Parents' Guide to

Find My Friends

By Chris Morris, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 18+

Parental controls help lessen risks of Apple's location app.

Find My Friends Poster Image

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this app.

Community Reviews

age 12+

Based on 5 parent reviews

age 18+

Live

Love
age 10+

good tracking location app

I like the app because you can see where someone who opted in is in real time. Sometimes the app is a little slow to refresh location. And if user is in airplane mode tracking location does not work which stinks.Good alerts to notify you when someone leave or arrives locations you set.

This title has:

Easy to play/use

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say (5 ):
Kids say (4 ):

The risks that accompany any location tracking app are present in FIND MY FRIENDS, but to Apple's credit, the company has taken several steps to mitigate risk. That said, the app is still not a wise choice for children, unless parents want to use the iPod Touch or iPhone as a tracking device for their kids.

The free app allows people to track where their friends are, but uses a permission-based system. No one can track you unless you give your consent first. (Kids, though, might let anyone track them in an effort to build a large cache of online "friends.") It's easy to stop broadcasting your location, but given people's tendencies to sometimes forget simple tasks, it's inevitable that users will sometimes inadvertently announce where they are when they would rather not. Functionality-wise, it's not dramatically different than other location sharing services, but it does the job well and includes enough additional features (such as temporary location sharing) and controls that it might be worth checking out -- if the user is age appropriate.

App Details

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