Findly is a fictional location-sharing smartphone app developed by Debbie Mullen and used by her and members of her family throughout Dear Debbie. The app acts as a symbol of Debbie’s intelligence and wasted potential, and of her protective nature, which stems from the trauma of being raped in college. Findly is described as “a highly accurate tracker of friends and family” (18) comparable to the Find My Friends app, “but with much more impressive accuracy” (96). These passages suggest that Debbie has an exceptional technical mind on par with developers at major tech companies. The fact that Debbie is a stay-at-home mom and keeps the app closed to everyone “except for our immediate family” (18) reflects the novel’s sense that Debbie’s potential is being wasted.

Debbie’s insistence that her family members download and use Findly is the result of her overly-protective nature, which the novel suggests stems from the trauma of being sexually assaulted. Debbie insists that her daughters “are safer when [she] know[s] where they are” (18), and although she tries not to violate their privacy, she feels comforted knowing that, “not only do I know where they are, but I’m also able to download a history of their prior locations” (18). She explicitly connects her desire to keep her daughters safe to the lasting trauma of her sexual assault, noting, “if my parents had protected me better” (86), she might not have been assaulted. The novel suggests that Findly is Debbie’s attempt to protect her daughters from the same abuse she suffered.