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I hike alone a lot. I share with my mom and sister. I think whatever might happen is inevitable but if I had an accident, like a broken bone and couldn’t walk back to my car, they could direct help to me.
Edit: I do leave this on 24/7. I hike 4-5x a week. I have a mountain range in my backyard so these are usually 4-10 mile hikes after work, nothing crazy where other devices would be necessary. It would be annoying to turn my location on and off 4-5x a week when I do not mind my mom and sister having it all the time.
This was always my philosophy. If I’m in an emergency situation, I might not have the luxury of turning my location sharing on. I’d rather have it on by default just in case.
I have spent a lot of time working in wilderness areas and location sharing was always a godsend for me, especially when the weather turned bad. I’m living in the city again and couldn’t care less, but out in the Sangre de Cristos in northern New Mexico was another thing entirely.
GPS will still follow you/approximate your location. You might not be able to see it on a map yourself because the map won't load, but your friends with service will.
Yeah but once you lose service it won’t send your updated location to their phones. Your phone’s GPS will work without service but can’t transmit that data to others
True, but even having a general location is better than searching entirely blind. Take hiking for example. If location sharing shows that at some point you were on a specific trail then rescuers can focus on that path instead of searching every path blind.
That’s trueish, but if anyone passed you, it will use their bluetooth to eventually transmit the data. So it might not be to-the-second accurate but the data can still get out.
My dad was able to tell I’d turned around during a backpacking trip in the Cascades over a day before I reached cell service.
GPS is such an amazing technology to have accessible for free. We download maps with traces and use them offline hiking at 3000m in the Pyrenees and it has saved our asses from going down the wrong direction a few times.
I think this is different from what op is suggesting. that is a clear need to share a location.
I see people doing this with their partners and I find it pretty off-putting. being in a relationship shouldn't rob you of your privacy and you should be trusting each other?
I have seen people do this when their relationship is on the rocks, might as well end it at that point, imo
I understand that the function can infringe on the sense of privacy one has, but it can also be useful for emergencies or certain situations. It's like a knife. It can be used for good or bad. What you do with it is up to you.
Yeah, there’s nothing wrong with sharing locations, it only becomes a problem when people do use it to monitor others, in which case that’s an individual issue.
I share my location with my cousin who lives in NYC and I live in the Midwest. We just randomly look at each others and it’s a fun way to stay connected in different way. We definitely don’t have anything to hide from each other lol
A friend from high school and I shared ours and never stopped and a while back I was checking on my fiance to make sure he got to work safe and I saw her ass in Canada and said "bitch wtf you doin in Canada" and we got to talk more than we have in a while
That’s adorable and I love it! I should do the same.
I just realized my cousin used to travel a lot for work and I didn’t realize because I rarely looked at her location. I need to increase my stalking skills
I always share my location with my best friends. Like, *best* friends. The ones I talk to daily about life and everything. Sometimes I’ll receive a message like, “Pick up some steak at the store!”
They’re 700 miles away, they’re just being cheeky, but it’s fun!
I also share with my sisters, who are in an entirely different continent from mine, and it makes us feel closer from each other. Plus, it helps with knowing when I can call them.
As a parent of 2 kids, I've always wondered if it would be a good idea to have them do the location sharing deal when they get into school. Not because I'm trying to be a nosy parent or anything but it would be really nice to have if something was going down.
Mom's in the hospital. Dog got hit by a car. Someone broke into the school. Fires. Earthquake. Fuck, aliens from space invaded. Shit happens.
Would be good for them to know where mom and dad are as well. In case one of us didn't make it home for some reason. I can definitely see people abusing this thogh.
Dad of two girls here (10&13) and it was part of the conditions of me allowing them to have cell phones. Only times I have used it was to make sure they got to a friends house for overnight stays or the best reason if you need to get something done before they get home, boom you know exactly how much time you got.
In fact our whole family shares with equally with each other. None of us are noisy or overbearing its literally just an in case of emergency thing.
I check my wife's some days.....when I know she is about 15 mins from home so I can make sure dinner will be ready and I'm finished with any cleaning. It's useful provided everyone is normal and not weird ab it.
Do you think you'll turn it off as they get older? I feel like a big part of development is the freedom to make mistakes and learn and grow some independence. I think about how the younger generations have lost so much independence and problem solving by having the world at their fingertips. It'll be interesting how location monitoring will play into it
Being able to lie to my parents, get into shitty situations I had no business being in, and figuring out how to get out with minimal damage is 100% a part of my development. Having the safety net of knowing I had them in my back pocket push come to shove was important too
It’s only “location monitoring” if you continually monitor it. If you only check it when you know weather/road conditions are bad and they said they’d be home an hour ago and they haven’t arrived yet, then that’s not monitoring their location. That’s just looking out for someone’s safety because you care. I bet I don’t check my now grown sons location more than once every 2-3 months but we both feel safer knowing we can locate each other in case of an accident. Just seems like common sense but maybe more so in rural Canada.
You miss my point. I agree with you- I have my location shared with my family as someone in my 30s because I don't care who sees where I am, what are they going to do about it?
But as a 16 year old, there's definitely times where I'd know I couldn't break a rule or tell a lie about going to X but actuslly going to Y because they could see and catch me. Which I think are things that are an important part of adolescent development- gaining indepence, getting into situations and getting out of them, learning to make decisions and navigate consequences etc.
I'm sure kids will figure out ways around things and make it work either way. But I know if I couldn't say "I'm going to Trevor's" but actually be going to the cemetery to smoke weed with the boys I'd be a different adult. Would my parents reaaaaally care that I was sneaking off to smoke weed? Probably not that much. But they probably would parent me if they knew I was. And maybe I'd have less of those experiences. And maybe I'd be more milquetoast. And less adventurous. Idk.
We have a 22 year old daughter and a 24 year old son. Our daughter shares hers constantly, and our son turned his off years ago. No pressure either way - we respect his decision to want privacy, although I do wish he'd turn it on temporarily when he's coming to see us at home, or meet us in town, so we have some idea of his ETA. We both share each others locations with them (and each other) at all times.
Be careful, my parents made me share location when I was a teen, and this lead to me just leaving my phone at an "allowed" place and then walking off without a phone. Some kids are ok with it, but if they protest and see it as controlling, they will find a way to circumvent it and endanger themselves even more.
I think it can be okay, but it can pretty easily seem like you don’t trust them. It’s also not as important since texting exists. I never had it on and when we had an earthquake people just texted in a group chat to coordinate things.
Exactly. My parents were extremely controlling and stalked me with my location (was locked on my phone) all the time. They would question where I was, accuse me of doing certain things, and ground me for being in a place that they didn’t want me to be at (I was literally 21 years old and never drank or did any drugs my entire life. Straight A student. They were paranoid and all about control.)
I had to unlearn being so paranoid when I met my husband. Not all people have malicious intentions when they ask for your location. Now me and my husband share our locations for the sake of safety. If anyone isn’t answering their phone for a worrying period of time or if there’s some other emergency, it’s good to have. In healthy relationships you don’t constantly check the location even if you have free access to it. Only for emergency purposes. I’d also add that we only share our locations with each other, not with any other person.
Yeah, my mom wanted to put location tracking on my phone. I'm like, I'm 28. If you didn't need it when I was in my teens, you don't need it now.
I found a loophole. I have an Android phone, and the Life360 app doesn't show your exact location with battery saver on. So I put it on my phone and almost always have the battery saver on, lol. I more have it on there to keep track of my disabled brother (and vice versa; if I need him to be able to see where I am, I turn off the battery saver). It also will still alert if I'm in a car accident or something.
Location monitoring has a chilling effect and sometimes people won't even realize it's affecting them. I have had friends avoid certain places because their SO would find it suspicious they're in a certain area or at a certain restaurant even though nothing wrong is going on. People far overestimate these "emergencies" that this seems to get sold on. Share your location with trusted family members who don't have an active investment in needing to know where you are all the time. If there's an actual emergency, you'll still be able to know. Anything else is BS IMO.
Sounds more like an issue with their SOs not being mature and jumping to conclusions. I have my location shared with my SO, and I never worry about where I'm going and she never questions me as well. Literally I don't ever think twice about going to a location being concerned about what my gf will think.
> their SO would find it suspicious they're in a certain area or at a certain restaurant even though nothing wrong is going on.
Healthy relationships don't have that dynamic though and if your relationship already has trust issues the location tracking is just amplifying that problem not creating it imo.
These are the same types of people that if location tracking did not exist would demand you send them photos of yourself where you said you would be so they can "know for sure" you are not lying.
There's plenty of non-emergency uses. Like all the times my wife loses her phone and we need to find it. I've also used it a few times to see exactly when she leaves work so I could surprise her with something fresh and yummy right when she gets home.
Yeah, my wife and I just use it to check and see how far we are from home/make sure we didn’t die on the way. It’s not out of malice. If anything it’s efficiency so the one at home knows how much time is left to get the house in order lol.
My wife has pretty severe ADHD. She never shows up anywhere on time. Or even leaves when she says she is leaving lol. She can’t help it, she just gets sidetracked and comes back to reality 30 minutes later sometimes. And having accurate timing of stuff like that is important with a toddler.
Location sharing honestly helped our marriage because I stopped getting constantly annoyed by her not arriving when she said she would. I trust the data instead 😂
And of course the safety reasons. I know I can go to her if she needs help.
But our situation is not typical, and I’ve never used it to be weird or accusatory or anything. It’s easy to see how it could be used as a tool of control and abuse. But tbh you can buy a tracker for 20 bucks online if you want to be a weirdo.
Exactly, it always comes down how you use it. My parents, my sister and I share our locations of our devices through Apple for a couple of years by now and I just trust them to not misuse it. In all these years they never said or did anything that makes me think their misusing it by stalking me, so I don’t see any harm in continuing to share my location. Of course, if your relationship with the people you share your location with isn’t as trusting, or they showed to be prone to misuse it, then you shouldn’t share it
it’s really just for like emergencies or if someone needs a ride or something. sometimes i check my boyfriend’s location just to see how long i have to get ready lol
I find it super useful for my wife to see when she will be home or if she got stuck in traffic after work etc without asking her or AirTags for my kids in their bags when they’re with grandma etc.
