The Hidden Risks of Sharing Location: What Parents Need to Know

I only know five phone numbers by heart:

1. My wife’s
2. My mom’s
3. My dad’s
4. The landline of my childhood home
5. The landline of my childhood best friend’s home.

Those last two have been disconnected for a very long time now, but are stuck in my head because I used them almost every day. I’d call my friend’s house to see if he was home and could play. I’d call home to check in when I was anywhere else. That was pretty much the extent of location sharing when I was growing up. Not anymore.

Today, kids can stream an exact dot of their whereabouts to dozens of people, minute by minute, inside apps they open every hour. That visibility can feel comforting — or unsettling. 

Now that it’s so widely available, the question for us as parents isn’t whether location sharing works, but what it does to our kids (and us) over time.

What Location Sharing Is (and Why It’s Everywhere)

Modern phones can share a live or recent location through operating-system tools (e.g. Apple’s Find My or Google Location Sharing) and apps (e.g Snap Map or Life360). These features rely on GPS or nearby Wi-Fi/cell data, and often require the user to “opt in.” 

That being said — and as you’re likely aware — users encounter frequent prompts to turn this feature on for convenience. So “opt in” feels a lot more like “very strongly encouraged.” 

A 2024 scholarly review notes that digital location tracking (DLT) is now common in U.S. families, with one-third to two-thirds of families estimated to use the technology. That same review also found that DLT coexists with — and may shape — other parenting behaviors and teen adjustment, but there just isn’t enough data available yet to know exactly what impact it’s likely to have. 

Translation: location tracking is common for families, but it’s too early to have data that clearly shows whether that’s a good thing, bad thing, or mixed bag.

The Upside for Our Kids

The benefits for kids and teens are fairly obvious:

• Convenience: “Pick me up here.”
• Belonging: “Everyone in my friend group shares.”
• Safety: “Text me when you get there” turns into “share your live location.

Those benefits explain why it now feels like location sharing is included in every app we download. Most social platforms keep and attract users through promises of convenience and belonging. 

And now that the dangers of social media are mainstream, apps are marketing location features as safety nets to appeal to parents who worry about their kids online. It’s not surprising that more and more platforms are adding location sharing features.

The Upside For Us as Parents

It isn’t just kids who benefit from location tracking. Parents see a lot to love here too.

• Peace of mind: A quick glance can now confirm your child made it to practice or is just leaving school.
• Logistics: Coordinating rides, finding one another at a crowded stadium, or rerouting when plans change is easier with a dot on the map.
• Emergencies: When a phone is lost or there’s a genuine safety concern, precise location sharing can save time, or even lives.

If it wasn’t already obvious before you started reading this article, I hope it is now: there are some great benefits that come with location sharing. 

But any tool that’s useful can also be harmful. Make a hammer so safe it can’t harm a person and it’s no longer useful for driving nails into wood. 

So let’s look at the potential dangers of location sharing.

The Potential Risks of Location Sharing

In order to get the benefits of location sharing, we have to understand the drawbacks. Here are the major ones.

1) Privacy erosion. Normalizing “always on” location can teach our kids that they owe their whereabouts to peers or partners. Privacy groups remind us phones are beacons: carriers and apps can compile location trails in real time or retrospectively. That data is useful — but potentially abusable. Kids need to know it’s important to fully trust a person or company before saying yes to handing over location data.

2) Security and misuse. More sharing means more opportunity for misuse. Acquaintances, ex-friends, or anyone with access to a kid’s device or account can leverage location history.

3) Relationship pressure. “If you trust me, share your location.” Teens (and adults) report coercive dynamics in which constant tracking is framed as care. Research on technology-facilitated abuse has found that location tools can become instruments of control in unhealthy relationships. We want our kids to spot that red flag early.

4) Psychological toll. Surveillance changes behavior. The emerging academic literature links DLT to shifts in family dynamics and teen adjustment, while also emphasizing how under-studied these impacts are (we need more longitudinal data). In other words, the risks aren’t just hypothetical, but the science is still catching up—so families should proceed with caution. 

Pull-quote: “Location sharing can be a safety net. But if we aren’t intentional about when/how we use it, it becomes a leash.”

Who Actually Sees the Location Trail?

Who can see a child’s location will, of course, depend on what device or app they’re using for location sharing. Broadly speaking, here’s what to keep in mind:

• Friends & contacts. Whoever your child explicitly shares with on apps like Find My, Google Maps, or Snap Map will be able to track their location. That means settings matter here in a big way. As Jacques Marcoux, research and analytics director with the Canadian Centre for Child Protection put it, “Blanket sharing this sensitive information with a wide network of contacts could put teens at greater risk of sextortion, coercive control and emotional distress.” If you’re not up to speed on the dangers of sextortion, now is a good time to read up.
  
