Young people’s attitudes towards privacy

Young people’s attitudes towards privacy

Contrary to stereotypes, youth do care about their privacy.

Some scholars have described today’s youth as digital by default.[1] Even before they’re born, they may have had a digital profile generated by their parents, a health record produced by the state, and they may have already attracted the interest of commercial actors.[2] As they grow, they increasingly participate in a digital environment that “is not designed or regulated to be legible and respectful of children’s rights and best interests.”[3]

One obstacle to addressing this is that both how young people view privacy and how they manage it are often different from adults. As a result, “we need to be careful not to make false assumptions about teens and privacy.”[4] Most notably, rather than making privacy decisions in advance based on a rule or principle, youth “experiment with online disclosures and take protective measures retroactively once their privacy concern has been triggered.”[5]

To understand how young people see privacy, it’s useful to consider it as two distinct (though overlapping) concepts: social privacy and data privacy.

Youth and privacy

Youth don’t see privacy primarily as keeping certain things to themselves, but rather as the right to decide “who could see what – and in particular to avoid the eyes of teachers and parents.”[6] In their paper Young People Online and the Social Value of Privacy, Canadian privacy scholars Valerie Steeves and Priscilla Regan identified four different understandings of the value of privacy by young people:

1. Contextual: Privacy is imagined in terms of norms and values. These norms may be different in different communities – among teens and adults, most obviously, but also within different online spaces and communities.
2. Relational: Privacy is understood in terms of a reciprocal relationship or a shared obligation.
3. Performative: Privacy is seen as necessary to create a space free of “constant monitoring, of judgmentalism, or of retention of trial runs” as part of adolescent self-discovery and self-expression.
4. Dialectical: Privacy isn’t seen as absolute but as a constant tension “between realms or spheres, with overlaps and gray areas.” This conceptualization of privacy can seem paradoxical to adults, as youth seek both privacy and publicity online at the same time.[7]

Rather than being in tension, though, controlling which audiences see posted content and limiting unwanted surveillance are both essential for youth to feel they can participate fully and openly in online spaces.

Social privacy

MediaSmarts’ research has shown that young people are highly aware of social privacy issues and take significant efforts to control who sees the different things they post. For instance, 19 out of 20 Canadian youth have taken steps to hide their online content from someone, more than half have used an app or platform’s privacy settings to manage who can see what they post, and one third have used a fake account to protect their privacy.[8] They also have strong social norms around whether and when it’s appropriate to share other people’s content.[9] For instance, one study found that four in 10 youth always seek consent before posting anything about a close friend.[10] This demonstrates that social privacy is largely concerned with privacy ethics.

One of the main ways in which youth manage audiences is by making multiple accounts on the same social network. Typically, there will be a single “real” or “public” account which is available to all online contacts and another “spam” account (or “finsta,” short for “fake Instagram”) for close friends only. As one youth put it, “the reason [people] make a spam account or private account is because their main Instagram account is for people who barely know them. Let’s say you meet someone and it’s like, ‘Hey, what’s your Instagram? You’re gonna give them your regular Instagram where [there are] pictures of you and your friends.”[11]

Steganography – the use of things like slang, in-jokes, codes, song lyrics or pop culture references to send a message legible only to their friends or peers – is another common technique used by youth as a form of boundary management, where youth assert social and behavioural clues.[12] This “allows teens to de/code messages for their intended audience, or to use language/specific references for their intended audiences.”[13] Friends and peers that share similar cultural reference points, experiences or interests are then able to glean the ‘true’ meaning of the post, while other readers come to a different understanding.

While youth are mostly concerned with the immediate consequences of social networking, such as affecting or changing their consciously crafted online image, they are conscious of the possible future audiences of what they post, as well.[14] Once anything is posted online, it can be seen by unanticipated audiences or used for unintended purposes. This is made even easier by tools such as TikTok’s Stitch and Duet features, which allow a user to split-screen their video with someone else’s.