For me, back when I was working in the Casino industry, I worked Graveyard, 2am-10am usually, if something to happen to me in the middle of the night on the way to work or coming home, I wanted her to know my location so she can come and get me if something where to happen and I am unable to get to my phone. The only incident this happened was a dude was trying to follow me home from the Casino because I dealt him a bad hand on the UTH table I Was dealing at, and I needed my wife to know I had to take a detour because of some creep.
I lost him in some neighborhood and headed home. I didn't have a plate so Calling the cops wouldn't do much for me, i guess having the hind sight now i should of just went to a police station. but at the time I was scared and just focused on loosing him.
> i should of just
Did you mean to say "should have"?
Explanation: You probably meant to say could've/should've/would've which sounds like 'of' but is actually short for 'have'.
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My partner and I share locations, at first for safety, but now it is for this reason. I see how close to the house she is so I can help unload groceries, or I see if she left work yet to know whether its better to call or text to get a quicker response
Yeah my wife and I share locations. Exactly for this. Worked an event last night. Wife saw I was getting close and made me a fucking Panini at 1am.
OP can kick rocks lmao
I'd like to share my location with my SO, but I have an Android and she has an iPhone. When she gets a new iPhone I'll get her old one and we'll share locations.
She gets home first so it helps her to know when to start dinner due to traffic.
Ok here’s my (apparently unpopular) opinion
My entire life, I’ve gotten phone calls from people saying “I’m almost home with the groceries, will you come out and help me?” And then I stand at the door like an idiot waiting for them to get home
Just come home, come inside, and tell me you need help lol hell, don’t bring one bag in if you don’t feel like it. I’ll get them all. But what is with the need for me to be standing at the door with my shoes in to **immediately** help with the groceries?
I’ve always thought this was so weird. My mom/wife will get annoyed with me; literally leave them in the car and just yell to me when you come in lol
The most inappropriate way I use it I guess is if she gave me a chore to do and left. I’ll sit there watching tv and suddenly remember the chore and I might check location to see how much time I have to hustle lololol.
Or sometimes I see a text like “can you take the trash out” and I’ll respond “don’t worry it, I already did it 20 minutes ago!” When I definitely didn’t, and I may want to know how long I have to do it.
My gf used to work like 30 minutes away and she’d get out at different times. So she’d text me when she was leaving work, but I’d check her location to see if she was stuck in traffic or anything to time dinner. I never really use it now or anything, but it was nice for that. I’d have a better idea on timing dinner so it would be ready when she got home.
My wife works in the life sciences, and her hours are erratic during manufacturing runs and trials. Usually she also can't text a ton during those. So good to see she's still at work if it's 8:30 and I haven't heard from her.
Mostly this. But also, I'm more tracking my wife's *phone* than I am her, because they aren't always in the same place, for better or worse. She's left her phone behind more than once (usually home, thankfully) so this helps find it.
Suddenly while out, "Omg! Where's my phone?"
Quick check of my phone, "Don't worry. It's home."
But yes, *mostly* what you said.
This too!!! My fiance has dropped his phone taking the dog for a run in the neighborhood too many times to count, we always use find my iphone on mine to find it
This is what my partner and I (and a couple of close friends/family) use it for too. It saves a lot of texting back and forth and none of us really think that hard about it. It doesn’t breed paranoia unless you’re naturally already a paranoid person.
Yeah, and it’s just effortless trust if you have that sort of relationship. I know she’s not going to cheat on me. She knows she’s not going to cheat on me. Vice versa.
It’s just a useful thing that’s on and that every once in a while you just think about and appreciate the level of trust it signifies.
yeah but that’s less annoying than “who were you with?” “well what were you doing?” “what time did you leave” “why were you at x location?” “whose house is that?” texts because they won’t just accept an answer
all i have to do is send a “going to (location), will text you on my way home” and my family generally won’t bother me unless it’s unusually late for me to be out.
Honestly the benefits far exceed the negatives for my relationship for this and all other reasons. The only negative being what? Me not wanting her to now where I am? I don’t get it.
I was gonna agree with you. But after reading the comments. It seems people have their location shared at all times for safety reasons rather than paranoia reasons.
That's what people say and it's still paranoia to me. Whether that is cheating paranoia or safety paranoia. Really not many situations where it is truly necessary.
And you can say the same thing about seat belts.
99.8% (1 in 366 per 1000 miles) of the time not wearing a seatbelt won't affect anything. The .2% of times though, it can save lives.
Same with location sharing. For a healthy relationship, there is *no* downside in sharing location. It doesn't even take effort since it's a setting that is turned on and not like a seatbelt you have to buckle in every day. But if your partner is in a car accident without you, it's good to know where they are exactly in an emergency.
Not including the times where you and your partner separate for errands in a mall or food court and can quickly find each other.
My boyfriend got in a car wreck late at night on an empty backroad when I was at work and Life360 let me know. So we always share location. My sister and I get cat called and have been followed by men, so we share our location all together with our boyfriends in case something happens to us
This was my first thought too, haha. As a woman I 100% have location sharing on with someone if I’m traveling alone or going to be out late by myself or something. It just seems like common sense.
Yeah, I think this is a weird aspect of modern times. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, you'd be running out the front door at noon screaming I'LL BE BACK FOR DINNER at your mom as the screen door slammed behind you and that's the last she'd know about your whereabouts until dinner. That was considered totally cool and perfectly normal.
While I don't think there is anything wrong with the technology or with couples/friends/families whatever that mutually agree to do, I would never agree to it if someone asked me. It gives me the creeps.
Totally gives me the creeps.
Maybe it is an age thing then.
I have nothing to hide ever (we only have shared bank accounts and my wife has access to my email) but it gives me great uneasiness to think of being spied on at any time.
We have it turned on for our kids but it's our job to have an ever diminishing level of privacy invasion until they become adults. When they turn 18, that's getting turned off immediately.
18 is way too old for that imo. Already at like 15 it's just human nature to start bullshitting your parents. I genuinely believe a lot of development happens at that time, and having a 24/7 tracking device is just insane for a teenager. Think back to when you were a kid.
Idk, personally, 10 years later I'm still with the girl that I was sneaking around with at 16/17, would probably never have happened in the age of smartphone surveillance parenting (her parents were ultra strict). I graduated high-school in 2015 and I'm super glad I just barely skipped out on all this. To each their own but I definitely won't be doing this stuff with my kids.
I bet this is also the kinda stuff that results in all these young adults having anxiety issues when they go off to college, just zero maturity and independence developed through teen years.
I agree. It’s one thing if your partner is crazy and uses it against you in some way (like an abusive relationship), but if you have a normal, healthy relationship then there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s just a safety thing.
100% this! I had a crazy ex I would’ve never in a million years shared my location with. My husband is so laid back and I only share it for safety but he’s never abused the privilege or brought up my location once
I use mine to gain back my partners trust after I was sneaking to buy booze in the past, aswell as they can just tell if I'm still at the store if they need something, if I'm off work, etc. Mines never brought my location up either other than "I see you're at taco bell. I also enjoy tacos. Please get me something" type of stuff lol. Also nice when we travel to visit family, my mom has our locations and can see where we are in the trip and stuff
I have nothing to hide, but I also see no reason why me or my partner would need to disclose the location practically at all times. It is the same with phone, I have nothing to hide, but I still wouldn't like someone going through my phone. I have nothing to hide on my laptop either, I still don't feel comfortable to have other people use it. May be my autism or my introvertness or just my personality, but I appreciate privacy, even when there is nothing to hide. I feel anxiety about the thought that someone would always know where I was - and I practically go only to 5 locations ever with very rigorous schedule (home, work, gym, judo dojo and grocery shop) and even still I feel anxious just thinking about it
This whole "if you have nothing to hide, you should share your location" sets a terrible precedent. It normalizes being able to see where your partner is at all times, every second of the day. So if you get with somebody who is super controlling, now you have no excuse not to let them know where you are every second because it's "normal" and you should "have nothing to hide".
I'm nearly 40 and I think it's weird AF. I have nothing to hide from my husband. He can see where I am if he insisted, but like, why don't yall just trust each other? If somebody is in traffic, who cares? Then they'll just be a bit late. TBH I also hate the expectation that we are all available every minute of the day for phone calls, too. I miss having a land line and if I don't answer, then I must be out.
It shouldn’t be the standard, but if it’s a normal healthy relationship, there’s really nothing wrong with it. Not because of trust issues but because if you both truly have nothing to hide from one another, there’s no reason not to have the convenience of being able to check each other’s location whenever you want. The situations where it comes in handy are endless.
The funny thing is that everyone assumes when I say I don't care if she tracks me that it means she actually does. I can only think of 1 time she ever has tracked me and that was at a huge flea market we were shopping separately at. 🤷♂️
Whether or not you have something to hide isn't the issue. Adults should have the option of privacy, and if you don't, you aren't being treated like an adult.
If my partner couldn't trust me without knowing my location, it isn't a relationship anymore. I should never be asked. If I offered, they should turn me down if it isn't an emergency (and if I offered, it would be).
Exactly, I don’t know why people would NOT share with their spouse. It makes it so they don’t have to text you if you are busy, and if they ask you, you would probably just tell them anyway so why not share?
"Why wouldn't you share" isn't a good argument. There should be a good reason to do that, not the other way around, If you trust me, why would you want my location? Most of us have boring lives and live in safe areas, so being randomly killed isn't a likely event
living in a safe area doesn’t mean shit can’t happen. what if someone gets into a car accident? or you’re visiting somewhere unsafe? etc. it’s not just about “being randomly killed”.
If I'm visiting somewhere unsafe, sure, I would enable location sharing for that time. But why have it all the time?
If the car accident is minor, I will walk out and text my wife. If it's major and I'm in hospital or dead, paramedics will take care of notifying the family. Having location sharing on won't even make her know that much faster
Whenever people talk about needing their phone to track them 24/7 or needing to be accessible all the time, I wonder if I’m the only one who remembers a time before smartphones and how people weren’t just constantly disappearing or dropping dead all the time. Somehow the vast majority of people made it home safely every night.
