Got Facebook?  

            The popularity of social media has called into question whether the mere joining of a SNS constitutes one to forego their expectation of privacy.  Regardless of these expectations, people who put their personal information out there must realize a threat to their privacy will always exist.  This information as well as a person’s physical whereabouts can be tracked without much effort put forth.  One researcher suggests that people still care about their privacy but have a lack of knowledge in understanding how their information is used and stored.  While other researchers suggest people are unconcerned and become desensitized to the negative consequences that could result.  The Pew Research study (2012) concluded that although most people state their privacy is important to them, they do not take necessary steps to protect their privacy.

Summary of Findings

            Social network sites (SNS) account for approximately two thirds of all internet users. This was concluded in a study conducted by the Pew Research Center (Pew Research, 2012).   This study went on to state that along with the increased usage of SNS the management of privacy and reputation on these sites has increased as well. Fifty-eight percent have their profile labeled as private and twenty percent have their profile open to, the public.  Women have placed significantly higher restrictions on their accounts than men, while men and younger adults have a higher incidence of posting comments they later regret.

Findings

            Two out of three adult internet users maintain a profile on a SNS.  Fifty-eight percent have privacy settings that allow only their friends to view their profiles, while 20% leave their profiles open for public viewing.  When considering gender, 67% of women reserve their profiles for friends only, while only 48% of men placed the same limitations on their profile.  Age does not appear to be a factor in privacy settings as the data show similar trends among the various ages (Pew Research, 2012).

One barrier for lack of privacy controls on SNS may be due to the level of difficulty in setting these controls. Forty-eight percent of social media users report that managing controls can be somewhat difficult.  Forty-nine percent report they do not feel these controls are difficult at all.  Younger adults have the least amount of difficulty in managing privacy settings.  College graduates experience a great amount of difficulty in managing their controls than people with less education. 

            In the past four years, there has been a 7% increase in profile pruning or deleting people, comments or photos from a profile.  Fifty-six percent of young adults have deleted comments on their profiles.  The primary reason cited is reputation management.  One in ten people reported that they posted a comment that they later went on to regret. Facebook continues to be the preferred social networking site with 93% of people who have a profile say they have it on Facebook.

Survey and Methodology

            The study used a survey that consisted of multiple questions being asked of 2,277 adults, to include interviews with 755 people over cell phone.  One of the questions that was asked of everyone was whether they had used one of the popular social networking sites, such as MySpace, Facebook or LinkedIn, “ever, yesterday, never, don’t know, or refused” (Privacy Management on Social Media Sites, 2012).  Another question that was asked is how often they visited social networking sites?  Answers to this question ranged from “several times a day” to less than every few weeks.  These questions established the frequency in which the users visited these sites.  Out of all of the sites, 79% of the users said they visited Facebook the most.

            After establishing this information, the users were asked about the privacy settings set within their profiles.  58% of the people who answered the question stated that their profile was set to “Private (friends only)” while a surprising one in five people claimed that their profiles were set to “public” access.  One might argue that the difficulty level of selecting privacy settings may contribute to the high number of public profiles in the survey, but the next question eliminated that theory when only 2% of the users claimed that privacy settings were “very difficult” to configure.

In conclusion, the use of social networking sites is on the rise as well as people’s desire to maintain a certain amount of privacy while continuing to frequent these sites.  Most people have stated that they understand that a possible breach of privacy may exist but gain a false sense of security as time goes on without incident.  Women are more likely to put controls on their accounts while men tend to leave theirs open for public access. Most people found that the privacy controls were not too difficult to use, eliminating this as a barrier to setting privacy controls.

 

References

Pew Research Center (2012).  Privacy Management on Social Media Sites.  Retrieved from http://www.isaca.org/Groups/Professional-English/privacy-data-protection/GroupDocuments/PIP_Privacy%20mgt%20on%20social%20media%20sites%20Feb%202012.pdf.