The sneaky new friendship divide between millennials and Gen Z
Do you want to share your location with me? Eighteen of my closest friends and family already do.
On a Tuesday evening in early June, I can map a digital town square of that real-life network. One friend is still at the office; two are at Central Park; another is at home hundreds of miles away from me. These are people who share their location with me, not just for directions, but in perpetuity through the Find My Friends app. I think it strengthens our bonds to observe each other's routines and special outings — even when there's no practical need for it.
To others, location sharing is a nightmare. They see it as an extension of the surveillance state, with their college roommate, jealous partner, or overbearing parent acting as Big Brother. The Washington Post proclaimed that it's "making us miserable."
How you feel about your friends and loved ones being able to see where you are at any given time may represent your current lifestage, how friendships evolve, and technology's role in our relationships.
"This is brand new culturally, historically," Anna Goldfarb, the author of "Modern Friendship: How to Nurture Our Most Valued Connections," told me of the confluence of friends and location-sharing technology. "And it makes sense that people are like, 'what does this mean?' This is something we haven't ever had that technology to do before — much less the space and freedom to do it."
While it's impossible to generalize entire generations' attitudes toward anything, I wanted to find out how location sharing shakes out across the age spectrum. So, I spoke to seven people spanning three generations to get a sense of their feelings about sharing their location. Gen Zers were chill about it; so are Gen Xers. But as millennials approach middle age, location sharing highlights how their friendships are growing — or growing apart.
A Gen Z convenience
The location sharing debate represents the journey of growing up in a digital age.
As a geriatric Gen Zer, I'm still at a stage in life where the majority of my friends are single or unmarried, and pretty much none of them have kids. We're living similar lifestyles, often out and about, and I don't encounter many issues with my friends knowing my whereabouts at all times.
That mid to late 20s uncoupledness and childlessness aligns with historical trends: On average, each generation gets married and has kids later in life.
For Aiden Lewis, a 26-year-old Ph.D. student in the Boston area, sharing his location with his family is a matter of convenience.
"The positives really far outweigh the negatives," he said, adding that while it's unlikely he'll be in danger, if he is, his parents would know his whereabouts. "But otherwise, the only risk on my part is minor embarrassment that they saw me out late drinking too much."
A 2022 Harris Poll found that Gen Z, born 1997 to 2012, was the most likely generation to say it was convenient to share their location. For folks like Lewis, location sharing is just another digital tool in their belt.
As Goldfarb, on the border between Gen X and the millennials, said, "When I was younger in my 20s, I would've absolutely loved to know where all my friends are at all times."
As I've progressed through my 20s, location sharing has shown me some shifts that are harbingers of what's to come in the next decade: Couples are together more often. My higher-earning friends, or those in more corporate roles, might show up at nice hotels on a work trip or a more upscale vacation. Others might still be on campus for their graduate degrees. And it felt symbolic when I revoked a former college friend's location-viewing privileges — a sort of closure for a specific period in my life.
Millennials are divided
Millennials, born 1981 to 1996, are in a life stage that's as bifurcated as their views toward location sharing.
Meranda Hall, a 33-year-old in Brooklyn, operates more like a Gen Zer in this realm. She doesn't have any married friends, and she said she never plans to marry. She and her friends have no qualms about sharing their locations.
"All the people that I share mine with, they're super open about it, and no one is ever anywhere particularly interesting for it to be too much of a debate," Hall said.
For her peers of similar ages but a different life stage, like Goldfarb, location sharing might be more fraught. After age 30, Goldfarb said, friendships start falling off a cliff; people move, have kids, take on different jobs, or prioritize relationships relevant to their careers.
"When you get older, you tend to have different perspectives on your friendships," she said. "You don't need your friends to know where you are at all times when you're older, because you probably have children, spouses, in-laws, there's just different relationships that bubble to the surface in my opinion,"
In my informal surveying, which also included several coworkers, millennials were the most likely to have very strong thoughts on location sharing. Some outright hated it, although still shared with one or two friends, and others felt no need for it, unless they were happily coupled and shared with spouses. Some said they found it to be strangely intimate.
Olivia Bethea, 31, said she only shares with four people. She said she's noticed location sharing coming up more in regular conversations, with people offhandedly referencing that they checked where someone else was. She doesn't see herself expanding her location-sharing circle more.
"A lot of people end up sharing where they are anyway on Instagram and stuff, but I'm finding myself to be a little bit more protective over it," she said. "People can make a lot of inferences from your location, and I just don't want to invite those inferences."
Millennials grew up before everyone carried an always-on GPS device at all times. A concern that I heard repeatedly was about surveillance and willingness to constantly reveal where they were, which doesn't seem to bother the always-tracked and always-online Gen Zers.
"Millennials, it wasn't something that we always had. I guess if you're Gen Z, it's kind of always been a thing," Hall said, adding, "I guess it's just something to be skeptical about."
Gen X shrugs
When I spoke to Gen Xers about location sharing, I was met with a proverbial shrug. The forgotten generation, born 1965 to 1980, doesn't seem to be too pressed about location sharing, although they're not eager to adopt the practice either.
Meredith Finn, a Gen Xer in her 50s in Maine, said she thinks she missed the location-sharing bandwagon completely. It would've been more fun in college, on a night when all her friends were out at different bars.
"I remember nights when we'd go from bar to bar looking for some of our friends, and we'd just miss them," she said. "And it just would've been kind of nice to be able to see where everybody was hanging out. Of course, we didn't have anything like that. We didn't even have cellphones when I was in college."
She said that she'd probably be willing to share her location with a few friends. But if anyone came up to her and asked to share her location, "I think I would say, 'Why? Just send me a text and ask me where I am.'"
Leslie Lancaster, a 47-year-old in California, felt similarly — she said she's shared location when she's navigating somewhere difficult to find on a map, or trying to find friends in rural locations. Lancaster said she can see the benefits of it, but also how it could become controlling in the wrong hands.
"For myself, my husband and I, I don't need to know where he's at all the time. So that's why I probably wouldn't share my location with him, unless I were potentially off on a vacation or a trip where I was not with him," she said.
Both Gen Xers said they could see its utility in a time when folks are struggling to connect or feeling more isolated. Lancaster said she could understand the impulse to see where your friends are, even if you're not actively communicating.
"People are so isolated now. I mean, since the pandemic and a lot of work from home, a lot of people are just in their little bubbles," Finn said, adding that it's rarer to pop into your regular coffeeshop and run into five friends. "It doesn't happen the way it used to."
Gen Alpha may come up with something even newer and more horrifying
Like many technological advances, your thoughts on location sharing are a reflection of your own situation. It's at a crossroads of issues facing our social lives: The lack of third spaces has put them into our phones, social circles are shrinking, and we've had to use technology to fill the gaps.
I'm sure Gen Alpha, born 2010 to 2024, will come up with something that horrifies and shocks me (they're already back on Snapchat). As I creep toward age 30, I am thinking about the ways the social contours of my life have changed; in speaking with other Gen Z peers, we all realized we had a few friends we'd fallen out of touch with who were still lingering on Find My Friends. Right now, though, it feels mean to pull the cord.
"I predict that this is something that you're going to change your relationship with," Goldfarb told me. She added, "I think that it's more likely that it's going to be a more concentrated friend group that will need to know this about you."
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