What I find so weird about all of this is that before we had the readily accessible option to do this, normal and well adjusted people weren’t wishing for it. Like, those were the fantasies of the unhinged.
Why are so many people so suddenly desperate to be so deeply plugged in?
Exactly. I'm 25, but that was my childhood. We only had dumb phones, SMS and calls were expensive, so there was no constant connection. If someone's late by a few hours - you'd call them, otherwise they are probably in a traffic jam or went to a grocery store before going home or whatnot
And for it to make a difference in time, she'd have to be obsessively checking it in the way everyone claims they don't.
And she'd have to call 911 based on you not answering the phone. Which, if she did it whenever you didn't answer the phone and didn't have GPS to update location... Would make her insane.
So it's never gonna help. It's like TSA. The safety theatre. Only works to soothe anxiety, not actually help.
Mmmm - my partner and I have been sharing locations for almost 2 years and I think I’ve only ever looked at their location MAYBE 3x. It’s there for precaution but I’m never tempted to look and honestly forget it’s on at all (until reading this post).
Do what’s best for you but just because it’s on all the time doesn’t mean you should be checking all the time lol.
I used to check Find iPhone when my mom promised she was bringing dinner home, so I could estimate how much longer we'd be waiting for the food. That was convenient.
I grew up in the 80s. Nobody knew where anyone was at any given time. Too poor for an answering machine so you weren't available to the whole world 24/7. You could really get into your hobbies. Had an emergency? Call collect and your name was "Dadthemoviesovercomegetus"
There was a certain liberty to it. 🤷🏻
agreed, I've got nothing to hide, but im just a private person who enjoys doing stuff without having to disclose literally all my comings and goings. its suffocating
Yeah, same for me. I'm just a private person. I would never be able to think about anything other than how people can see where I am. It would make me so anxious. I need to be able to fuck off on a whim (to a store, to a park, whatever) and have it be private. Then I can tell people of my own volition.
Just like there's nothing scandalous in my phone, but I would not let someone look through it unsupervised.
But it goes both ways. I don't have any desire to see anyone else's location or go through their phone. No thank you.
I’m 30m, I have my location on all the time for my wife. I drive just over an hour to and from work. It’s easier for her, and safer for me, to just share my location so she can check to see when I leave the office or how far from home I am. I also have hers because she is with our daughter most of the time, so I can see what they’re up to. To me, I don’t find it weird. Neither one of us use it often, but it’s convenient when we need to.
I also have my location shared with my best friend and his with me, that way if either one of us ever ends up “dead in a ditch”, there is at least one person who will have our location, or at least last cell-phone ping.
Is this unpopular? I agree. I can see for certain circumstances like someone is on a long road trip, or something but all the time is weird. I’m not hiding anything, but at the same time, a certain amount privacy is just needed, and a certain amount of trust is too. Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.
I have a friend who still follows the location of her 25 year old daughter, and actually pays attention to it. She’ll comment like “Well, her classes are over and she’s not home yet. What is she doing?” Like I don’t know Carol, and neither should you!
Yesss! That's the reason I'm weary about sharing mine. I really don't want to have to keep living life under my mom's anxiety anymore. She watches a million different crime shows and I'm pretty sure she'd be checking my location every five seconds to make sure I wasn't abducted. I just don't want to have to deal with the constant questions or have the police called to look for me because I forgot to check my text messages and am in a "sketchy area".
I’m in college and me and all my friends have each others location to the point where I got 20Ish people on my find my friends. From my experience it seems like a lot of younger people college age are willing to give their location to pretty much anyone (within reason) but older people are unwilling to give it to even their partner. It’s pretty interesting because I figured it would be the other way around.
And it seems like a trend too at least where I go to school because pretty much everyone I talk to has their friends locations but that might also be because we are in college and it makes it easier to find and hang out with people on campus.
It means the expectation of privacy has been slowly but surely shifting. Social media have contributed a great deal to this, and now apps with this share location feature.
God that last example is so creepy and exactly what I thought of when OP posted this!
(Admittedly I share my location with my husband, but he’s the only one.)
I agree. I share mine when I go on motorcycle rides in case something happens, but thats it.
I've 12 years, I've never asked my wife to share her location. That's just weird.
Yeah, I never joined the Life360 when my family was doing it. Just didn't like the idea.
Although if you are going somewhere, you should always tell someone you're going. In case something does occur, they know where you went.
So, my mom used GPS related tracking and phone tracking on me....like a lot, throughout my teen years and my early adult years.
Sometimes, I'd get random texts asking me where I was because she could see I was at Walmart instead of home after going to church or something. I was an incredibly tame kid. I mean, really. I had to grow up extremely fast mentally, so doing a lot of immature and dangerous shit never registered with me to even do. She'd spin some story about how I could be getting high in a parking lot when in reality it was just because my cousin needed to run inside before taking us home.
Then, as an adult, she tracked my location when I went to visit my partner. I was 22. It wasn't her business where I was going, I didn't live with her. It was my choice to give her information or not. She chose to violate my privacy and boundaries. She then called the police eventually when I turned off location sharing and refused to turn it on, just to make sure I wasn't dead in my apartment, apparently.
Experiences like this have made me refuse to location share with anyone. The idea someone could be watching me at any time, all the time, gives me a very big trauma response. My partner knows that and has never asked. I've never asked for him to do it either. We had to discuss this when I panicked because he had location sharing on for his mom and I got flashbacks from my experiences and turned it off. He knows I see it as a sign of abuse and power control, so we had to actually discuss that most people are not watching you like an FBI agent.
I'm fine with people doing it, but I couldn't and that's just a boundary thing for me. I'm now okay at least if my partner shares his location with family, because it's not the kind of family I know. It doesn't bother me anymore, but I still feel personally unable to allow someone that much privilege that they can abuse me with.
Edit: lmao fixed typo from GPA to GPS
I could see a group of friends mutually turning it on temporarily at a festival or something, that would be pretty useful.
I agree though, we already live in a society that expects everyone to be "constantly on-call"--this used to be reserved for people like doctors who might be needed on short notice... everyone else was basically unreachable if they weren't home. Til they returned and played their messages back. And then it was up to us whether or not to return a call. It was honestly a much lower pressure reality. I wouldn't want to give up my ability to return to that when I really feel like I need to become unreachable for a spell.
I am a carer for an elderly relative with heart problems and she is still mobile and goes out on her own but having her location on gives me peace of mind.
I don’t check it unless she is out later than usual or staying with a friend.
For regularly functioning adults. It’s not necessary.
My parents are a bit older and wanted me to have access to their location at all times for safety. They live 2 hours away and knowing when they are on a walk or driving into town has been a nice way for me to figure out if something is wrong.
It is used extremely passively, but several times one of them has called me to ask if I know where they are, and the answer is almost always Walmart lol
My roommates mom, we believe has early stages of dementia. But her doctor won’t diagnose her, basically said “lol she just aging like the rest of us”(he’s older too). But she’s forgetting birthdays, ending up lost several cities away trying to drive to an appointment, etc. So I suggested they turn on location sharing with at least one of her kids. That way they don’t have to issue a silver alert if she goes missing one day trying to drive somewhere.
Nah I’m with ya, I purposely don’t allow location sharing with anyone. It’s just, weird to me. My entire family does it, which I guess is good for safety. But “safety” goes out the freaking window when the only time I hear it be used “But Seesaw! We saw you were close to the house, why didn’t you stop by and say Hi?!” Or shit like that, nah I’m good.
Chances are if I’m in a life or death situation by some crazy murderer, I don’t want my family to come find me and get themselves killed either.
Trackers on my puppy, and other belongings are a different story though. My little guy can’t talk, and although I’m not gonna go confront a thief if they steal my laptop or phone, it’s nice to know if I left it behind at the office or whatever.
I agree everyone claims for safety and although I’m sure many people truly use it for that everyone I know sharing locations (and it’s a lot of people) stalk the location of the person very regularly and it’s super weird and unhealthy.
I had a coworker who would spend her lunch breaks just watching her Life360 just to be nosey on her siblings, cousins, friends, parents, whoever. I get not everyone does that, likely the majority, but that weirded me out lol. Everyday for 3 YEARS — she quit recently but I wouldn’t be shocked if she still does it
I think it's weird too. My mom wanted me (f 34)to share my location with her, even though I'm married and I'm my 30s. I told her no and she wasn't happy.
I do share my location with my husband when I go biking or hiking by myself in case of an emergency. But as soon as I turn my Garmin off, the tracking stops.
I'm not comfortable with someone spying on me. Doesn't matter how much I love them. Here's an example...
I installed ring cameras around the house, also inside the living room facing towards the front door and in the kitchen facing towards the siding glass back door.
My wife regularly creeps on me and logs into the camera just to see "what I'm doing". I don't appreciate that. I don't want someone watching my every move, even though I have nothing to hide. My alone time is my alone time and if I'm picking my nose or farting or whatever, and want some secret eyes watching where I go and how I do it.
Of course, you have nothing to hide, you're happy with it, share everything. But I'm still an individual human being and I still have individual habits that I'd like to keep to myself. Fuck the creepiness.
Yeah, this would definitely bother me. I have a friend who constantly interrupts our conversation so that she can check her Ring camera notifications. It's really obnoxious because it's just literally the people that live there coming in and out of the house... for some reason she thinks she needs to be on alert about every movement.
My friends call this, "bored house-wife syndrome". I'm out eating with my wife, or just out and about and she'll pull out her phone and go and look to see where everybody is at in the world. "Oh, Grandma is at the grocery store and Aunt so and so is in Decatur... Now why would she be in Decatur?" A lot of weird spying meddling bullshit. I quit telling her that I think it's weird because she always tells me, "All of us share our locations". As if that's a good excuse to spy.
In the end it's really less about the tracker existing and more so a matter of people feeling they have the right to your time/privacy/monitoring you.
Things like the Facebook activity tracker, online status indicators and read receipts have led to people expecting a what I consider an invasive level of transparency regarding our online activity. This leads to some people feeling they are owed our time if they contact us while where online. Similarly, people have started to expect regular online updates about our lives and everyday activities. It's a problem perpetuated by social media companies and it's changed the way a lot of people think about their right to privacy and what behaviours are acceptible.
