Our Weird & Wild Experiences Using ‘Find My Friends’

Friend: "Where are you?"

You: "Just jumping on the bus now. 10 mins away."

You're lying. You're stood in your bedroom wearing nothing but a towel, unhurriedly scrolling through Spotify to find the right playlist to get ready to. But it's fine, right? Because you were always going to be late and there's no way of them knowing that you haven't left the house yet.

Oh, the simple pleasures we were once afforded! Being able to lie to our loved ones about where we are is a skill we've been perfecting since our teenage years (no, Mum, I didn't really have sleepovers at Sophie's six times a month). But then technology got better, our modes of communication got weirder and all of a sudden we had the ability to track people from our phones whenever we like. Terrifying.

For the most part, of course, you can opt in and out of these things. But isn't it wild that Find My Friends is one of the pre-downloaded apps that come with your iPhone? Or that a weird Snapchat update a couple of years back suddenly let you locate absolute strangers at the click of a button? The overwhelming consensus here at Refinery29 HQ is that apps like Find My Friends are creepy. No one really wants to be stalked by their mates. But we can't ignore the appeal. For one, it eliminates the need to even ask people where they are (because who wants to exchange words these days) and if there were ever a real risk of getting lost or stumbling into a dangerous situation, at least someone knows where to find you.

There are pros, cons and glitches to our experiences with location trackers. Most of them are funny and many will make you cringe, so to offer some wisdom and warning to you, dear friends, we asked around and gathered some of our own wayward tales. From stalking ex-partners and being presumed dead to secretly monitoring troublesome younger siblings, here's the best (and worst) of our Find My Friends activity.