A new report suggests that many people who belong to Gen Z use Find My and other apps to permanently share their location with groups of friends.
A study earlier in the year found that 40% of Gen Z adults share their location with three or more people, and a new piece found it was common to location-share with double digit numbers of friends …
Gen Z is generally defined as those born between 1997 and 2012, so current ages would be roughly 13 to 28.
A CivicScience study back in April found that Gen Z was more likely that other age groups to share their location with multiple people, but as the study maxed out at specifying 5+ people, the actual numbers were unclear.
However, a new piece in SFGate suggests that sharing location with a dozen or more friends is not unusual.
I don’t remember exactly when I started doing it, but at some point, I began sharing my location with all my friends on Apple’s Find My app. Today, 25 people can see where I am, or at least where my iPhone is, 24/7 […]
“I don’t find people having my location to be invasive at all. I think that’s just a natural part of life,” said Rhiannon Cogley, 19. “I would tell people where I am anyways. That just saves a text, you know?” […]
Kong, who attends Boston University, primarily uses Find My to keep track of the friends and family she shares location with — 29 in total.
Indeed, some of those sharing their location on Snap Map could end up making their location available to 100 or more people.
While your friends routinely knowing where you are can have safety and social benefits, it can also create some potentially tense situation – the author of the piece describing seeing several of his friends having lunch without inviting him, for example.
However, it’s also possible that a FindMy limitation could lead to people inadvertently allowing friends to see their location indefinitely. Some use it as a safety feature at the end of a night out, a group of friends able to see that everyone made it home safely. But FindMy only offers three options:
- For one hour
- Until end of day
- Indefinitely
If a group parts shortly before midnight, and it might take someone more than an hour to get home, they may choose Indefinitely to ensure it remains on for that occasion, and then forget to cancel it. But it’s clear that for many, this is a deliberate choice.
As someone who is <cough> not Gen Z, I found the very different attitude to privacy fascinating. The only time I share my location is when meeting up with one or more friends in a hard-to-define location, like a park, and I always use the one-hour option.
How about you? Please share in the comments.
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