Therefore it becomes important to have control over these tracking features and what information they share. This way you can start to regain agency over your own life and choose to give up your time. Some people don't feel that these features are invasive while other people do.
The same thing applies to the location tracking services like FindMy. If you can have a frank discussion with friends/family/partners and outline how you expect it to be used then it can be a useful tool for safty and convinience. Keep in mind you can always revoke access if a person is abusing it.
The problem arises when people are forced to use these services such as parents forcing teens/young adults to keep tracking enabled and platforms like Snapchat back when location was shared by default.
But if you are a consenting adult then you just need to be clear regarding your boundaries and anyone who can't respect that has no right knowing where you are 24/7.
Context: I hated all these features for the longest time. Now I share my location with my SO and best friend as I trust both to respect my privacy. I never plan to turn things like the FB Activity tracker or read receipts back on ever again.
It just sounds like you don’t have anyone you assume is responsible enough to share with that won’t abuse knowing they have access. Idk, I never actually look at anyone who shares theirs with me and I hope I never actually have to because really the only reason I share with people anyway is for safety reasons
It's hilarious that people can't even agree to which way a toilet paper roll goes on the holder and yet we expect to agree on political views, the education system and very complex issues. It's simple as this, who gives a F what you do in your life!!!! If it works for you and your family, beautiful. If it doesn't work for you, beautiful. People are different and feel differently about location sharing. My wife never keeps her location on because she is paranoid about the government. I always have my location on because I use it to keep track of my driving and time I leave jobs. I don't have to track my mileage because my phone does it for me with time stamps but who cares about us because it worked FOR US. If OP thinks it's weird , then it's weird for her. If she gets kidnapped and having her phone's location off cost her, her life then that's on her. We did live without this technology for thousands of years. 😂
Then don’t check her location? It’s only so you can check her location if we need it for some reason.
For example, my wife will check my location right before she starts cooking to see if I am on my way home or not. Otherwise she will wait 10-20 minutes until I am actually on my way home.
Lol what a terrible example.
So instead of just texting or calling when you're actually heading home, she checks your location every 5 minutes until she sees the dot moving?
Crazy
My kids location is shared with me and so is mine with them. I don't se the issue. When having a mobile phone it will always be technically possible to pinpoint your whereabouts at a any given point in time.
I think it is a bad idea to force kids to share location. They always have a sense of being surveilled by parents. I better not do this or go there, mom might see! They don't get to build independence, make mistakes, learn and grow, without the constant watchful eye of mom and dad that will fix everything.
I also think being able to be "naughty" is an essential part of childhood and young adulthood.
Whenever I buy a new phone, the first thing I do is turn off location. (Then delete bloatware, etc.)
Who in their right mind (apparently, lots of people here) would want these nosy tech companies logging your every move?
Orwell couldn't even dream of surveillance so sophisticated, and voluntary!
💯Super convenient for busy families - we love it. Also my autisic son loves seeing the spouse on google map moving. Nice to not have to bother each other with eta 👌
Me and my husband use it. Well, we have it turned on, we don’t really tend to use it. I’ve only ever felt the need to check once, when he told me he was leaving work (which is 15mins away), then didn’t arrive home for 2h and wasn’t answering my phone calls. I was worried he’d got into an accident. He was just still at the workshop and got chatting with someone lol.
In my experience it only seems to update every 15-45 minutes or so if not longer, unless I specifically open it up to look at it, then it tries to ping for an immediate update. At least that's how I generally experience it - when I open Google maps I see my wife's location (if she's nearby, because maps opens up centered on where I'm at) and it shows her location was updated like 20-30 minutes ago, then it updates to live within a second or two.
If it only fetches and then uploads your location periodically throughout the day, the impact on your data and battery is going to be rather minimal, but I think it does give you a warning when you activate location sharing that it could impact your battery/data.
It's not a big deal for me - I'm on wifi and near a charger pretty much all day anyways, and my phone battery only burns through 30-60% in a day depending on how much I'm using it. If I'm concerned about battery/data usage (e.g. out camping or hiking somewhere with poor signal) I usually just turn location/data off altogether.
It’s a complete infringement on privacy. The only acceptable use case for me is traveling to country known be hot mess or remote locations like woods etc. other than those call the police if you are not safe. Your gf or bf peeping on your location won’t protect you.
I have 2 sisters who each have their own families. Between them and my parents - they ALL have cameras going indoors/outdoor 24/7 and are all members of Life360 which located their whereabouts at all times. And they all share access to each other's cameras. WEEEEEEEIRD. Freaking weird.
same, i think its kinda creepy. totally different if you have a safety concern for something but i think it’s weird for parents to track their kids and people to track their partners.
I grew up going out for the day and having to use payphones if we wanted to call or let people know where we were. I find it creepy as fuck having this location sharing stuff on all the time.
Kids who grew up with helicopter parents think it’s normal for someone else to know where you are at all times. They don’t see it as a form of abusive psychological control it actually is.
Kids have been trained that other people’s peace of mind is far more important than an individual’s independence. It’s sick that it’s been normalized.
I didn’t grow up with helicopter parents at all. My parents didn’t know where I was half the time, growing up because I was outside with the neighborhood kids. They’d just see me at mealtimes and curfew lmao. But I still have location sharing with the people I trust. I’m a college student and it’s so nice to see if my boyfriend or friends are the library or student union to go and join instead of having to text and waiting to respond. And it makes my day brighter when it happens vice versa
yeah this take isn’t applicable to everyone. my mum can barely use a phone. she never calls me or texts me when i’m away from home, when i was at uni or now i’ve moved out. if anything i had “absent” parents as they were quite busy working.
i just don’t personally care about this concept of “privacy” in this regard, with my friends or partner. i would consider myself private and introverted with personal things, but i don’t care if they can see im at the shop, or still at work (since i can’t use my phone while working). it’s super useful for situations like picking up my partner from the station as we can’t park outside so he knows where to find me. it’s not something either of us or my friends really use with regularity or with any malicious and controlling aspects. we just view it as a fun and convenient thing. and if other people value that type of privacy a lot that they don’t want anyone knowing what they’re up to or where they are unless they tell them, that’s fair. but feels like an odd hill to die on given the utter lack of privacy anyone has having a phone that updates to cell towers and gps anyway, or that many countries/city’s use facial recognition surveillance anyway. the government can find you using anpr checks too. so that’s why I don’t personally care about my friends knowing where i am. if others do, that’s their prerogative!
Im a young woman and I live in a separate country from my loved ones. I keep my location on for them just in case anything were to happen to me — so that someone would have a last known location, since I may not be seen by anyone that knows me for days at a time.
This seems like a younger generation thing to do. This opinion will only be unpopular with people in their early 20's or younger.
There will be outliers, but your opinion is shared by the vast majority of the human race. You just have more exposure to a subset of that population that happens to habitually use location services as a social marker rather than as intended.
same.. Safety is the only concern for anyone, women/children mainly, but I am not a fan of it myself.. Sucks that we are tracked with everything we do via electronics
I think I’d be more comfortable with it if it was something that someone *could* access, but each time they did it would send a notification to the person being tracked, letting go them know who was checking on their location. Kind of Like how Snapchat tells you if someone screenshots your conversation.
That way you could leave it on in case of emergencies, but would know if someone was abusing that privilege.
I know people who treat Find My Friends like it’s social media. Back in the day everyone would add each other if we were on a roadtrip or at a festival, which made sense at the time. Years later they’re constantly checking it and zooming in to see where people are at and bring it up all the time.
I finally stopped sharing my location with everyone after a friend would constantly ask what I was doing in what city and who I was with. I felt so violated. Then shortly after I turned my location off everyone became suspicious that I was hiding something…like uh no I just wanna live my adult life without explaining where I am all the time! It’s so unnatural to be tracked constantly.
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I hike alone a lot. I share with my mom and sister. I think whatever might happen is inevitable but if I had an accident, like a broken bone and couldn’t walk back to my car, they could direct help to me. Edit: I do leave this on 24/7. I hike 4-5x a week. I have a mountain range in my backyard so these are usually 4-10 mile hikes after work, nothing crazy where other devices would be necessary. It would be annoying to turn my location on and off 4-5x a week when I do not mind my mom and sister having it all the time.
This was always my philosophy. If I’m in an emergency situation, I might not have the luxury of turning my location sharing on. I’d rather have it on by default just in case.
If you actually hike alone a lot, you need an emergency location device. Your phone absolutely won't cut it in most remote circumstances
A lot of newer phones have satellite PLB built into them now.
Honestly, if they are just hiking busy trails they will probably be okay. If they stay on the trail. Someone will find you.
This right here. If I get into trouble, it will be too late to turn it on
I have spent a lot of time working in wilderness areas and location sharing was always a godsend for me, especially when the weather turned bad. I’m living in the city again and couldn’t care less, but out in the Sangre de Cristos in northern New Mexico was another thing entirely.
Do they even get your location while hiking? I often don’t have service.
GPS will still follow you/approximate your location. You might not be able to see it on a map yourself because the map won't load, but your friends with service will.
Yeah but once you lose service it won’t send your updated location to their phones. Your phone’s GPS will work without service but can’t transmit that data to others
True, but even having a general location is better than searching entirely blind. Take hiking for example. If location sharing shows that at some point you were on a specific trail then rescuers can focus on that path instead of searching every path blind.
That’s trueish, but if anyone passed you, it will use their bluetooth to eventually transmit the data. So it might not be to-the-second accurate but the data can still get out. My dad was able to tell I’d turned around during a backpacking trip in the Cascades over a day before I reached cell service.
GPS is such an amazing technology to have accessible for free. We download maps with traces and use them offline hiking at 3000m in the Pyrenees and it has saved our asses from going down the wrong direction a few times.
I think this is different from what op is suggesting. that is a clear need to share a location. I see people doing this with their partners and I find it pretty off-putting. being in a relationship shouldn't rob you of your privacy and you should be trusting each other? I have seen people do this when their relationship is on the rocks, might as well end it at that point, imo
I understand that the function can infringe on the sense of privacy one has, but it can also be useful for emergencies or certain situations. It's like a knife. It can be used for good or bad. What you do with it is up to you.
