A New Privacy Paradox: Young People and Privacy on Social Network Sites

TLDR

Despite the common belief that younger users are less privacy‑concerned, privacy online remains a strong social norm, as illustrated by Zuckerberg’s claim that “privacy is no longer a social norm.” The study tests this claim using a representative British sample from the Oxford Internet Survey and develops a sociological theory of privacy that explains youth concern. The authors construct a sociological theory of privacy that accounts for the heightened concern among young people. OxIS data reveal that younger people are more likely to protect their privacy than older users, yet the paradox remains that social‑network sites compel disclosure despite inadequate privacy controls.

Abstract

There is a widespread impression that younger people are less concerned with privacy than older people. For example, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg justified changing default privacy settings to allow everyone to see and search for names, gender, city and other information by saying “Privacy is no longer a social norm”. We address this question and test it using a representative sample from Britain based on the Oxford Internet Survey (OxIS). Contrary to conventional wisdom, OxIS shows a negative relationship between age and privacy; young people are actually more likely to have taken action to protect their privacy than older people. Privacy online is a strong social norm. We develop a sociological theory of privacy that accounts for the fact of youth concern. The new privacy paradox is that these sites have become so embedded in the social lives of users that they must disclose information on them despite the fact that these sites do not provide adequate privacy controls.