sharing locations is a gesture of love
there was some article that came out either early this year or last year about how gen-z's willingness to share their location with their friends showcases some sort of moral downfall with my generation [paraphrasing]. at the time, I was not sharing my location with anyone except my parents on life 360, but I knew my friends all shared their locations with each other.
I didn't care for the article and said as much when I quote-tweeted it on my twitter account, but it's stuck with me for a while, how bizarre of a gripe that is. like, why do you actually even care? I thought it was cool and sweet to share your location with your friends. cuz why not?
I currently have 7 of my friends' locations in my find my friends. 4 of those are my online friends, and three of them are my irls. all I love and trust very much.
if you don't get it, it's just fun. it's a way of showing how much you love someone. like, even if I'm not texting you nowadays or if we haven't spoken in a while, you know where I am and I know where you are. in a way, you're always with me. in my little iPhone.
it's cool to have your friends' locations cuz you see when they've got plans going on. like wow, oomf is at her boyfriend's house rn, other oomf is at work, and other oomf hasn't left their house in days. and you know what I can do? I can text them to see what's up and what exactly they're doing at that moment. better yet, when I see them again, ask them, "hey, how was your trip to the lake?" and it's fun! like I'm their little fly on the wall.
it's fun to ask for, too. at first, I didn't share my location with anybody. but your iPhone can do this cute little thing where you can share your eta with someone, and they see your live location. so I did that for one of my friends, who was already engaged in this dance of location-sharing with her other friends, and she just sent me her permanent location back, like it was an exchange. so even though my location expired on her phone, I just... had hers.
and when someone sends you their location you can't just, like, delete it or reject it. it just happens. like, okay, this is mine now I guess. and technically you can remove them on your find my, but when they entrust you with this gift of "I want you to know where I am at all times no matter what", how are you gonna say "uhhhh no. you can keep it."
but now I ask. sometimes it's just fun. like "omg do you wanna share locations?" like the way that girls talk to each other. and they'll be like omg yeah! and now we have each other's locations.
find my is like a little game sometimes, too. you can turn on notifications for when your friends leave the house or arrive somewhere, which makes it like a game of sims but the sims are your dear, sweet friends. and those are my favorite sims!
some people might wonder, why would anyone want to share their location with anyone? what's the point of that? and if this is you, you might see this from a privacy standpoint. to that I say, having locations is a security measure, in a sense. like, we haven't spoken in weeks but you can very much see that I'm not laying in some ditch cuz you see me walking around my college campus right now. and what if I went missing or something? my friends will at least see my phone. like, woah, Kristin was last seen in such-and-such. let's send a search party over there (fake situations).
and if you're seeing it in a what's-the-point way, it's just a kind gesture. like we all basically know where everyone is anyway, with their tweeting about what they're doing or their ig stories tagging a location or posting what they're eating for dinner at a place you recognize or when they're spam posting on their Instagram close friends story from their bedroom. like I already have the idea of where basically everyone is anyway, so what more is it to just know for sure? especially if we're friends cuz we're just gonna talk about it anyway.
we're in an era of mass surveillance anyway, why not take ownership of it in some small sense? 
anyway if any of my location sharers are reading this, I love youuu!!!