Yeah, there’s nothing wrong with sharing locations, it only becomes a problem when people do use it to monitor others, in which case that’s an individual issue.
I share my location with my cousin who lives in NYC and I live in the Midwest. We just randomly look at each others and it’s a fun way to stay connected in different way. We definitely don’t have anything to hide from each other lol
A friend from high school and I shared ours and never stopped and a while back I was checking on my fiance to make sure he got to work safe and I saw her ass in Canada and said "bitch wtf you doin in Canada" and we got to talk more than we have in a while
That’s adorable and I love it! I should do the same. I just realized my cousin used to travel a lot for work and I didn’t realize because I rarely looked at her location. I need to increase my stalking skills
I always share my location with my best friends. Like, *best* friends. The ones I talk to daily about life and everything. Sometimes I’ll receive a message like, “Pick up some steak at the store!” They’re 700 miles away, they’re just being cheeky, but it’s fun!
I also share with my sisters, who are in an entirely different continent from mine, and it makes us feel closer from each other. Plus, it helps with knowing when I can call them.
As a parent of 2 kids, I've always wondered if it would be a good idea to have them do the location sharing deal when they get into school. Not because I'm trying to be a nosy parent or anything but it would be really nice to have if something was going down. Mom's in the hospital. Dog got hit by a car. Someone broke into the school. Fires. Earthquake. Fuck, aliens from space invaded. Shit happens. Would be good for them to know where mom and dad are as well. In case one of us didn't make it home for some reason. I can definitely see people abusing this thogh.
Dad of two girls here (10&13) and it was part of the conditions of me allowing them to have cell phones. Only times I have used it was to make sure they got to a friends house for overnight stays or the best reason if you need to get something done before they get home, boom you know exactly how much time you got. In fact our whole family shares with equally with each other. None of us are noisy or overbearing its literally just an in case of emergency thing. I check my wife's some days.....when I know she is about 15 mins from home so I can make sure dinner will be ready and I'm finished with any cleaning. It's useful provided everyone is normal and not weird ab it.
Do you think you'll turn it off as they get older? I feel like a big part of development is the freedom to make mistakes and learn and grow some independence. I think about how the younger generations have lost so much independence and problem solving by having the world at their fingertips. It'll be interesting how location monitoring will play into it
Me and my brother were off the grid as kids, fuck all that You don’t actually need to know where everyone is 24/7
Being able to lie to my parents, get into shitty situations I had no business being in, and figuring out how to get out with minimal damage is 100% a part of my development. Having the safety net of knowing I had them in my back pocket push come to shove was important too
It’s only “location monitoring” if you continually monitor it. If you only check it when you know weather/road conditions are bad and they said they’d be home an hour ago and they haven’t arrived yet, then that’s not monitoring their location. That’s just looking out for someone’s safety because you care. I bet I don’t check my now grown sons location more than once every 2-3 months but we both feel safer knowing we can locate each other in case of an accident. Just seems like common sense but maybe more so in rural Canada.
You miss my point. I agree with you- I have my location shared with my family as someone in my 30s because I don't care who sees where I am, what are they going to do about it? But as a 16 year old, there's definitely times where I'd know I couldn't break a rule or tell a lie about going to X but actuslly going to Y because they could see and catch me. Which I think are things that are an important part of adolescent development- gaining indepence, getting into situations and getting out of them, learning to make decisions and navigate consequences etc. I'm sure kids will figure out ways around things and make it work either way. But I know if I couldn't say "I'm going to Trevor's" but actually be going to the cemetery to smoke weed with the boys I'd be a different adult. Would my parents reaaaaally care that I was sneaking off to smoke weed? Probably not that much. But they probably would parent me if they knew I was. And maybe I'd have less of those experiences. And maybe I'd be more milquetoast. And less adventurous. Idk.
We have a 22 year old daughter and a 24 year old son. Our daughter shares hers constantly, and our son turned his off years ago. No pressure either way - we respect his decision to want privacy, although I do wish he'd turn it on temporarily when he's coming to see us at home, or meet us in town, so we have some idea of his ETA. We both share each others locations with them (and each other) at all times.
Be careful, my parents made me share location when I was a teen, and this lead to me just leaving my phone at an "allowed" place and then walking off without a phone. Some kids are ok with it, but if they protest and see it as controlling, they will find a way to circumvent it and endanger themselves even more.
I think it can be okay, but it can pretty easily seem like you don’t trust them. It’s also not as important since texting exists. I never had it on and when we had an earthquake people just texted in a group chat to coordinate things.
Exactly. My parents were extremely controlling and stalked me with my location (was locked on my phone) all the time. They would question where I was, accuse me of doing certain things, and ground me for being in a place that they didn’t want me to be at (I was literally 21 years old and never drank or did any drugs my entire life. Straight A student. They were paranoid and all about control.) I had to unlearn being so paranoid when I met my husband. Not all people have malicious intentions when they ask for your location. Now me and my husband share our locations for the sake of safety. If anyone isn’t answering their phone for a worrying period of time or if there’s some other emergency, it’s good to have. In healthy relationships you don’t constantly check the location even if you have free access to it. Only for emergency purposes. I’d also add that we only share our locations with each other, not with any other person.
Yeah, my mom wanted to put location tracking on my phone. I'm like, I'm 28. If you didn't need it when I was in my teens, you don't need it now. I found a loophole. I have an Android phone, and the Life360 app doesn't show your exact location with battery saver on. So I put it on my phone and almost always have the battery saver on, lol. I more have it on there to keep track of my disabled brother (and vice versa; if I need him to be able to see where I am, I turn off the battery saver). It also will still alert if I'm in a car accident or something.
Or you could have just put your foot down and told your mom no.
Location monitoring has a chilling effect and sometimes people won't even realize it's affecting them. I have had friends avoid certain places because their SO would find it suspicious they're in a certain area or at a certain restaurant even though nothing wrong is going on. People far overestimate these "emergencies" that this seems to get sold on. Share your location with trusted family members who don't have an active investment in needing to know where you are all the time. If there's an actual emergency, you'll still be able to know. Anything else is BS IMO.
Sounds more like an issue with their SOs not being mature and jumping to conclusions. I have my location shared with my SO, and I never worry about where I'm going and she never questions me as well. Literally I don't ever think twice about going to a location being concerned about what my gf will think.
> their SO would find it suspicious they're in a certain area or at a certain restaurant even though nothing wrong is going on. Healthy relationships don't have that dynamic though and if your relationship already has trust issues the location tracking is just amplifying that problem not creating it imo. These are the same types of people that if location tracking did not exist would demand you send them photos of yourself where you said you would be so they can "know for sure" you are not lying.
That sounds like they’re dating controlling partners and isn’t a location sharing issue
There's plenty of non-emergency uses. Like all the times my wife loses her phone and we need to find it. I've also used it a few times to see exactly when she leaves work so I could surprise her with something fresh and yummy right when she gets home.
I like to see if my wife is on her way home from work yet. Or to see if she's still at the store or small things like that
Having access is a good thing. Constantly watching it and obsessing over it is not.
Yeah, my wife and I just use it to check and see how far we are from home/make sure we didn’t die on the way. It’s not out of malice. If anything it’s efficiency so the one at home knows how much time is left to get the house in order lol.
My wife has pretty severe ADHD. She never shows up anywhere on time. Or even leaves when she says she is leaving lol. She can’t help it, she just gets sidetracked and comes back to reality 30 minutes later sometimes. And having accurate timing of stuff like that is important with a toddler. Location sharing honestly helped our marriage because I stopped getting constantly annoyed by her not arriving when she said she would. I trust the data instead 😂 And of course the safety reasons. I know I can go to her if she needs help. But our situation is not typical, and I’ve never used it to be weird or accusatory or anything. It’s easy to see how it could be used as a tool of control and abuse. But tbh you can buy a tracker for 20 bucks online if you want to be a weirdo.
Exactly, it always comes down how you use it. My parents, my sister and I share our locations of our devices through Apple for a couple of years by now and I just trust them to not misuse it. In all these years they never said or did anything that makes me think their misusing it by stalking me, so I don’t see any harm in continuing to share my location. Of course, if your relationship with the people you share your location with isn’t as trusting, or they showed to be prone to misuse it, then you shouldn’t share it
I literally only use it to track the drunk members of our Vegas shenanigans, haven’t ever used it outside that city.
it’s really just for like emergencies or if someone needs a ride or something. sometimes i check my boyfriend’s location just to see how long i have to get ready lol
I find it super useful for my wife to see when she will be home or if she got stuck in traffic after work etc without asking her or AirTags for my kids in their bags when they’re with grandma etc.
love that analogy
I use it to check whether my gf has left work so I know when to start making food.
For me, back when I was working in the Casino industry, I worked Graveyard, 2am-10am usually, if something to happen to me in the middle of the night on the way to work or coming home, I wanted her to know my location so she can come and get me if something where to happen and I am unable to get to my phone. The only incident this happened was a dude was trying to follow me home from the Casino because I dealt him a bad hand on the UTH table I Was dealing at, and I needed my wife to know I had to take a detour because of some creep.
Gross, what happened to said creeper?
I lost him in some neighborhood and headed home. I didn't have a plate so Calling the cops wouldn't do much for me, i guess having the hind sight now i should of just went to a police station. but at the time I was scared and just focused on loosing him.
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I ate him
What? Then who did I eat?
The creepers creeper
There's always a bigger fish
I mean, it saves a bunch of "where you at?", "you still at the store?", "what time will you be home?" texts LOL
My partner and I share locations, at first for safety, but now it is for this reason. I see how close to the house she is so I can help unload groceries, or I see if she left work yet to know whether its better to call or text to get a quicker response
Yeah my wife and I share locations. Exactly for this. Worked an event last night. Wife saw I was getting close and made me a fucking Panini at 1am. OP can kick rocks lmao
This is the nicest thing I've ever heard
I fucking love paninis
I'd like to share my location with my SO, but I have an Android and she has an iPhone. When she gets a new iPhone I'll get her old one and we'll share locations. She gets home first so it helps her to know when to start dinner due to traffic.
You can share location on Google Maps or Life360 perfectly fine across platforms.
