‘It gave me the ick’: When friendly surveillance crosses the line

Do you know where five of your closest friends are at this very moment? Ask any odd Millennial or Gen Z these days, and chances are they’d be able to pull out their phone and show you the whereabouts of their nearest and dearest, represented by little glowing dots on a map.

Kyle Booth, a 30-year-old from Melbourne, shares his location with 20 to 30 of his friends, plus his partner and sister.

“It started purely because we’re such a tight-knit group of friends,” he says, explaining it’s a convenient way to check how far away people are if they’re catching up or co-ordinate spontaneous hang-outs.

Location sharing apps are changing the nature of friendships.Credit: Matt Davidson/iStock

Another benefit, says Booth, is that he’s able to be a more considerate friend. He says he’ll often check on his sister, who lives rurally, before giving her a call to make sure she’s not out with her kids.

“We’re so time poor these days ... I just feel like to prioritise my time I would look into whether it’s an appropriate time [to call] based on their location.”

But there are limits to the level of friendly surveillance Booth will allow. Last year, he decided to distance himself from a close friend whom he discovered had been obsessively monitoring his location.

“I heard that they were looking at it almost as regularly as social media, and that kind of gave me the ick,” he says. “You have this agreement and respect for one another that you’re not using it as a means to find out exactly where they are all the time.”

Beyond safety

The number of Australians sharing their location with one another is on the rise. The California founded app Life360 has 2.2 million users nationwide, with 14 per cent identifying as friends, according to an internal survey from the company. Twelve- to 15-year-olds are twice as likely to share their location with friends compared to the Australian average of 17 per cent.

In 2017, social media platform Snapchat launched Snap Map, a location tracking feature with the express purpose of keeping friends connected, while Apple’s inbuilt app Find My Friends is another popular means of location sharing.

While location-sharing technology was initially conceived with safety in mind, a growing number of friendship groups like Booth’s are using GPS tracking to stay connected.

Collett Smart, a psychologist and teen expert, sees the growing popularity of location sharing apps among friends as part of our increasing interconnectedness, as well as a greater desire for convenience.

“For this generation they prefer the idea of instant information rather than calling or texting. So they can just check where someone’s location is and find them pretty instantly.”

Brady Robards, an associate professor of sociology at Monash University, says location sharing has long been part of our digital lives, whether on Foursquare or by “checking in” to locations on Facebook. The phenomenon of friends sharing their live locations is merely an extension of this.

“It’s just a new way that those old dynamics are playing out around visibility of friends.”

Like Booth, Ruby Cole, a 23-year-old student from Sydney started using location sharing apps for safety reasons when she moved out of home, but has found the technology has added a new dimension to her friendships.

She says she’ll often check on the location of her uni friends to see if they’re nearby for a coffee.

“I think it’s creating a bit more of a spontaneous hang-out rather than having to plan and organise too much.”

But she says she’d be hesitant to do the same with a romantic partner, and has previously refused to share her location with her mum.

“My attitude is so different towards friendships compared to relationships because I think I’d be a bit hesitant to share it with a partner, even though of course you trust a partner,” says Cole, explaining she’s heard stories of location sharing being used for nefarious reasons.

Privacy and trust

A common critique of those who use location sharing technology is they must not care about privacy.

But Robards says young people today have to start navigating privacy and what they’re willing to sacrifice to technology from a young age – and the manner in which they do this is complex.

“The assumption that young people don’t care about privacy is incorrect,” says Robards.

“Young people are very conscious of their own privacy, whether that’s privacy from their peers or family or government or from platforms, like Meta. But it’s different for different contexts.”

He explains they might be willing to sacrifice privacy for convenience, like with location sharing apps, but more conscious about privacy during difficult times in their lives.

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