Teens, Social Media, and Privacy

antdude writes "Pew Internet reports that: 'Teens are sharing more info about themselves on social media sites than they have in the past, but they are also taking a variety of technical and non-technical steps to manage the privacy of that information. Despite taking these privacy-protective actions, teen social media users do not express a high level of concern about third-parties (such as businesses or advertisers) accessing their data.'"

Comments

Newsflash: Teens make bad decisions

[Anonymous Coward]

Film at 11.

Re:Newsflash: Teens make bad decisions

[Anonymous Coward]

I am against being tracked. If the advertisements were just relevant to the content of the site I was on, and not based on what the advertising server thinks I am interested based on it tracking my browsing habits, I wouldn't mind them.

Re:Newsflash: Teens make bad decisions

[_merlin]

I'm working in Hong Kong, and youtube has been bombarding me with ads for finding a foreign husband, which is pretty funny considering I'm a straight married guy.

Re:Newsflash: Teens make bad decisions

[stephanruby]

I'm working in Hong Kong, and youtube has been bombarding me with ads for finding a foreign husband, which is pretty funny considering I'm a straight married guy.

Are you sure your wife hasn't been using your computer?

Re:Newsflash: Teens make bad decisions

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Why is it a bad decision? The more advertisers know about me, the more likely I am to see ads for things I am actually interested in.

I do hope that none of your interests would be worth more to your insurer, potential employer, or other interested parties than they would be to doubleclick...

Re:Newsflash: Teens make bad decisions

[Joce640k]

Are you Scott Adams?

You may want to form part of the matrix and let the overlords manage you, not everybody does.

Everybody screws up when they're a teenager, it's all part of the deal.

This is the first generation that will have all their screw-ups stored in a cross-referenced database for future reference. A database that "connected" people will be able to manipulate/edit for their own benefit.

Not being in the database will be even worse - employers are already demanding access to people's Facebook accounts.

Re:Newsflash: Teens make bad decisions

[Razgorov Prikazka]

Define harmful please.
If a store owner sees me lurking around the high end laptops and comes to me to help me (and his income of course) I think that that is not 'harmful'.
If a server is tracking my every move around the web for years on end. Not so nice. Not harmful either, but annoying... yes, certainly.
If a company is tracking my every move around the web for years on end and sells this to who knows who, and has a 'privacy' policy of 24 pages in fontsize 5. Mmmmnot harmful in the sense that it will harm my health or quality of life, but back OFF!!
If a company is tracking my every move around the web for years on end and sells this to my future boss who wants to inquire my personal habits. This is harmful because it might deprive me of income (and with that food, medical treatments and so on). Yes harmful.

Privacy is not about harmful vs harmless. 25 Shades of harm I would say :-)
A lot of us here remember the time before internet and cell phones. When I wanted to know about herpes I would go to the library and look it up in a book on STD's. No one would ever know (to a certain degree of course). Now this search queries are logged and stored and available to the highest bidder. That is a completely different story!
The teens of today have no clue whatsoever how life would be without the web, social media, cellphones and the integration of all these. They therefore make different choices. Surprised? Not me. They have no 0. No baseline to what is intrusion and what is just fine.

Re:Newsflash: Teens make bad decisions

[chihowa]

You're missing something though - the fact that everyone's indiscretions will be available will mean that indiscretions will matter less.

That doesn't really follow, though. What will happen is that we'll have a larger class of people who will never be fit for high level jobs, politics, certain professions because of their actions as teenagers. Kids in the "right" class will be taught not to make these mistakes or their parents will pay to have them properly covered up.

Our society may talk the talk, but it isn't really tolerant of indiscretions, youthful or otherwise. In the same way, charging more and more people with felonies for minor victimless crimes doesn't make people look less harshly on felons; it just makes a larger class of unemployable felons.

Whew.

[multiben]

I'm so glad that today's social media options didn't exist when I was at school. I shudder to think of the things I would have thought would be fun to post on the internet.

Perspective...

[Alyeska]

Yesterday, I watched an old episode of "The Rockford Files" from 1977 -- a serious two-parter about a private consortium committing various crimes while setting up a secret computer system to track consumers. The episode ended with a black screen and a chilling message from NBC:

"Secret information centers, building dossiers on individuals, exist today. You have no legal right to know abut them, prevent them, or sue for damages. Our liberty may well be the price we pay for permitting this to continue unchecked -- Member, U.S. Privacy Protection Commission."

Re:Perspective...

[TapeCutter]

I know the episode your talking about and remember the message. It's probably no coincidence that Nixon split his guts to David Frost in 1977. The FBI under J.E. Hoover had been spying on US citizens for decades, they routinely infiltrated and sabotaged non violent groups such as anti-war protesters, as an example of how absurd it became they had a huge dossier on John Lennon. I'm not an American but I was 17 at the time and watergate was a huge affair, it was clear that the kind of thing that happened at the Watergate hotel was routine, the scandal was followed by some significant legislation on what data government could collect, and under what circumstances domestic groups could be infiltrated. It doesn't seem to have worked, I would not be at all surprised if someone found a similar dossier on the "Dixie Chicks" buried somewhere in Homeland security's basement.

As an Aussie I would like to give Letterman a pat on the back for what he's been doing with his "stooge of the day" segment, regardless of your views on gun control, the point he keeps hammering home is that all the stooges voted in direct opposition to the expressed wishes of an overwhelming majority of their constituents. Every single stooge on Letterman's show is a specific example of an individual politician doing their bit to "steal your liberty". Sure politicians should lead rather than follow the opinion polls, but when they are so out of kilter with them (in some cases taking a position opposed by over 90% of voters), they have some 'splaining to do.

Ah youth

[Krneki]

Still innocent about how morally hypocrite the adult world is.

I envy them.

There is nothing wrong with sharing personal information if a person desire to do so, what is wrong is the exploitation of them. This is what we should be enraged about.