How the Find My App Became an Accidental Friendship Fixture
Introduced 10 years ago, the app has slowly become a popular way to keep track of friends. But it comes with considerable privacy concerns.
In July, Shay Pierre opened Apples location-sharing app Find My and noticed a friend at an unfamiliar apartment building in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
Ms. Pierre, 23, zoomed in to inspect the building, then texted her friend its address, along with a joking where are you? Her friend came clean. He had started dating somebody, and he was at her apartment. If Find My had not given it away, Ms. Pierre would not have known about the relationship until months later.
Her friend later relabeled the apartment building in the app: None of your business.
As location sharing through apps like Find My has proliferated in recent years, they have become a staple in some friendships ostensibly for safety but with the side effect of complicating dynamics between friends.
The impact is particularly noticeable among Generation Z and millennials, the first generations to come of age with the possibility of knowing where their peers are at all times. It has changed how friends communicate with one another and blurred lines of privacy. Friends now, sometimes unwittingly yet obsessively, check one anothers locations and bypass whole conversations about where somebody is, what they are doing or how their days are going when socializing. All of that information can be gleaned from Find My.
Although Find My is not marketed as a social experience, sharing locations has become a test of sorts, much like being included on a close friends list on Instagram or on a private story on Snapchat can signal closer friendships.
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