It isn’t just other users that can prolong the life of online content. In 2020 an independent security researcher used Instagram’s Download Your Information tool to see what data the social network was storing on its servers about him and discovered that it was holding on to information he had deleted going as far back as seven years (Instagram’s policy states that it will remove deleted data from its servers within 90 days).[15] Similarly, X (formerly known as Twitter) has been found to store direct messages years after users have deleted them.[16] For young people, the idea that platforms store deleted content is more upsetting than the thought of other people seeing it: as one participant in MediaSmarts’ study To Share or Not to Share put it, ““I really do not know [why corporations keep photos] ’cause what could they do with your picture? Why do they have it? What could they do with it? It doesn’t make sense to have it if they don’t even know you... I don’t really want them to have my picture. I mean what would they do with it? It’s actually scary.”[17]

Another problem associated with social privacy is parents sharing information and photos about their children online, or “sharenting.” MediaSmarts’ research has found that almost three-quarters of parents say they sometimes share photos, videos or blogs about their children online,[18] while a UK study found that parents share more than 1500 photos of their child online by their fifth birthday on average.[19]

Parents may have many motivations for sharenting: sharing one’s life with family members or other parents, curating and communicating a particular image of oneself as a parent, or (especially in the case of parents of children with disabilities) finding support within a community.[20] But sharenting has significant downsides as well, which can range from an increase in bullying due to content being shared without a child’s consent and reputational damage later on in life.[21]

In some cases, there may also be financial compensation for parents who monetize videos or photos on Instagram, TikTok or YouTube. When sharing information about your children online becomes a source of income, “the question of agency or control becomes even more important when the legacy or history of that identity may be entirely inescapable.”[22] As one young person who had been frequently featured in their parents’ online posts said, “To any parents that are considering starting a family vlog or monetizing your children’s lives on the public internet, here is my advice: you shouldn’t do it. Any money you get will be greatly overshadowed by years of suffering… your child will never be normal… I never consented to being online.”[23]

While these risks are generally unlikely, a more common consequence of sharenting is “privacy turbulence” between parents and children, especially teens who often resent their parents’ sharing photos or posts about them without their consent. [24]

The main problem with sharenting, therefore, is the attitude towards privacy that it models. As with parental surveillance, if we don’t show we care about their privacy, we won’t teach youth to respect other people’s privacy – or their own. Making a point of modeling privacy-respecting behaviors, such as by asking kids before posting anything relating to them, makes them more likely to do the same.[25]

As well as “sharenting,” MediaSmarts’ research has found that parents often feel obligated to surveil their children because they fear what they’re doing online.[26] This is often encouraged by media coverage which tells parents that their children are at risk.[27] Young people seem to have accepted this narrative as well, with almost three-quarters of them feeling that it’s acceptable for parents to track them using location apps on their digital devices.[28]

Increasingly, enabling parental surveillance is positioned by technology companies as a positive step in keeping children safe, with app and device makers promoting tools such as Apple’s Family Location Tracking, Google’s Family Link and TikTok’s Family Pairing. MediaSmarts’ research, however, has found that parents’ use of technological tools is not associated with a safer online experience for youth.[29]

Besides being of limited effectiveness in protecting youth, intrusive surveillance by parents deprives young people of the space they need to grow and experiment with their identities and self-expression,[30] and “can have a suppressive effect by limiting teens’ online disclosures and risk-coping skills.”[31] Additionally, surveillance creates an environment that leads to distrust:

“Monitoring our kids can give us a false sense of security. We trust that by surveilling their every move, we can step in to prevent harm. But if we are constantly there to catch, fix, and prevent every mistake, it’s very likely that our children will keep repeating them. And in the end, constant vigilance may harm our relationships without any guarantee we can keep our kids safe from all harm, mistakes and danger.” Devorah Heitner, Growing Up in Public