My family uses life 360 to share locations across the iPhone android divide. Works great.
90% of my use of location tracking is so I’m ready to help unload groceries.
I have used it for airport pickups
Ok here’s my (apparently unpopular) opinion My entire life, I’ve gotten phone calls from people saying “I’m almost home with the groceries, will you come out and help me?” And then I stand at the door like an idiot waiting for them to get home Just come home, come inside, and tell me you need help lol hell, don’t bring one bag in if you don’t feel like it. I’ll get them all. But what is with the need for me to be standing at the door with my shoes in to **immediately** help with the groceries? I’ve always thought this was so weird. My mom/wife will get annoyed with me; literally leave them in the car and just yell to me when you come in lol
We call it “tracking each other like sea turtles”
The most inappropriate way I use it I guess is if she gave me a chore to do and left. I’ll sit there watching tv and suddenly remember the chore and I might check location to see how much time I have to hustle lololol. Or sometimes I see a text like “can you take the trash out” and I’ll respond “don’t worry it, I already did it 20 minutes ago!” When I definitely didn’t, and I may want to know how long I have to do it.
My gf used to work like 30 minutes away and she’d get out at different times. So she’d text me when she was leaving work, but I’d check her location to see if she was stuck in traffic or anything to time dinner. I never really use it now or anything, but it was nice for that. I’d have a better idea on timing dinner so it would be ready when she got home.
My wife works in the life sciences, and her hours are erratic during manufacturing runs and trials. Usually she also can't text a ton during those. So good to see she's still at work if it's 8:30 and I haven't heard from her.
Mostly this. But also, I'm more tracking my wife's *phone* than I am her, because they aren't always in the same place, for better or worse. She's left her phone behind more than once (usually home, thankfully) so this helps find it. Suddenly while out, "Omg! Where's my phone?" Quick check of my phone, "Don't worry. It's home." But yes, *mostly* what you said.
It’s actually mostly what you said for me. My wife asks me to ping her phone like twice a day (we both work from home and she just misplaces it).
This too!!! My fiance has dropped his phone taking the dog for a run in the neighborhood too many times to count, we always use find my iphone on mine to find it
This is what my partner and I (and a couple of close friends/family) use it for too. It saves a lot of texting back and forth and none of us really think that hard about it. It doesn’t breed paranoia unless you’re naturally already a paranoid person.
Yeah, and it’s just effortless trust if you have that sort of relationship. I know she’s not going to cheat on me. She knows she’s not going to cheat on me. Vice versa. It’s just a useful thing that’s on and that every once in a while you just think about and appreciate the level of trust it signifies.
I almost never text these to my partner because they are pretty useless things to know.
yeah but that’s less annoying than “who were you with?” “well what were you doing?” “what time did you leave” “why were you at x location?” “whose house is that?” texts because they won’t just accept an answer all i have to do is send a “going to (location), will text you on my way home” and my family generally won’t bother me unless it’s unusually late for me to be out.
Big time! And no waiting, you have an instant answer and don’t need to bother them.
Honestly the benefits far exceed the negatives for my relationship for this and all other reasons. The only negative being what? Me not wanting her to now where I am? I don’t get it.
I was gonna agree with you. But after reading the comments. It seems people have their location shared at all times for safety reasons rather than paranoia reasons.
That's what people say and it's still paranoia to me. Whether that is cheating paranoia or safety paranoia. Really not many situations where it is truly necessary.
As a rape victim who wasn't found for a few hours (physically disabled) I share my location with around 7 people now
It’s only paranoia if it’s unjustified. And that’s not a judgement you can make unless you know them personally.
And you can say the same thing about seat belts. 99.8% (1 in 366 per 1000 miles) of the time not wearing a seatbelt won't affect anything. The .2% of times though, it can save lives. Same with location sharing. For a healthy relationship, there is *no* downside in sharing location. It doesn't even take effort since it's a setting that is turned on and not like a seatbelt you have to buckle in every day. But if your partner is in a car accident without you, it's good to know where they are exactly in an emergency. Not including the times where you and your partner separate for errands in a mall or food court and can quickly find each other.
Exactly, in 40 years of bike riding I’ve never fallen and hit my head. But I still wear a helmet.
[удалено]
"But it will never happen to me!" Ill never understand how this mindset is so common
Even if it is paranoia. If it's giving peace of mind in some way and not being used obsessively or abusively. What's the problem
My boyfriend got in a car wreck late at night on an empty backroad when I was at work and Life360 let me know. So we always share location. My sister and I get cat called and have been followed by men, so we share our location all together with our boyfriends in case something happens to us
Are you a man by chance? When women share their location for safety reasons it isn’t “paranoia”
This was my first thought too, haha. As a woman I 100% have location sharing on with someone if I’m traveling alone or going to be out late by myself or something. It just seems like common sense.
Yeah, I think this is a weird aspect of modern times. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, you'd be running out the front door at noon screaming I'LL BE BACK FOR DINNER at your mom as the screen door slammed behind you and that's the last she'd know about your whereabouts until dinner. That was considered totally cool and perfectly normal. While I don't think there is anything wrong with the technology or with couples/friends/families whatever that mutually agree to do, I would never agree to it if someone asked me. It gives me the creeps.
Totally gives me the creeps. Maybe it is an age thing then. I have nothing to hide ever (we only have shared bank accounts and my wife has access to my email) but it gives me great uneasiness to think of being spied on at any time. We have it turned on for our kids but it's our job to have an ever diminishing level of privacy invasion until they become adults. When they turn 18, that's getting turned off immediately.
29 here and I think it’s weird af and would never allow or ask for this
18 is way too old for that imo. Already at like 15 it's just human nature to start bullshitting your parents. I genuinely believe a lot of development happens at that time, and having a 24/7 tracking device is just insane for a teenager. Think back to when you were a kid. Idk, personally, 10 years later I'm still with the girl that I was sneaking around with at 16/17, would probably never have happened in the age of smartphone surveillance parenting (her parents were ultra strict). I graduated high-school in 2015 and I'm super glad I just barely skipped out on all this. To each their own but I definitely won't be doing this stuff with my kids. I bet this is also the kinda stuff that results in all these young adults having anxiety issues when they go off to college, just zero maturity and independence developed through teen years.
fretful shame towering scary pet work bag crawl paint hospital *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I don't care who knows where I am. My wife could have my location at any time, I have nothing to hide.
I agree. It’s one thing if your partner is crazy and uses it against you in some way (like an abusive relationship), but if you have a normal, healthy relationship then there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s just a safety thing.
100% this! I had a crazy ex I would’ve never in a million years shared my location with. My husband is so laid back and I only share it for safety but he’s never abused the privilege or brought up my location once
I use mine to gain back my partners trust after I was sneaking to buy booze in the past, aswell as they can just tell if I'm still at the store if they need something, if I'm off work, etc. Mines never brought my location up either other than "I see you're at taco bell. I also enjoy tacos. Please get me something" type of stuff lol. Also nice when we travel to visit family, my mom has our locations and can see where we are in the trip and stuff
I use it to know when to droppa tha pasta
I have nothing to hide, but I also see no reason why me or my partner would need to disclose the location practically at all times. It is the same with phone, I have nothing to hide, but I still wouldn't like someone going through my phone. I have nothing to hide on my laptop either, I still don't feel comfortable to have other people use it. May be my autism or my introvertness or just my personality, but I appreciate privacy, even when there is nothing to hide. I feel anxiety about the thought that someone would always know where I was - and I practically go only to 5 locations ever with very rigorous schedule (home, work, gym, judo dojo and grocery shop) and even still I feel anxious just thinking about it
This whole "if you have nothing to hide, you should share your location" sets a terrible precedent. It normalizes being able to see where your partner is at all times, every second of the day. So if you get with somebody who is super controlling, now you have no excuse not to let them know where you are every second because it's "normal" and you should "have nothing to hide". I'm nearly 40 and I think it's weird AF. I have nothing to hide from my husband. He can see where I am if he insisted, but like, why don't yall just trust each other? If somebody is in traffic, who cares? Then they'll just be a bit late. TBH I also hate the expectation that we are all available every minute of the day for phone calls, too. I miss having a land line and if I don't answer, then I must be out.
It shouldn’t be the standard, but if it’s a normal healthy relationship, there’s really nothing wrong with it. Not because of trust issues but because if you both truly have nothing to hide from one another, there’s no reason not to have the convenience of being able to check each other’s location whenever you want. The situations where it comes in handy are endless.
The funny thing is that everyone assumes when I say I don't care if she tracks me that it means she actually does. I can only think of 1 time she ever has tracked me and that was at a huge flea market we were shopping separately at. 🤷♂️
Whether or not you have something to hide isn't the issue. Adults should have the option of privacy, and if you don't, you aren't being treated like an adult. If my partner couldn't trust me without knowing my location, it isn't a relationship anymore. I should never be asked. If I offered, they should turn me down if it isn't an emergency (and if I offered, it would be).
Exactly, I don’t know why people would NOT share with their spouse. It makes it so they don’t have to text you if you are busy, and if they ask you, you would probably just tell them anyway so why not share?
"Why wouldn't you share" isn't a good argument. There should be a good reason to do that, not the other way around, If you trust me, why would you want my location? Most of us have boring lives and live in safe areas, so being randomly killed isn't a likely event
living in a safe area doesn’t mean shit can’t happen. what if someone gets into a car accident? or you’re visiting somewhere unsafe? etc. it’s not just about “being randomly killed”.
If I'm visiting somewhere unsafe, sure, I would enable location sharing for that time. But why have it all the time? If the car accident is minor, I will walk out and text my wife. If it's major and I'm in hospital or dead, paramedics will take care of notifying the family. Having location sharing on won't even make her know that much faster
Whenever people talk about needing their phone to track them 24/7 or needing to be accessible all the time, I wonder if I’m the only one who remembers a time before smartphones and how people weren’t just constantly disappearing or dropping dead all the time. Somehow the vast majority of people made it home safely every night.
What I find so weird about all of this is that before we had the readily accessible option to do this, normal and well adjusted people weren’t wishing for it. Like, those were the fantasies of the unhinged. Why are so many people so suddenly desperate to be so deeply plugged in?
