As a result, “there’s an intimacy that’s intertwined with that act,” he added. With Find My, “you aren’t actively choosing to do something as you reach a certain location because you’re constantly sharing your location,” said Michael Saker, a senior lecturer in digital sociology at City, University of London. All of that information can be gleaned from Find My. Friends now, sometimes unwittingly yet obsessively, check one another’s locations and bypass whole conversations - about where somebody is, what they are doing or how their days are going - when socializing. It has changed how friends communicate with one another and blurred lines of privacy. The impact is particularly noticeable among Generation Z and millennials, the first generations to come of age with the possibility of knowing where their peers are at all times.

Her friend later relabeled the apartment building in the app: “None of your business.”Īs location sharing through apps like Find My has proliferated in recent years, they have become a staple in some friendships - ostensibly for safety but with the side effect of complicating dynamics between friends. Pierre would not have known about the relationship until months later. He had started dating somebody, and he was at her apartment. Pierre, 23, zoomed in to inspect the building, then texted her friend its address, along with a joking “where are you?” Her friend came clean. In July, Shay Pierre opened Apple’s location-sharing app Find My and noticed a friend at an unfamiliar apartment building in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

How to use find my friends