(Image Courtesy of National Conference of State Legislatures)
Alexia: Hi! I’m Alexia Bailey, a junior here at the University of Colorado Boulder. Because I’ve been here and seen things, I’m here to share everything I’ve picked up so far, which is a surprising amount of information. “What’s Eating at Alexia” is my unofficial and unfiltered guide to some of the things that being a CU Boulder Buff brings. Think of it as your guide to navigating everything that makes CU Boulder, well, CU Boulder. Whether you’re a freshman finding your footing or a senior with “no body, no crime” level grievances about finals week, I’m here to share my takes, tips and honest observations on everything from the sometimes-unpredictable choices that CU Boulder makes to navigating online controversies that surround and impact college life. College is a wild, unforgettable ride, and “What’s eating at Alexia” is here to make sense of some of it, one opinion at a time.
College at the University of Colorado Boulder is full of many new experiences, like watching Ralphie run for the first time, stuffing a buff during Homecoming, and the feeling of unease that comes when night falls, and there’s no way back to William’s Village but your own two feet.
In many ways, CU Boulder has tried its best to mitigate the many safety concerns that come with a big campus known for its party culture. We have CU NightRide, the CU Boulder Safe app (emergency alerts, connect with dispatch for support, and access important safety resources) and the late night Buff Bus. However, they all have their limitations, many closing too early, and this leaves students, quite literally, in the dark. Luckily, Generation Z is nothing but resilient, and if there’s one thing that we love more than matcha and edibles, it’s location sharing. According to Life360, 77% of Gen Z uses location sharing as a “social connection,” making it the leading age group to do so.
Location sharing takes personal safety into our own hands. However, I’m beginning to think we may be getting a little too comfortable with it. For me, this story began in 2017 with the release of Snapchat’s Snap Map, which helped popularize location sharing beyond the watchful eyes of our parents. For what felt like the first time, you could see exactly where your friends were and what was happening in your area and beyond. It felt like a new kind of honesty: proof that you were exactly where you said you’d be, your parents’ suspicions about you sneaking out be damned.
The Snap Map wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows though. It allowed the real-time GPS tracking by friends, or anyone on a user’s friend list, and let them monitor daily routines, travel speeds, and exact whereabouts, according to BBC. It opened the door for the misuse of location sharing, leading to stalking and burglaries. Instagram followed suit with its own live location-sharing map in August 2025, which renewed the safety concerns, according to CBS.
Not only this, but apps specifically and only designed for location sharing, such as Life360, have become more and more mainstream, and, all of a sudden, it feels like sharing your location with your friends was the norm, expected even. And in many ways, I can really respect the reasoning for doing so. If I’m on a bad date, there is nothing my parents can do four hours away in my hometown, but my friends, however, that’s a different story. It also completely changes the game for scheduling, no more “ETA?!” or “Where are you?” texts, now all you have to do is just check Life360 and you can get their exact location. It’s a convenience thing. It’s a trust thing.
For me, the problem with location sharing is that we’ve become so accustomed to sharing our locations that we no longer think critically about who has access to them. Because of that, we’ve confused trusting our friends with trusting the companies that facilitate that trust. I mean, how well do you know the apps that you use? Do you trust them with your exact location at all times? Do you trust them to keep your data safe? It’s not like you can reasonably expect to personally meet and befriend the white-haired CEO and ask for a tampon. And yet, we routinely hand over our personal information to companies we know next to nothing about. This has proven to be costly.
In November 2022, Google reached a $391.5 million settlement with a coalition of 40 states over allegations that it misled users about location tracking, according to NPR. More recently, in Chatrie v. United States, the Supreme Court addressed the constitutionality of law enforcement’s use of geofence warrants to obtain cellphone location data, raising further questions about the privacy we can reasonably expect in an increasingly connected world.
When information shared voluntarily with an app becomes accessible to a third party, we lose control of that data, and when data is free, man is it free. Tell me, dearest readers, does knowing that your location is being tracked change how freely you move through the world?
On a less serious note, I also just think that there’s a different stupid type of intimacy that comes with sharing your location with someone. It’s saying “hey, I trust you not to follow me home and steal my cat.” I mean, once I had a guy ask me if I could share my location with him on our first date, the answer was no, but I really applaud him for asking. But would I have felt differently if it was our third date? Our fourth? Is that third base now? Is having a constant stream of access to another person’s whereabouts proof of intimacy, even when that access can be invasive or even dangerous?
I don’t know if location sharing, or at least the widespread use of it, is worth it if we are left with so many questions. Yet, I am acutely aware that when we go on our phones to doomscroll on social media before bed every night, we are consenting to other people seeing our IP address, among countless other things. When you’re at CU Boulder at 2 a.m. on a Saturday night and you’re walking home after studying, location sharing gives you a peace of mind that can often feel better and less anxiety-inducing than calling a police dispatcher with the CU Safe App. And therein lies the problem. How can I reasonably ask students to give up a tool that makes them feel safer when the alternatives aren’t always enough? I can’t. Nor do I think we should have to choose between feeling secure on our walk home and maintaining some semblance of digital privacy. But somewhere along the way, we have begun treating constant access to one another as the price of feeling safe.
We have normalized giving our friends, our apps, and the companies behind them a window into our daily lives, often without asking what happens to that information once we’ve shared it. So, if we’re going to do that, I am suggesting that we start asking questions. Who can see our locations? How long is that information stored? What happens when a company experiences a data breach or law enforcement requests access to that data? And why have we become so comfortable handing over information that, in the wrong hands, can reveal so much about us?
Location sharing can be an act of care. It can mean knowing your friend made it home safely and checking that someone arrived where they said they would, and I don’t want to lose that. But caring about someone’s safety shouldn’t require giving up the right to privacy, and trusting a friend shouldn’t mean automatically trusting every company that helps us keep track of them.
So, heed my warning, Buffs, think before you give over your location.
Contact CU Independent Managing Editor Alexia Bailey at Alexia.Bailey@colorado.edu.