Monitoring kids at all times, even with the best of intentions, can deprive “children of the opportunity to be trusted and to learn about trusting others, and the opportunity for growing competence and capacity that can result from this.”[32] Perhaps as a result, one quarter of Canadian youth have taken steps to hide online content from parents or other family members – the second-most-frequent response after “strangers.”[33]

Data privacy

While many young people take concrete steps to manage their social privacy, such as being selective of their audiences intended for certain information by using different platforms for different purposes or creating different accounts for different groups, data privacy is more difficult to manage.[34] Young people across Canada are becoming increasingly aware of how their personal information is collected, used and shared by online corporations and platforms, and they are looking for more information and resources on how to maintain control over their data..

When youth think about corporate data collection, they do have strong feelings about it, using terms like “weird” and “sketchy” to describe practices like location tracking[36] and being “shocked at why companies would be interested in their data and why this might have privacy implications when they have nothing to hide.”[37]

Many young people take steps to limit data collection when they register or sign up for services or web pages that require personal information. A common practice is to falsify or limit the information given in order to sign up. Limiting information is a practice whereby only the information that’s necessary to access the service (generally noted by an asterisk) is provided, while any non-required information is simply left blank. Furthermore, many youth use pseudonyms or otherwise make up information when filling out information forms.[38] While these practices demonstrate that youth are aware that corporations are collecting their data, they also show the limits of that awareness as they focus exclusively on the information that young people consciously submit, rather than data passively collected by apps and platforms. As well, they may actually lead to less privacy if youth sign up with a false age, as apps and platforms are increasingly limiting the use of data collection among users ages 13 to 18.

Similarly, one reason why youth are often surprised at the extent of corporate surveillance is that they often expect companies to act with the same values as would someone they know personally.[39] For example, they expect platforms such as social networks to remove all copies of photos that they’ve deleted and to refrain from accessing accounts set to “private.”[40] While this may seem naïve, it is likely a consequence of the fact that they learn about social privacy first, and as a result “extend interpersonal assumptions to institutional and commercial contexts.”[41]

Even when they are aware of data collection and its possible consequences, however, young people don’t feel that they have a choice about using popular platforms; to do so means cutting themselves off from popular culture, in the case of video-sharing platforms, or from their friends in the case of social networks.[42]

Similarly, many youth feel helpless to make sense of privacy policies and terms and conditions documents that are so long that companies could “hide stuff in there that you might not like,” and at any rate they feel “obliged to agree” if they want to use the service.[43] Perhaps as a result, almost two-thirds of Canadian youth mistakenly believe that the presence of a privacy policy means an app or website won’t share any information about them.[44] Participants in MediaSmarts’ research expressed a desire to “unbundle” consent, making it possible to opt in to certain features and out of others, as well as making policies more readable and transparent and taking steps to confirm that users genuinely understand what they are agreeing to.[45]

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[1] Livingstone, S, Nandagiri, R & Stoilova, M (2020). Digital by Default: Children’s Capacity to Understand and Manage Online Data and Privacy. Media and Communication, 8:4, pp. 197-207.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Wisniewski, P. J., Vitak, J., & Hartikainen, H. (2022). Privacy in adolescence. In Modern socio-technical perspectives on privacy (pp. 315-336). Cham: Springer International Publishing.

[5] Wisniewski, P. J., Vitak, J., & Hartikainen, H. (2022). Privacy in adolescence. In Modern socio-technical perspectives on privacy (pp. 315-336). Cham: Springer International Publishing.

[6] Steeves, V (2012). Young Canadians in a Wired World Phase III. MediaSmarts. Ottawa.

[7] Steeves, V., & Regan, P. (2014). Young people online and the social value of privacy. Journal of Information, Communication and Ethics in Society.

[8] MediaSmarts. (2023). “Young Canadians in a Wireless World, Phase IV: Digital Media Literacy and Digital Citizenship.” MediaSmarts. Ottawa

[9] Johnson, M, Steeves, V Regan Shade, L & Foran, G (2017). To Share or Not to Share: How Teens Make Privacy Decisions about Photos on Social Media. Ottawa: MediaSmarts.

