LOCATION SHARING LOADINGS : GOLDEN ESSAY GLOBAL

'' PERILS OF WANTON LOCATION SHARING.'' THIS isn't really new ; location sharing among students / youth has been common for over a decade.

IN 2022 The Time's Kally Huang wrote about how sharing one's location had become a litmus test of close friendship for people in their 20s, and described one way that it can cause unhappiness. :

If you see friends hanging out without you, that's going to feel awful. For couples, sharing your location can be either a sign of trust or a creepy and possibly manipulative intrusion.

YOU might be wondering if I track the Founders or my kids. I refuse to track them on principle, because I want them to feel the same freedom I had growing up.

TRUST - or lack of it - plays a strong role in how students feel about location tracking.

Personality traits and attachment style may also affect how a person perceives location tracking, said Randi Smith, a professor at Metropolitan State University of Denver, who has studied location-sharing practices in romantic relationships.

For people who have a history of bad or unfaithful relationships, or a high level of neuroticism location sharing may just ''accentuate their feelings of insecurity'' said Smith, who is also a psychotherapist in private practice.

Sinead Smyth, a family therapist, thinks there are enormous and mostly negative, implications to location sharing for couples and friends. '' It generates more suspicions and questions than it provides answers,'' Smyth wrote in an email.

'' What happens if the partner turns off the sharing? It inserts the notion of wrongdoing into a relationship unnecessarily, which can lead to increased defensiveness, secrecy, conflict and lower trust. ''

Which is all to say : One's time is probably better spent actually communicating directly with friends and lovers, and building trust through words and deeds, rather than passively monitoring someone's location and trying to play gotcha.

Even just checking in to see if a loved one is safe may bring more anxiety than relief - what if he or she is someplace strange and not answering texts?

One young person Kalley Huang interviewed said it felt like '' a stab '' when friends stopped sharing their location. Who needs that extra pain and status consciousness?

Surveillance isn't always the basis of a solid bond.

!WOW! thanks Jessica Grose.