What I learned from sharing my location

I had never shared my location before September 2025. My family technically had Life360 for a couple of months, but no one ever checked it. Location sharing only became a real part of my life after coming to Stanford.

I first heard of location sharing when my friend causally pulled up his “Find My,” filled with icons. As fall quarter progressed, I decided to start collecting locations myself. My first came during a late-night snack at Lakeside. Next was my CS109 buddy, so I could tell when he was coming to lecture and when he was running late. Soon after came my twin sister, who you’d probably expect to have been first. As the locations accumulated on my phone, I grew more comfortable exchanging them with friends. Oftentimes I would just send someone my location, and they’d send theirs back — an unspoken interaction, but a meaningful one nonetheless. Suddenly, I could tell where my friends were studying, when my fellow dance members were running late, and which dining hall would give me the best chance of running into someone I knew.

Most people check locations occasionally, usually when they’re deciding where to eat or study. I, on the other hand, am a location-checking addict. Whenever I’m bored, which is often, I open the Find My app just to see my friends scattered across campus. I like checking in on people in this way, especially when they’re at interesting places. It’s almost as if I’m figuring out what’s new in everyone’s lives without having to ask. I don’t set contact photos, so my friends all exist on Find My as a pair of initials. Over time, those initials have become representations of people: a way to tell who still hasn’t left Lakeside and who woke up early for FloMo lox bagels.

From far away, the icons blur together, piled into a muddled cluster. As I zoom in, though, they separate, dispersing across campus. Most linger in the hallways of Eucalipto and Granada, pausing for dinner at Lakeside. There are also the CoDa regulars, whom I track subconsciously, knowing who I might run into later. Then there are the nomads, constantly moving between Green, Lathrop and the Graduate School of Education.

I find myself noticing when an icon doesn’t update. I’ve learned that means someone is in airplane mode, ready to leave campus behind and appear in a completely new place. Each disappearing icon slightly lowers my spirit. During finals week, I noticed TH teleport to Illinois. Then AJ to Michigan. And IG to North Carolina. I watched my friends vanish from Stanford one by one until I was one of the only icons left on campus. Everyone was going home, and I was left behind finishing finals. I biked the empty roads while my favorite icons roamed their hometowns.

But leaving campus made things even stranger. Now, our initials weren’t just scattered across California or the country, but across the world: both U.S. coasts, China, India, even Australia. Surprisingly, I wasn’t sad. I knew our time apart was temporary. In a few weeks, our icons would cluster again, biking to CoDa or Arillaga Dining like nothing had changed.

But watching the map change made me realize something. Three years from now, our icons will scatter again, across cities, countries and time zones. And that time, they won’t reunite. They’ll fade from my map one by one, slowly replaced with new initials, new routines and new lives.

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