[10] Ruiz, D. (2023) What Gen Z really cares about when it comes to privacy. Malwarebytes. Retrieved from https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/personal/2023/11/what-gen-z-really-cares-about-when-it-comes-to-privacy

[11] Quoted in Heitner, Devorah. (2023) Growing Up in Public. Penguin Publishing Group

[12] Livingstone, S et al. (2019). Children’s data and privacy online: Growing up in the digital age – Evidence review supplement: Coded sources. LSE Media and Communications. Retrieved from https://www.lse.ac.uk/media-and-communications/assets/documents/research/projects/childrens-privacy-online/Evidence-review-Supplement.pdf

[13] Livingstone, S et al. (2019). Children’s data and privacy online: Growing up in the digital age – Evidence review supplement: Coded sources. LSE Media and Communications. Retrieved from https://www.lse.ac.uk/media-and-communications/assets/documents/research/projects/childrens-privacy-online/Evidence-review-Supplement.pdf

[14] Johnson, M, Steeves, V Regan Shade, L & Foran, G (2017). To Share or Not to Share: How Teens Make Privacy Decisions about Photos on Social Media. Ottawa: MediaSmarts.

[15] Humphries, M (2020). Personal Data Found on Instagram’s Servers 7 Years After User Deleted Files. PC Mag. Retrieved from https://www.pcmag.com/news/personal-data-found-on-instagrams-servers-7-years-after-user-deleted-files

[16] Lomas, N & Whittaker, Z (2019). Even years later, Twitter doesn’t delete your direct messages. TechCrunch+. Retrieved from https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/15/twitter-direct-messages/

[17] Johnson, M, Steeves, V, Regan Shade, L & Foran, G (2017). To Share or Not to Share: How Teens Make Privacy Decisions about Photos on Social Media. Ottawa: MediaSmarts.

[18] Brisson-Boivin, K. (2018) The Digital Well-Being of Canadian Families. Ottawa, ON.

[19] Nominet. (2016). Share with Care. Retrieved from https://media.nominet.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Nominet-Share-with-Care-2016-Infographic.pdf

[20] Ranzini, G., Newlands, G., & Lutz, C. (2020). Sharenting, peer influence, and privacy concerns: A study on the instagram-sharing behaviors of parents in the United Kingdom. Social Media+ Society, 6(4), 2056305120978376.

[21] Korajlija, K (2020). An Unfair Game of Virtual Hide-and-Go-Seek: The Passive Collection of Children’s Information Online. The Interdisciplinary Research Laboratory on the Rights of the Child (IRLRC). University of Ottawa.

[22] Leaver, T. (2015). Born Digital? Presence, Privacy and Intimate Surveillance in Hartley, J. & W. Qu, (2015) Re-Orientation: Translingual Transcultural Transmedia. Shanghai: Fudan University Press. 151.

[23] Latifi, F. (2023) Influencer Parents and The Kids Who Had Their Childhood Made Into Content. Teen Vogue. Retrieved from https://www.teenvogue.com/story/influencer-parents-children-social-media-impact

[24] Ranzini, G., Newlands, G., & Lutz, C. (2020). Sharenting, peer influence, and privacy concerns: A study on the instagram-sharing behaviors of parents in the United Kingdom. Social Media+ Society, 6(4), 2056305120978376.

[25] Reich, S. M., Starks, A., Santer, N., & Manago, A. (2021). Brief report–modeling media use: how parents’ and other adults’ posting behaviors relate to young adolescents’ posting behaviors. Frontiers in Human Dynamics, 3, 595924.

[26] Steeves, V., McAleese, S., & Brisson-Boivin, K. (2020). Young Canadians in a wireless world, phase IV: Talking to youth and parents about online resiliency. MediaSmarts. Ottawa.

