Location sharing has become an increasingly familiar feature of digital relationships, allowing selected friends, partners and relatives to see where someone is in real time. A new study examines why adults choose to provide this access and finds that the motivations can vary substantially depending on the relationship involved.
The study, titled Near, Far, Wherever You Are: With Whom and Why Do People Use Location Sharing in Relationships, adds nuance to debates over privacy and safety. It suggests that, for many users, location sharing can serve practical, safety-related and relational purposes, although the same technology can also raise concerns about privacy, pressure and unwanted surveillance.
Smartphones now offer location-sharing tools through services such as Apple Find My, Google Maps and dedicated apps including Life360. Depending on the settings used, these technologies can allow selected contacts to view a person’s location over extended periods, making information about everyday movements continuously accessible.
Previous research has examined risks associated with digital tracking, including stalking, coercive control and excessive parental monitoring. The new research instead focused on how adults already using location sharing describe the reasons they give others access to their whereabouts.
How the study was conducted
Researchers led by Brian G. Ogolsky at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign surveyed 203 adults between the ages of 19 and 59 who owned smartphones and shared their location with at least one other person.
Participants were asked to open their location-sharing applications, determine how many people could see their location and identify their relationship with each person.
They then answered open-ended questions about why they initially enabled location sharing and why they continued using it. The researchers coded these responses into themes that were ultimately organized into four broader categories of motivation.
The research was informed by communication privacy management theory, which conceptualizes privacy as a process through which people establish and negotiate boundaries around personal information. In the context of location sharing, information about someone’s whereabouts becomes another form of personal information whose accessibility must be managed within relationships.
Who gets access and why
Participants shared their location with an average of nearly four people, although many restricted access to a relatively small number of contacts.
Romantic partners were the most commonly reported recipients, with more than 62% of participants sharing their location with a partner. Friends and siblings were also common recipients, while parents and children appeared among the other relationship categories.
The reasons for sharing were not uniform.
Safety was one of the most prominent motivations. Participants described location sharing as a source of reassurance and as a way for trusted people to know where they were if something unexpected happened.
Some responses involved monitoring family members who might require additional attention, including teenage drivers or older relatives. However, location sharing should not automatically be interpreted as an emergency-response system. In many circumstances, another person would still need to check the application, recognize that something was wrong and decide how to respond.
Convenience is another major reason
Practical coordination represented another important motivation.
Participants described using location information to determine when someone might arrive home, coordinate pickups or manage everyday plans without repeatedly exchanging messages.
In romantic relationships in particular, location sharing could function as an everyday logistical tool. Rather than asking a partner whether they had left work or how far away they were, someone could obtain that information directly from the application.
These accounts show that viewing another person’s location is not necessarily experienced by users as surveillance. Within mutually agreed arrangements, some participants regarded it primarily as a convenient way of coordinating shared routines.
That distinction remains important, however, because the same technological capability can have very different meanings depending on consent, expectations and the dynamics of the relationship.
Some people barely think about location sharing
Not every participant described a strong safety or practical reason for continuing to share their location.
Some reported that the feature remained enabled because they had forgotten about it or simply did not feel strongly enough about the access to turn it off.
Others described more playful forms of location checking between friends, including looking at where someone was and making lighthearted comments about it.
These responses suggest that location sharing can sometimes become an ambient feature of a relationship — something that remains available in the background without requiring deliberate decisions each time information is accessed.
This also raises questions about whether initial consent to share location necessarily reflects how someone feels about that access months or years later.
Location sharing can carry relationship meaning
A fourth group of motivations involved the relationships themselves.
For some participants, sharing their whereabouts was connected with feelings of openness, closeness or trust. Some described having “nothing to hide,” suggesting that location access could become associated with transparency between partners.
However, not all sharing appeared to arise entirely from an individual preference. Some participants mentioned forms of pressure from partners or roommates.
This distinction is particularly important. Voluntarily giving a trusted person access to location information is different from feeling obligated to provide that access to demonstrate loyalty or prevent conflict.
The study documented participants’ reported motivations rather than determining whether individual relationships were healthy, controlling or coercive. It therefore cannot establish when a request for location access crosses the line into problematic surveillance.
Different relationships come with different motivations
The researchers also found that motivations differed depending on who was receiving the location information.
Practical reasons appeared particularly relevant in romantic relationships and close friendships, where people may frequently coordinate schedules, transportation or activities.
Safety-related motivations were more prominent in some family relationships, including those involving parents and children.
Some adults also described location sharing as a way of maintaining reassurance or connection with relatives who lived at a distance.
These differences demonstrate how identical technology can acquire different meanings depending on the relationship. A partner may check a location to coordinate dinner, while a family member may use the same feature primarily for reassurance.
The findings therefore complicate attempts to categorize location sharing as inherently beneficial or inherently invasive.
Privacy depends on more than turning sharing on
Location sharing also raises broader questions about digital boundaries.
Granting someone location access is not necessarily a one-time privacy decision. Relationships change, circumstances change and people may become more or less comfortable with another person having continuous access to their whereabouts.
Consent to location sharing can therefore be understood as something that may need to be reconsidered rather than assumed to remain permanent.
The meaning of access also matters. Two people may both technically consent to location sharing while having very different expectations about how often the information will be checked and what conclusions should be drawn from it.
For one person, the feature might be intended only for emergencies. For another, regularly checking a partner’s movements may seem entirely normal. Those differing assumptions can potentially become a source of tension.
Important limitations remain
The researchers noted that their sample was predominantly white, heterosexual and highly educated, limiting how confidently the findings can be generalized to more diverse populations.
The study also deliberately recruited people who already shared their location. It therefore cannot explain why other smartphone users decide not to use these features.
People who avoid location sharing because of privacy concerns, previous negative experiences or discomfort with surveillance may have substantially different perspectives from those represented in the study.
Another important limitation is that participants were not directly questioned about intimate partner violence or coercive control.
Digital location tracking can be used within abusive or controlling relationships, and the study design may therefore have missed harmful motivations or experiences that participants did not spontaneously disclose.
What researchers want to understand next
As location-sharing functions become increasingly integrated into smartphones and digital platforms, researchers are interested in how expectations surrounding access to another person’s whereabouts may evolve.
One question is whether persistent location visibility changes everyday communication. If someone can simply check an application to determine whether a partner has left work or arrived somewhere safely, they may have less reason to send a message asking for that information.
Future research could examine whether this reduces routine communication, changes feelings of connection or creates new expectations about how available people should be to one another.
It will also be important to distinguish voluntary location sharing from access that is expected, pressured or demanded. The technology itself does not determine whether tracking represents convenience, reassurance, intimacy or control; much depends on the relationship and the conditions under which access is granted.
Overall, the study suggests that location sharing serves multiple social functions rather than a single universal purpose. For many participants, it was associated with safety, practical coordination, casual use or relationship processes.
At the same time, those benefits do not eliminate privacy concerns. The same feature that provides reassurance in one relationship can become intrusive in another, making consent, expectations and the ability to withdraw access important parts of understanding how location sharing functions between people.
