Adolescents' privacy on social network sites: an investigation of predictors of privacy protection behavior
Year: 2013
Type: conference-paper
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: A widespread assumption is that all young people in contemporary society tend to 'overshare' sensitive personal information on Social Network Sites (SNS).Although many studies are investigating drivers for personal information disclosure, research that is paying attention to privacy protection behavior remains relatively scarce.To fill this gap this study investigates what factors predict the types of personal information adolescents disclose and how they apply privacy settings on their SNS profile.We conducted a large-scale survey with a sample of 1118 adolescents from Flanders (Belgium's northern Dutch-speaking region), ranging in age from 11 to 18 years.Based on an exploratory factor analysis we are able to make a distinction between two types of personal information that young people disclose on a SNS, namely profile data (e.g.demographic or lifestyle data) and contact data (e.g. home address or phone number).Adolescents are more willing to disclose profile than contact data and are applying more lenient privacy settings to these profile data.Furthermore, regression analysis results show that privacy concerns as well as parental mediation styles appear to be the most important predictors.
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2546392424