Trends change, technology advances, yet teenagers always seem to stay the same. They find new ways to maintain social relevance — often by doing things older generations don’t understand. (Don’t believe me? Just try to guess what any of their slang terms mean.) One of the latest teen trends is something that might raise a few eyebrows among parents, due to safety and privacy concerns: location tracking.
Although teens crave independence from their parents, they are voluntarily sharing their real-time whereabouts with their friends. Popular phone tracking app Life360 recently found that Gen Z is 70% more likely than any other age group to share their location with friends. And 94% of Gen Z surveyed said their lives benefit from location sharing.
In May 2025, Snapchat announced that its location-sharing Snap Map has more than 400 million monthly active users, per TechCrunch. This influences other social media platforms, as Instagram is reportedly working on a similar Friend Map to allow users to see their friends’ locations.
Many adults, including Leigh McInnis, the executive director of Newport Healthcare, may feel wary about this trend; however, McInnis keeps an open mind. “While my immediate instinct is related to protection of privacy and boundaries,” she told HuffPost, “I realize that this impulse is likely more related to my generational identity and discomfort with technology and tracking than the social needs and preferences of today’s teens and young adults.”