• The app provider. App providers will get location data (for features/analytics), unless you minimize it. For example, Apple and Snap both include popups about location sharing for users to opt into, Snap offers Ghost Mode, and Apple provides Safety Check and granular reviews of data sharing.
  
• Networks & third parties. Carriers and data brokers can infer or sell location datasets unless constrained by policy/law. Advocacy groups have spent years litigating and lobbying for stronger protections (especially for kids), so I’m hopeful things improve, but there’s a ways to go.
  
• Regulators watching. In 2025 the FTC finalized stronger COPPA rules, part of a broader movement (including the UK’s Children’s Code) toward high-privacy defaults for kids’ data — explicitly including geolocation. The policy tide is moving toward “protect first, ask later.”

Where Experts Disagree (and What We Actually Know)

It should shock no one that there are differing opinions on the use of location sharing, especially when it comes to kids. Here’s a quick rundown on the most prominent opinions circulating today.

The safety-first case: Advocates say routine location sharing reduces parental anxiety and can deter risky decision-making. Some teens say it helps them feel safe, especially when traveling or on late-night outings. 

Gabb’s own research has found that location sharing is one of parents’ most sought-after features (hence why we’ve included it on Gabb devices).

The independence case: Some have cautioned that 24/7 tracking could increase parental stress, undermine a child’s autonomy, and drive secrecy workarounds (e.g. second phones, airplane mode). 

Journalists and psychologists describe this as a “tight virtual leash” that can follow kids into college.

What does the evidence say? 

The 2024 Clinical Child & Family Psychology Review quoted earlier concludes that we lack robust, long-term causal evidence one way or the other.

The conclusion? You know your kids, your family needs, and you’ve got parental intuition. So pick the route you feel best about. 

Mainstream guidance like the APA’s 2023 advisory on youth and social media suggests we emphasize things like building skills, literacy, and other developmentally appropriate scaffolds — rather than blanket surveillance. 

In other words, teach your kids with a tech in steps approach that tapers tracking as they earn trust and mature toward adulthood.

Practical Steps (Boundaries, Scripts, and Settings)

Here are a few practical approaches you can use as you develop your family’s location tracking approach.

1) Talk Before you Track

Consider co-creating a family policy around tracking. Discuss questions like: When is sharing helpful? With whom? For how long? You might even list specific times/situations when it’s okay to share their location with others (e.g. at large events, when driving, etc.)

Talk about the trade-offs between peace of mind now and autonomy later. For older teens (especially those already driving or spending significant amounts of time away from home), determine a tapering plan that prepares them for the day they leave home.

Depending on your child’s age, it might also be worth explicitly discussing the pressure they might feel to share their location so they can recognize it — and push back. For example: “I don’t share my live location, but I’ll text when I leave and when I get there.”

2) Teach How to Unshare Location

Take the time to walk through the location sharing settings on any device or app your child uses so they can unshare location when appropriate. As a family, you might consider doing regular audits (e.g. monthly). Check your app/device settings for: Who can see my location? Which apps have access?

• For how to unshare location on iPhone, see here.
• For how to unshare location on Google, see here.
• For how to unshare location using Ghost Mode on SnapChat, see here.

How to Unshare Location Without Burning Social Bridges

Do a quick search online for “how to unshare location without someone knowing,” and you’ll find that this is a popular concern. Some apps or devices will notify a contact when location sharings are changed to block them from seeing a person’s location. That could create some awkwardness, or worse.

In most situations when your child receives pushback, encourage them to own their new approach to location sharing and frame it as a general approach rather than something specific to the confronting person: “I’m being more careful about online privacy so I don’t do 24/7 sharing anymore.”

If pushback is intense, that might be a signal. Healthy friendships don’t require surveillance.

3) Plan for Coercion or Safety Concerns

If someone is pressuring your teen to share location — or if there’s relationship danger — pre-decide your approach to the problem. If your child has mistakenly shared a private location with someone they shouldn’t have, take that seriously. 

If you have reason to believe someone dangerous knows your child’s home address, school address, or other often-visited locations (work, dance studio, practice field, etc.) don’t hesitate to get local police involved.

Last Thoughts

A generation ago, we coached kids not to give strangers our home address. Today’s version is teaching them to guard their live location. 

Our job isn’t only to keep kids safe this weekend, it’s to grow adults who can set boundaries, spot coercion, and choose when sharing helps — and when it harms.

Join the Conversation

What has worked in your family? What experiences with location sharing have you had that would help other parents? Share in the comments below.