Junior Felipa Poma pulled out her phone once the lunch bell rang and opened Find My. The blue dots that represented her friends were scattered across the digital map of campus. She spotted her group of friends near the cafeteria and immediately headed over. The whole process took 30 seconds. She never texted or called.

Location sharing has become such a part of social life that students say they rarely text or call to coordinate anymore. But as the technology becomes commonplace, it raises questions about privacy, trust and whether constant digital tracking enhances friendships or undermines them.

With the 2019 iOS 13 update for iPhone users came a variety of new features, including the ‘Find My’ app. Giving users the ability to track the location of not just their devices, but also their friends.

But Apple was not the first company to create a location-sharing app. Life360 was released in 2008, 11 years before Apple.While nearly 12.5 million families today use Life360, Gen Z seems to prefer Find My.

“I use Find My iPhone,” Poma said. “I don’t use social media for location sharing because you have to make an account for those while ‘Find My’ is just your Apple account which you already have, so it is the easiest way.”

For Poma, the practice began about a year ago.

“I started sharing locations with people around 10 months ago to one year ago,” Poma said. “I share my location because people ask me to share and I’m always like ‘sure.’”

Although this might seem unsafe to an onlooker, Poma shares her location with only those close to her.

“On ‘Find My,’ I have my friends and my cousins and I only shared it with them because they shared theirs with me first,” she said. “If you share it with me first, I will share mine next.”

The most common use though, happens during lunch.

“I mostly check my friends’ locations when I’m trying to find them during lunch,” she said. “It’s just more convenient. I don’t call or text my friends to find them at lunch because I don’t trust them to answer. Sometimes they throw their phones in their backpacks and never take it out until the end of the day. Even though this is what we’re supposed to be doing at school, it’s obvious that no one follows that rule.”

While mobile devices are the epicenter of teenage life, there is a disconnect: They always seem to be on their phones yet they never seem to respond, especially to friends.

Ms. Suzanne Osman, the school librarian, grew up in an age where phones and computers weren’t as prominent. During her teenage years, she didn’t have location sharing apps and had to rely on word of mouth.

“We didn’t really have anything like that,” she said. “It was just like, for instance, if we agreed to meet in front of El Pollo Loco at noon, I had to hope my friends would show up.”

But not all of Gen Z is following the location-sharing crowd.

“I don’t share my location with anyone,” senior Ilda Ramirez said. “Firstly, because there’s no need to and secondly, because I’m not as active on social media so I’m not going to be checking friends’ location every now and then.”

But Poma recalls a time when location sharing proved useful.

“There was this one incident where a friend texted me saying that they needed help getting home so I looked at their location and they were like all the way in Santa Monica which is very far from home,” she said. “So, I sent them money so that they could get a ride back.”

Beyond specific incidents, Poma sees broader value in the technology.
“I think it’s important that this feature exists now even though people back in the day didn’t have it and had to rely on their friends picking up the phone but people now are unreliable and never answer their phones,” she explained.

Ms. Osman sees the issue differently.

“I feel like it’s the overreliance on technology to navigate relationships.” she said. “It’s a problem that someone is not picking up the phone or responding through text. Like why is that happening? Why are people not communicating? Is it because they figure ‘well if you really want to know where I am, you can use this app therefore I don’ t have to communicate or be responsive’ which I don’t think is good at all.”

In the past, there were different expectations around responsiveness.

“I think I would feel hurt if I was trying to find my friend and they didn’t pick up their phone or answer my text,” she said. “But I think I’d try to recognize that this is just the way people are operating these days. But it would be unacceptable to me and we would have to have a conversation.”

Poma sees it differently.

“I don’t know if it’s a sign of people being bad friends but maybe they’re not answering the phone because it could be like they don’t want to talk to you or they’re busy,” she said.

There’s a difference between location sharing among friends and in romantic relationships, according to Ramirez.

“In a relationship, I think it could get a bit toxic if it’s always ‘where are you’ or ‘I’m checking your location,” she said. “You could feel pressured.”

Senior Yulyana Rivera says this is not the case in her relationship.

“I share my location with my significant other and I think it affects our relationship in a positive way because we use it as a way to ensure safety and honesty,” she said.

While location sharing is another addition to a rapidly changing world, teenagers have adapted to the technology. Whether location tracking strengthens friendships through convenience or chips away at privacy and health boundaries remains a point for more debate.