ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Hum. Dyn.
Sec. Digital Impacts
Volume 7 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fhumd.2025.1553619
This article is part of the Research TopicDigital Relationships: Challenges and Opportunities in the Age of Virtual ConnectivityView all 8 articles
Privacy Paradox Among Romantic Couples: The Use of Location Sharing Apps
Provisionally accepted
- Shih Hsin University, Taipei, Taiwan
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The proliferation of smartphones has elevated privacy concerns, particularly regarding the easy access to geolocation information. Scholars have attempted to find a balance between location sharing and privacy protection; however, such a balance seems less relevant in the use of location-sharing apps among romantic couples. This study aims to explore the role of location-sharing apps in romantic relationships and examines whether privacy still matters in this context. The couple and family technology framework as well as sociotechnological family framework were incorporated to develop a theoretical framework for the current study. A survey was applied and the sample size was 434. The findings reveal that acceptance of monitoring negatively associates with perceived intrusion while scope positively associates with perceived intrusion. Scope is positively associated with mate-guarding. Perceived intrusion negatively associates with relationship satisfaction whereas mate-guarding positively associates with relationship satisfaction. Theoretical implications were discussed.
Keywords: romantic partners, location sharing apps, acceptance of monitoring, perceived intrusion, Mate-guarding, relationship satisfaction
Received: 08 Apr 2025; Accepted: 18 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Lin. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Chia Shin Lin, Shih Hsin University, Taipei, Taiwan
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