Knowing someone is "at school" or "at a friend's house" is qualitatively different from being fed their geographic coordinates in real time. Kind of like if you were in the bathroom when a guest arrived at your house - There's a being difference between your spouse telling your guest, "They're upstairs" vs. "They're upstairs in the bathroom pooping".
Neither Find My Phone or Life 360 doesn't tell you when someone is in the bathroom vs upstairs. It just gives you information like "at school" or "at a friend's house". Not sure what you are arguing here.
