Life360, a location and communication app for families, has shared findings from a recent omnibus survey that show a growing acceptance and use of location sharing apps. The survey, conducted by VeraQuest among a group of more of 1,169 teens and adults who own a smartphone, examined habits and feelings about sharing one’s location through an app.
More than 60% of smartphone users report that they use at least one location sharing app on their smartphone, and 36% say they use two or more. Forty-one percent of adults say they are more willing to share their location today versus five years ago.
Both teens and adults overwhelmingly cite safety as the primary reason they are willing to share their location through an app. Yet that feeling of safety is tied to sharing one’s location with family members more so than friends. 87% of teens and 73% of adults say they feel safer knowing that their family is aware of their location through an app while only 39% of teens and 42% of adults say they feel safer knowing that friends are aware of their location.
Interestingly, given the number of location sharing apps built to promote socialization with friends and places, only 46% of adults and 47% of teens say they feel more connected to others when they share their location through a location sharing app.
“As our user base has exploded to more than 20 million families, we were curious to learn more about the habits and motivations for location sharing,” says Chris Hulls, co-founder and CEO of Life360. “It’s particularly interesting to see that safety is the primary reason driving the use of location sharing apps, and that location sharing with family trumps sharing with friends.”
The survey sampled 1,950 online general population respondents aged 18+ and 250 teens within the United States between June 27 and June 30, 2013. Respondents were randomly selected to be proportional to the demographic strata of total U.S. population. For more information, visit www.life360.com.