Shay Pierre noticed a friend at an unfamiliar apartment building when he opened Find My.
Ms. Pierre sent a text to her friend's address after inspecting the building. Her friend told her what was going on. He was at a woman's apartment after starting a relationship. Ms. Pierre wouldn't have known about the relationship until months later.
Her friend changed the building's name to "None of your business."
With the proliferation of location sharing through apps like Find My, they have become a staple in some friendships, but with the side effect of complicating dynamics between friends.
The first generation to come of age with the possibility of knowing where their peers are is called Generation Z. It has changed the way friends communicate. Sometimes unconsciously, friends check one another's locations and ignore conversations about where they are, what they are doing or how their days are going. The information can be found in Find My.
Sharing locations on Find My has become a test of sorts, similar to being included on a close friends list on social media.
Sharing location isn't new. Find My Friends was a release by Apple. According to the research center, 7 percent of U.S. adults checked into locations on social media or shared their location with friends last year. According to the Harris Poll, 69 percent of Gen Z and 77 percent of millennials said they activated location-sharing features at least occasionally, compared with 62 percent of U.S. adults.
Younger people sharing their location information can be startling. Some people say that they track a lot of their friends on the app.
There are other features that are not limited to Find My. Access to location data is often asked for by dating and food delivery apps. Real-time location-sharing features can be found in third-party apps like Facebook's Messenger, as well as in third-party apps on the Apple andAndroid platforms.
A location sharing feature is built into some phones. Find My Friends was installed in the phone. Find My and Find My Mac were rolled into a stand-alone app called Find My.
Users choose to share their location on Find My as with a check-in on Facebook or location tag on social media. Find My shares real-time location after users choose to do so, with the option to share for one hour, until the end of the day or indefinitely.
Michael Saker is a senior lecturer in digital sociology at the University of London. He said that there was an intimate connection with that act. Being friends requires a verification.
Sharing locations can come with privacy concerns if users are not aware of or do not consent to whom they share their location with. Expectations among friends can make it more difficult to opt out.
She said that people do this kind of data sharing because it is normalized within their family or friends. Nobody has normalized pushing against that sharing.
A spokeswoman for Apple referred to a support page for Find My with instructions on how to stop sharing location.
Jade Calvin-Nau uses Find My to stay in touch with her friends. The app was all about safety in college. She and her friends looked at it to see if they could meet up after a night of partying.
She said that everyone was aware of where they were at all times. There was no need for anyone to ask where you are. It's possible to check.
Ms. Calvin-Nau had a map on Find My that was open to a constellation of contact icons. Her location is shared with 18 people. She said she would check the app five times a day and play a game of where everyone was.
She likened it to social media. You check the time. I refresh it in the same way that I refresh my social media accounts.
Find My is used by Olive Okoro to strengthen her friends. Her location is shared with about a dozen friends. Users of Apple's texting service, iMessage, are told when someone starts sharing locations with them and when they stop.
It's a privilege to be notified about starting. She said it felt like a stab. You hate my guts.
When she fell out with two of her friends, she stopped sharing her location on social media, but not her phone number. She didn't want them to know if she was in Dallas or College Station.
She immediately took her location back when that friendship ended.
The fear of missing out, which is fostered by social media, can be extended to Find My because location sharing reveals how and with whom people spend their time. Increased awareness can be difficult to deal with.
If you can see where your friends are and what they're doing, you can also see when they're not there. The window that social media has into the activities of people that we like is something that can include them doing things without you.
Adira and her friends shared their locations while they were in Chicago. Ms. Gresham now has a group of people around her. She checks her app at least twice a day and is not afraid to ask her friends what they are doing at a location without her.
They used to say, 'please stop.' She said that it was a little weird. They know I'm not weird. It's just a safety issue. She said that they all joke that she is a stalker.
Some lines have been drawn by Ms. One of her friends tried to convince her to share her friend's location in order to fight. She didn't like it.
I didn't think that was right. She thought that was crazy. She shares her location with me so that I can see it.
The relationship between Find My and the El Paso woman has been difficult. She was interested in someone who was at the home of a former friend. She wrote a note and left it at his door. Ms. Irwin and her friends fell out.
She said she wouldn't have known if she wasn't using it. I think it's a blessing. It didn't feel like that at the time.
There were other behavioral concerns caused by Find My as the restrictions were loosened. When the five friends she shares her location with began appearing in places that weren't their homes, it made her anxious, not only about missing out, but about their safety. Her therapist told her to stop using Find My.
Ms. Irwin said that she thought she had an obsession. She said she was safe knowing where her friends were and where she was.
She doesn't think she'd be able to remove it.
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