”
Arthur Wang, a 26 year-old software engineer, feels a sense of security from using Find My to make sure his girlfriend gets home safe. “I don’t think it’s an obligation [to share locations with partners],” he says. “But I do think couples should eventually get to a point where they both feel comfortable and want to do it.”
20 Trends That Will Define the Lives of American Men in 2026
We assembled our panel of experts. Here are their predictions for your dating life, your wardrobe, your fitness regimen and more.According toThe Wall Street Journal, it’s become standard practice for many young adults in relationships. For both Rodriguez and Wang, the access to a significant other is treated less as a test of loyalty than it is a measure of emotional intimacy. It’s kind of like getting a key to their apartment or a toothbrush left in their medicine cabinet.
A number of apps now offer real-time tracking. Life360 has earned a rap for catering to parents monitoring their kids. Instagram jumped on the bandwagon in 2023, although to little fanfare, reports the BBC. Snap Map, Snapchat’s built-in feature released in 2017, raised early alarms about privacy controls for teen users, but it also marked the moment live-tracking data started becoming social.
Young people are becoming increasingly lax about handing off their location because they don’t maintain the same anxieties older generations have about surveillance. Instead, their instincts are largely social. “I can see which friends are close by or at home if I want to hang out,” Wang says. “It makes spontaneous hang outs so much easier.”
Rodriguez echoed a similar practical use. “When I’m out, my friends could literally be at the wine bar next door!” she says. “Or, at the very least, in the neighborhood.”
The passive sharing of locations rises at a time when constant, ambient monitoring has defined our social media usage. We scroll through our friends’ Venmo transactions, track their latest meals on Beli, watch their live locations drift across a map. In another generation, this kind of access might have felt invasive or, at the very least, optional.
Our digital culture has come to embody something I’ve long been uneasy about: the digital push toward radical transparency, where access to each other’s information is increasingly treated as a prerequisite for closeness. You can see this logic play out in the way the internet talks about gatekeeping, as if withholding information — where you bought something, who you were with, where you went — is viewed as a moral failure. We’ve been trained to expect information the way the internet delivers it: instant, searchable and assumed to be freely available.
Should we be applying this same belief system to our most intimate relationships?
The answer, I think, has less to do with trust than with reassurance. Relationships, whether romantic or platonic, are built on signals that confirm we are chosen and considered. It’s why the first “I love you” marks a chapter, and how “best friend” becomes “best man” in the turn of adulthood. Public displays of validation, be it through Facebook relationship status updates or Instagram hard (and soft) launches, are fairly meaningless now. We have the digital tools to promise a real-time window into someone’s inner life. Tell me where you are. What you had for lunch. When you paid your roommate back for the water bill.
We’re all looking for intimacy in a world growing increasingly isolated. Our online and offline rituals are merely attempts to fulfill the age-old promise: That to be loved is to be known. If that’s the case, I don’t mind handing out the map directly.
Meet your guide
More Like This
This article appeared in an InsideHook newsletter. Sign up for free to get more on travel, wellness, style, drinking, and culture.