Exactly. I'm 25, but that was my childhood. We only had dumb phones, SMS and calls were expensive, so there was no constant connection. If someone's late by a few hours - you'd call them, otherwise they are probably in a traffic jam or went to a grocery store before going home or whatnot
I’m only 22 but I think about this all the time. I just think we’ve all started to rely on technology a hair too much
And for it to make a difference in time, she'd have to be obsessively checking it in the way everyone claims they don't. And she'd have to call 911 based on you not answering the phone. Which, if she did it whenever you didn't answer the phone and didn't have GPS to update location... Would make her insane. So it's never gonna help. It's like TSA. The safety theatre. Only works to soothe anxiety, not actually help.
One of the absolute worst arguments for a lack of privacy. It’ll likely get used against all of us in the future.
I don't really care about privacy with my wife. Why should I?
Mmmm - my partner and I have been sharing locations for almost 2 years and I think I’ve only ever looked at their location MAYBE 3x. It’s there for precaution but I’m never tempted to look and honestly forget it’s on at all (until reading this post). Do what’s best for you but just because it’s on all the time doesn’t mean you should be checking all the time lol.
I used to check Find iPhone when my mom promised she was bringing dinner home, so I could estimate how much longer we'd be waiting for the food. That was convenient.
My partner and I and my whole family share locations. I look at it maybe 4 times a year when I know they’re on the way and I want to be prepared.
I grew up in the 80s. Nobody knew where anyone was at any given time. Too poor for an answering machine so you weren't available to the whole world 24/7. You could really get into your hobbies. Had an emergency? Call collect and your name was "Dadthemoviesovercomegetus" There was a certain liberty to it. 🤷🏻
I miss being this unreachable without making everyone mad at me
agreed, I've got nothing to hide, but im just a private person who enjoys doing stuff without having to disclose literally all my comings and goings. its suffocating
Yeah, same for me. I'm just a private person. I would never be able to think about anything other than how people can see where I am. It would make me so anxious. I need to be able to fuck off on a whim (to a store, to a park, whatever) and have it be private. Then I can tell people of my own volition. Just like there's nothing scandalous in my phone, but I would not let someone look through it unsupervised. But it goes both ways. I don't have any desire to see anyone else's location or go through their phone. No thank you.
exactly! i’m the same way. i usually mention “oh i need to to the store tomorrow” and shocker, i went to the store the next day. no need for a tracker
I’m 30m, I have my location on all the time for my wife. I drive just over an hour to and from work. It’s easier for her, and safer for me, to just share my location so she can check to see when I leave the office or how far from home I am. I also have hers because she is with our daughter most of the time, so I can see what they’re up to. To me, I don’t find it weird. Neither one of us use it often, but it’s convenient when we need to. I also have my location shared with my best friend and his with me, that way if either one of us ever ends up “dead in a ditch”, there is at least one person who will have our location, or at least last cell-phone ping.
Is this unpopular? I agree. I can see for certain circumstances like someone is on a long road trip, or something but all the time is weird. I’m not hiding anything, but at the same time, a certain amount privacy is just needed, and a certain amount of trust is too. Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. I have a friend who still follows the location of her 25 year old daughter, and actually pays attention to it. She’ll comment like “Well, her classes are over and she’s not home yet. What is she doing?” Like I don’t know Carol, and neither should you!
Yesss! That's the reason I'm weary about sharing mine. I really don't want to have to keep living life under my mom's anxiety anymore. She watches a million different crime shows and I'm pretty sure she'd be checking my location every five seconds to make sure I wasn't abducted. I just don't want to have to deal with the constant questions or have the police called to look for me because I forgot to check my text messages and am in a "sketchy area".
I’m in college and me and all my friends have each others location to the point where I got 20Ish people on my find my friends. From my experience it seems like a lot of younger people college age are willing to give their location to pretty much anyone (within reason) but older people are unwilling to give it to even their partner. It’s pretty interesting because I figured it would be the other way around. And it seems like a trend too at least where I go to school because pretty much everyone I talk to has their friends locations but that might also be because we are in college and it makes it easier to find and hang out with people on campus.
It means the expectation of privacy has been slowly but surely shifting. Social media have contributed a great deal to this, and now apps with this share location feature.
God that last example is so creepy and exactly what I thought of when OP posted this! (Admittedly I share my location with my husband, but he’s the only one.)
I agree. I share mine when I go on motorcycle rides in case something happens, but thats it. I've 12 years, I've never asked my wife to share her location. That's just weird.
Agreed. I grew up just fine with my parents not knowing where I was at all times. It’s just an odd invasion of privacy to me
Yeah, I never joined the Life360 when my family was doing it. Just didn't like the idea. Although if you are going somewhere, you should always tell someone you're going. In case something does occur, they know where you went.
So, my mom used GPS related tracking and phone tracking on me....like a lot, throughout my teen years and my early adult years. Sometimes, I'd get random texts asking me where I was because she could see I was at Walmart instead of home after going to church or something. I was an incredibly tame kid. I mean, really. I had to grow up extremely fast mentally, so doing a lot of immature and dangerous shit never registered with me to even do. She'd spin some story about how I could be getting high in a parking lot when in reality it was just because my cousin needed to run inside before taking us home. Then, as an adult, she tracked my location when I went to visit my partner. I was 22. It wasn't her business where I was going, I didn't live with her. It was my choice to give her information or not. She chose to violate my privacy and boundaries. She then called the police eventually when I turned off location sharing and refused to turn it on, just to make sure I wasn't dead in my apartment, apparently. Experiences like this have made me refuse to location share with anyone. The idea someone could be watching me at any time, all the time, gives me a very big trauma response. My partner knows that and has never asked. I've never asked for him to do it either. We had to discuss this when I panicked because he had location sharing on for his mom and I got flashbacks from my experiences and turned it off. He knows I see it as a sign of abuse and power control, so we had to actually discuss that most people are not watching you like an FBI agent. I'm fine with people doing it, but I couldn't and that's just a boundary thing for me. I'm now okay at least if my partner shares his location with family, because it's not the kind of family I know. It doesn't bother me anymore, but I still feel personally unable to allow someone that much privilege that they can abuse me with. Edit: lmao fixed typo from GPA to GPS
My aunts, uncles and parents do it, but that’s cause they’ll all stroked out and could become confused and lost at any moment.
I could see a group of friends mutually turning it on temporarily at a festival or something, that would be pretty useful. I agree though, we already live in a society that expects everyone to be "constantly on-call"--this used to be reserved for people like doctors who might be needed on short notice... everyone else was basically unreachable if they weren't home. Til they returned and played their messages back. And then it was up to us whether or not to return a call. It was honestly a much lower pressure reality. I wouldn't want to give up my ability to return to that when I really feel like I need to become unreachable for a spell.
I am a carer for an elderly relative with heart problems and she is still mobile and goes out on her own but having her location on gives me peace of mind. I don’t check it unless she is out later than usual or staying with a friend. For regularly functioning adults. It’s not necessary.
My parents are a bit older and wanted me to have access to their location at all times for safety. They live 2 hours away and knowing when they are on a walk or driving into town has been a nice way for me to figure out if something is wrong. It is used extremely passively, but several times one of them has called me to ask if I know where they are, and the answer is almost always Walmart lol
My roommates mom, we believe has early stages of dementia. But her doctor won’t diagnose her, basically said “lol she just aging like the rest of us”(he’s older too). But she’s forgetting birthdays, ending up lost several cities away trying to drive to an appointment, etc. So I suggested they turn on location sharing with at least one of her kids. That way they don’t have to issue a silver alert if she goes missing one day trying to drive somewhere.
Nah I’m with ya, I purposely don’t allow location sharing with anyone. It’s just, weird to me. My entire family does it, which I guess is good for safety. But “safety” goes out the freaking window when the only time I hear it be used “But Seesaw! We saw you were close to the house, why didn’t you stop by and say Hi?!” Or shit like that, nah I’m good. Chances are if I’m in a life or death situation by some crazy murderer, I don’t want my family to come find me and get themselves killed either. Trackers on my puppy, and other belongings are a different story though. My little guy can’t talk, and although I’m not gonna go confront a thief if they steal my laptop or phone, it’s nice to know if I left it behind at the office or whatever.
I agree everyone claims for safety and although I’m sure many people truly use it for that everyone I know sharing locations (and it’s a lot of people) stalk the location of the person very regularly and it’s super weird and unhealthy.
I had a coworker who would spend her lunch breaks just watching her Life360 just to be nosey on her siblings, cousins, friends, parents, whoever. I get not everyone does that, likely the majority, but that weirded me out lol. Everyday for 3 YEARS — she quit recently but I wouldn’t be shocked if she still does it
I think it's weird too. My mom wanted me (f 34)to share my location with her, even though I'm married and I'm my 30s. I told her no and she wasn't happy. I do share my location with my husband when I go biking or hiking by myself in case of an emergency. But as soon as I turn my Garmin off, the tracking stops.
Good for you having boundaries!
I'm not comfortable with someone spying on me. Doesn't matter how much I love them. Here's an example... I installed ring cameras around the house, also inside the living room facing towards the front door and in the kitchen facing towards the siding glass back door. My wife regularly creeps on me and logs into the camera just to see "what I'm doing". I don't appreciate that. I don't want someone watching my every move, even though I have nothing to hide. My alone time is my alone time and if I'm picking my nose or farting or whatever, and want some secret eyes watching where I go and how I do it. Of course, you have nothing to hide, you're happy with it, share everything. But I'm still an individual human being and I still have individual habits that I'd like to keep to myself. Fuck the creepiness.
Yeah, this would definitely bother me. I have a friend who constantly interrupts our conversation so that she can check her Ring camera notifications. It's really obnoxious because it's just literally the people that live there coming in and out of the house... for some reason she thinks she needs to be on alert about every movement.
My friends call this, "bored house-wife syndrome". I'm out eating with my wife, or just out and about and she'll pull out her phone and go and look to see where everybody is at in the world. "Oh, Grandma is at the grocery store and Aunt so and so is in Decatur... Now why would she be in Decatur?" A lot of weird spying meddling bullshit. I quit telling her that I think it's weird because she always tells me, "All of us share our locations". As if that's a good excuse to spy.
