Think students don’t care about online privacy? Think again, say two researchers who have published a new paper about the privacy attitudes of 18- and 19-year-olds.
The researchers, Danah Boyd and Eszter Hargittai, report that most Facebook users modified their privacy settings at least once in 2009 and that “engagement with privacy settings increased significantly” between 2009 and 2010.
“Over all, our data show that far from being nonchalant and unconcerned about privacy matters, the majority of young adult users of Facebook are engaged with managing their privacy settings on the site at least to some extent,” the researchers write.
Ms. Boyd, a researcher at Microsoft Research, and Ms. Hargittai, an associate professor in the communication-studies department at Northwestern University, base their findings on surveys of students at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Their paper is published in the August issue of the journal First Monday.
The authors speculate that the increased privacy interest could come from public attention devoted to the subject, from more changes in Facebook’s default settings, or from prompts that Facebook shows users.
7 Responses to Who Cares About Facebook Privacy? Students Do
drnancylbush - July 30, 2010 at 9:19 am
Perhaps, but my anecdotal evidence suggests that college students talk about privacy but do little to insure it. I did a poll of my students (obviously a limited, convenience sample) and all but one had his/her date of birth on FB, the majority had a home town listed, and many had a cell phone number listed. Personal privacy requires personal responsibility, a characteristic that appears to be ignored in many cases.
rachael_stanley - July 30, 2010 at 9:51 am
I think with all the information in the media lately about how Facebook is making things more public without the user’s knowledge the desire for privacy by college students is increasing. They are more aware of what they’ve put out, but they are also angry that a large corporation is allowing their information to be used in ways they had not anticipated. When Facebook first started, it amazed me how many of my student workers had their class schedules, home addresses and more listed on the public section of their profiles for anyone to see. Now, most of them at least have learned to keep that associated only with their own friends on Facebook.
behzodsirjani - July 30, 2010 at 10:57 am
In response to drnancylbush, I think that if you do bring up a valid concern, but if you refer to the tables later on in the paper, you will see that boyd and Hargittai pay specific attention to the amount of privacy changes that users are making, as well as how their interactions on Facebook have shifted over the past year. I think the one piece of the study that I see lacking is a consideration of students who may not have changed their Facebook privacy settings, but have shifted the content that they are publishing. As a student, most of my settings are set to “friends only,” but I have began publishing less pictures of myself and friends, and more images of trips I go on, links I find interesting, and what not. This reduction in personal projection is something that I am finding more common amongst my peer group.Overall, I very much enjoyed the paper that these two put out and I think this size of survey into Facebook is just one of many more to come involving social media interactions and privacy, allowing us to better understand and qualify what “friends” look like in digital space.
sdblogger - July 30, 2010 at 10:48 pm
It seems social media is a huge issues in higher education these days, and especially Facebook as it started out targeting college students. I know many of the students I work with have changed their profile name – many use first and middle name while excluding their last name – so potential employers have trouble find them.It is one of my summer goals to improve the way our programs attract students through Facebook. Check out what we’re doing here: http://www.studentdevelopmentblog.com/2010/07/13/keeping-up-with-social-media/
samoz - August 2, 2010 at 12:41 am
There is a misconception as to why students are concerned with privacy on Facebook and other social sites. The problem you’ll find is that they don’t want their teachers or employers to know everything. If teachers and employers were to stop trying to tap into students’ social world, we probably wouldn’t see students being concerned with privacy. I think you’ll find that students don’t want teachers and employers sticking their nose in their social lives.
saraid - August 2, 2010 at 2:19 pm
@drnancylbush, each of those items are (1) common points where you can find connection with others and (2) widely considered to be trivial pieces of information (excepting the cell number).Most people don’t know how easy it is to pinpoint a person with the data that’s out there, and they don’t know how people would use such information to do so in the first place. Saying that the publication of this data implies that they don’t care is like saying a child doesn’t care about nuclear winters when there’s a big red button to push.It’s ignorance, first and foremost. Perhaps you should show them how each of those data can be used against them and then take a poll again.
cshunt312 - August 4, 2010 at 10:44 am
As someone who disagrees with the assertion made by Zuckerberg and others that privacy standards will be much looser in the Digital Era, I’m glad to see these results. I took a quick look at the study results and could not find the sample size, which is critical. Does anyone know what it is?