[27] Stern, S. R., & Burke Odland, S. (2017). Constructing dysfunction: News coverage of teenagers and social media. Mass Communication and society, 20(4), 505-525. 

[28] MediaSmarts. (2022). “Young Canadians in a Wireless World, Phase IV: Online Privacy and Consent.” MediaSmarts. Ottawa.

[29] MediaSmarts. (2022). “Young Canadians in a Wireless World, Phase IV: Encountering

Harmful and Discomforting Content Online.” MediaSmarts. Ottawa

[30] Weir, K (2016). Parents Shouldn’t Spy on their Kids. Nautilus. 35:2. Retrieved from https://nautil.us/issue/35/boundaries/parents-shouldnt-spy-on-their-kids

[31] Wisniewski, P. J., Vitak, J., & Hartikainen, H. (2022). Privacy in adolescence. In Modern socio-technical perspectives on privacy (pp. 315-336). Cham: Springer International Publishing.

[32] Rooney, T. (2010). Trusting children: How do surveillance technologies alter a child’s experience of trust, risk, and responsibility? Surveillance and Society, 7(3/4), 344-355.

[33] MediaSmarts. (2022). “Young Canadians in a Wireless World, Phase IV: Online Privacy and

Consent.” MediaSmarts. Ottawa.

[34] Stoilova, M., Livingstone, S., & Nandagiri, R. (2020). Digital by default: Children’s capacity to understand and manage online data and privacy. Media and Communication, 8(4), 197-207.

[35] MediaSmarts. (2023). “Young Canadians in a Wireless World, Phase IV: Digital Media Literacy and Digital Citizenship.” MediaSmarts. Ottawa

[36] McAleese, S., Johnson, M., Ladouceur M. (2020) Young Canadians Speak Out: A Qualitative Research Project on Privacy and Consent. MediaSmarts. Retrieved from https://mediasmarts.ca/sites/default/files/publication-report/full/report_young_canadians_speak_out.pdf

[37]Livingstone, S, Nandagiri, R & Stoilova, M (2020). Digital by Default: Children’s Capacity to Understand and Manage Online Data and Privacy. Media and Communication, 8:4, pp. 197-207.

[38] Dally C et al. (2019). ‘I make up a silly name’: Understanding Children’s Perception of Privacy Risks Online. Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA. Paper 106, 1-13.

[39]Livingstone, S, Nandagiri, R & Stoilova, M (2020). Digital by Default: Children’s Capacity to Understand and Manage Online Data and Privacy. Media and Communication, 8:4, pp. 197-207.

[40] Johnson, M, Steeves, V Regan Shade, L & Foran, G (2017). To Share or Not to Share: How Teens Make Privacy Decisions about Photos on Social Media. Ottawa: MediaSmarts.

[41] Stoilova, M., Livingstone, S., & Nandagiri, R. (2020). Digital by default: Children’s capacity to understand and manage online data and privacy. Media and Communication, 8(4), 197-207.

[42] McAleese, S., Johnson, M., Ladouceur M. (2020) Young Canadians Speak Out: A Qualitative Research Project on Privacy and Consent. MediaSmarts. Retrieved from https://mediasmarts.ca/sites/default/files/publication-report/full/report_young_canadians_speak_out.pdf

[43] Pangrazio, L & Selwyn, N (2018). “It’s not like it’s life or death or whatever”: Young People’s Understandings of Social Media Data. Social Media + Society. 1-9.

[44] MediaSmarts. (2023). “Young Canadians in a Wireless World, Phase IV: Digital Media Literacy and Digital Citizenship.” MediaSmarts. Ottawa

[45] McAleese, S., Johnson, M., Ladouceur M. (2020) Young Canadians Speak Out: A Qualitative Research Project on Privacy and Consent. MediaSmarts. Retrieved from https://mediasmarts.ca/sites/default/files/publication-report/full/report_young_canadians_speak_out.pdf