We all love social networks. We love letting our friends know where we are and what we are doing. However, we all worry about our privacy too. A recent poll from USA Today showed that nearly 7 out of 10 Facebook users worry about their safety on the social network.
Most people have changed their settings to protect the visibility of their social network profile. In addition to that, we are regularly warned by friends who pay attention to change a setting, in order to protect our privacy. This indicates that most social network users have the desire to protect their profile and personal information against unwanted visitors. Still at the same time, we play Facebook games and download applications on our smartphones, most of which demand acces to our personal information. And when one of our friends decides to tag a picture, hardly anyone would remove this tag for privacy reasons. Even though we know that this picture becomes accessible to everyone, including the company we (desire to) work for.
The question that we may ask ourselves is whether or there is an explanation for our contrasting social network behaviour. My explanation would be that social network users are afraid to miss out or to be found "socially awkward". This explanation is more or less consistent with the findings of a report on privacy and disclosure on Facebook. The authors of this study found that people "who reported having higher need for popularity and less awareness of the consequences of information sharing were more likely to disclose information about themselves on Facebook." In other words, the more we fear to be found socially awkward (and the less we know about privacy), the more personal information we spread about ourselves.
Solving privacy issues
People are constantly "socially forced" to spread information about themselves. Both by their friends and by the owners of social network sites. As a consequence, there are quit some people out there that live in fear. Fear of their boss finding that one picture made at a crazy 19th birthday party. In Germany, however, this problem has been partially solved (article is in Dutch). Employers are no longer allowed to check job applicants' social network profiles. Even though the road ahead might seem endless, we can only hope that this one step will eventually lead to the law becoming the solution to all privacy issues.
...or am I just wishful thinking?
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