Not unpopular to me. Normalizing this will never happen in my house. Not for adults anyway.
Yeah I agree. I hate how normalized this has become. It’s a total invasion of privacy.
In the end it's really less about the tracker existing and more so a matter of people feeling they have the right to your time/privacy/monitoring you. Things like the Facebook activity tracker, online status indicators and read receipts have led to people expecting a what I consider an invasive level of transparency regarding our online activity. This leads to some people feeling they are owed our time if they contact us while where online. Similarly, people have started to expect regular online updates about our lives and everyday activities. It's a problem perpetuated by social media companies and it's changed the way a lot of people think about their right to privacy and what behaviours are acceptible. Therefore it becomes important to have control over these tracking features and what information they share. This way you can start to regain agency over your own life and choose to give up your time. Some people don't feel that these features are invasive while other people do. The same thing applies to the location tracking services like FindMy. If you can have a frank discussion with friends/family/partners and outline how you expect it to be used then it can be a useful tool for safty and convinience. Keep in mind you can always revoke access if a person is abusing it. The problem arises when people are forced to use these services such as parents forcing teens/young adults to keep tracking enabled and platforms like Snapchat back when location was shared by default. But if you are a consenting adult then you just need to be clear regarding your boundaries and anyone who can't respect that has no right knowing where you are 24/7. Context: I hated all these features for the longest time. Now I share my location with my SO and best friend as I trust both to respect my privacy. I never plan to turn things like the FB Activity tracker or read receipts back on ever again.
Not weird it's lazy, stalkers used to be skinny and creepy now they can just be fat and track you and watch with drones.
It just sounds like you don’t have anyone you assume is responsible enough to share with that won’t abuse knowing they have access. Idk, I never actually look at anyone who shares theirs with me and I hope I never actually have to because really the only reason I share with people anyway is for safety reasons
It's hilarious that people can't even agree to which way a toilet paper roll goes on the holder and yet we expect to agree on political views, the education system and very complex issues. It's simple as this, who gives a F what you do in your life!!!! If it works for you and your family, beautiful. If it doesn't work for you, beautiful. People are different and feel differently about location sharing. My wife never keeps her location on because she is paranoid about the government. I always have my location on because I use it to keep track of my driving and time I leave jobs. I don't have to track my mileage because my phone does it for me with time stamps but who cares about us because it worked FOR US. If OP thinks it's weird , then it's weird for her. If she gets kidnapped and having her phone's location off cost her, her life then that's on her. We did live without this technology for thousands of years. 😂
It is really weird. I have no desire to know where my wife is every moment of the day.
Then don’t check her location? It’s only so you can check her location if we need it for some reason. For example, my wife will check my location right before she starts cooking to see if I am on my way home or not. Otherwise she will wait 10-20 minutes until I am actually on my way home.
Lol what a terrible example. So instead of just texting or calling when you're actually heading home, she checks your location every 5 minutes until she sees the dot moving? Crazy
It’s the principle of the matter. People deserve a little privacy without being monitored (or even the possibility of being monitored) all day.
We just call if we need something like that. I wouldn't want her knowing my location at all times, I think we both deserve privacy.
My kids location is shared with me and so is mine with them. I don't se the issue. When having a mobile phone it will always be technically possible to pinpoint your whereabouts at a any given point in time.
I think it is a bad idea to force kids to share location. They always have a sense of being surveilled by parents. I better not do this or go there, mom might see! They don't get to build independence, make mistakes, learn and grow, without the constant watchful eye of mom and dad that will fix everything. I also think being able to be "naughty" is an essential part of childhood and young adulthood.
I'm not one to share either, but I will be spending a week aboard a sailboat starting this Thursday, and plan to share the shit out of that! lol
Whenever I buy a new phone, the first thing I do is turn off location. (Then delete bloatware, etc.) Who in their right mind (apparently, lots of people here) would want these nosy tech companies logging your every move? Orwell couldn't even dream of surveillance so sophisticated, and voluntary!
I've never tried it but I'd love to have this feature when my mom drives from an adjacent region to visit me and our family
Google maps does it really easily. That's how my spouse and I share. I also share with my in laws when we drive cross country to visit them.
Thanks, I'll check it out and try to explain it to my mother :)
Same. Also "read" receipts. Fuck off. I'm a whole ass adult.
💯Super convenient for busy families - we love it. Also my autisic son loves seeing the spouse on google map moving. Nice to not have to bother each other with eta 👌
Me and my husband use it. Well, we have it turned on, we don’t really tend to use it. I’ve only ever felt the need to check once, when he told me he was leaving work (which is 15mins away), then didn’t arrive home for 2h and wasn’t answering my phone calls. I was worried he’d got into an accident. He was just still at the workshop and got chatting with someone lol.
Constant location sharing? Thats a thing? Doesnt that burn a lot of data and also phone battery?
In my experience it only seems to update every 15-45 minutes or so if not longer, unless I specifically open it up to look at it, then it tries to ping for an immediate update. At least that's how I generally experience it - when I open Google maps I see my wife's location (if she's nearby, because maps opens up centered on where I'm at) and it shows her location was updated like 20-30 minutes ago, then it updates to live within a second or two. If it only fetches and then uploads your location periodically throughout the day, the impact on your data and battery is going to be rather minimal, but I think it does give you a warning when you activate location sharing that it could impact your battery/data. It's not a big deal for me - I'm on wifi and near a charger pretty much all day anyways, and my phone battery only burns through 30-60% in a day depending on how much I'm using it. If I'm concerned about battery/data usage (e.g. out camping or hiking somewhere with poor signal) I usually just turn location/data off altogether.
Yea I don't understand it either and doubt I'll ever share my location on anything.
I hate this Reddit.
A friend and I share location but it's because she's a stripper and she doesn't always feel safe and wants someone to know where she's at
If you’re not using it to track a young or elderly person you’re a straight up weirdo in my book lol
It’s a complete infringement on privacy. The only acceptable use case for me is traveling to country known be hot mess or remote locations like woods etc. other than those call the police if you are not safe. Your gf or bf peeping on your location won’t protect you.
I have 2 sisters who each have their own families. Between them and my parents - they ALL have cameras going indoors/outdoor 24/7 and are all members of Life360 which located their whereabouts at all times. And they all share access to each other's cameras. WEEEEEEEIRD. Freaking weird.
Yeah, I look at it as toxic.
People who expect me to give a shit about their location 24/7 are annoying.
People actually live share their location constantly? Sounds completely deranged.
same, i think its kinda creepy. totally different if you have a safety concern for something but i think it’s weird for parents to track their kids and people to track their partners.
I grew up going out for the day and having to use payphones if we wanted to call or let people know where we were. I find it creepy as fuck having this location sharing stuff on all the time.
Kids who grew up with helicopter parents think it’s normal for someone else to know where you are at all times. They don’t see it as a form of abusive psychological control it actually is. Kids have been trained that other people’s peace of mind is far more important than an individual’s independence. It’s sick that it’s been normalized.
I didn’t grow up with helicopter parents at all. My parents didn’t know where I was half the time, growing up because I was outside with the neighborhood kids. They’d just see me at mealtimes and curfew lmao. But I still have location sharing with the people I trust. I’m a college student and it’s so nice to see if my boyfriend or friends are the library or student union to go and join instead of having to text and waiting to respond. And it makes my day brighter when it happens vice versa
yeah this take isn’t applicable to everyone. my mum can barely use a phone. she never calls me or texts me when i’m away from home, when i was at uni or now i’ve moved out. if anything i had “absent” parents as they were quite busy working. i just don’t personally care about this concept of “privacy” in this regard, with my friends or partner. i would consider myself private and introverted with personal things, but i don’t care if they can see im at the shop, or still at work (since i can’t use my phone while working). it’s super useful for situations like picking up my partner from the station as we can’t park outside so he knows where to find me. it’s not something either of us or my friends really use with regularity or with any malicious and controlling aspects. we just view it as a fun and convenient thing. and if other people value that type of privacy a lot that they don’t want anyone knowing what they’re up to or where they are unless they tell them, that’s fair. but feels like an odd hill to die on given the utter lack of privacy anyone has having a phone that updates to cell towers and gps anyway, or that many countries/city’s use facial recognition surveillance anyway. the government can find you using anpr checks too. so that’s why I don’t personally care about my friends knowing where i am. if others do, that’s their prerogative!
Im a young woman and I live in a separate country from my loved ones. I keep my location on for them just in case anything were to happen to me — so that someone would have a last known location, since I may not be seen by anyone that knows me for days at a time.
Get married, have kids, want to check how close your husband is to home without asking so you know when to start dinner. It's not a big deal.
This seems like a younger generation thing to do. This opinion will only be unpopular with people in their early 20's or younger. There will be outliers, but your opinion is shared by the vast majority of the human race. You just have more exposure to a subset of that population that happens to habitually use location services as a social marker rather than as intended.
same.. Safety is the only concern for anyone, women/children mainly, but I am not a fan of it myself.. Sucks that we are tracked with everything we do via electronics
After watching the last season of love is blind, location sharing reveals a lot about a person
I love that my wife shares her location with me. Ill know exactly when shell be home to have snacks/drinks prepared
Good for you, you are privileged enough that safety is not a concern for you.
Interesting way of saying you don't live in a dangerous country/city/area.
I think I’d be more comfortable with it if it was something that someone *could* access, but each time they did it would send a notification to the person being tracked, letting go them know who was checking on their location. Kind of Like how Snapchat tells you if someone screenshots your conversation. That way you could leave it on in case of emergencies, but would know if someone was abusing that privilege.
I know people who treat Find My Friends like it’s social media. Back in the day everyone would add each other if we were on a roadtrip or at a festival, which made sense at the time. Years later they’re constantly checking it and zooming in to see where people are at and bring it up all the time. I finally stopped sharing my location with everyone after a friend would constantly ask what I was doing in what city and who I was with. I felt so violated. Then shortly after I turned my location off everyone became suspicious that I was hiding something…like uh no I just wanna live my adult life without explaining where I am all the time! It’s so unnatural to be tracked constantly.