Age and Privacy


A UC-Berkeley Law/U. Penn Annenberg team recently commissioned a telephonic (wireline and wireless) survey of internet using Americans (N=1000) on privacy. The findings are presented in How Different are Young Adults from Older Adults When it Comes to Information Privacy Attitudes and Policies?

The major findings include–

  • Large percentages of young adults (aged 18-24) are in harmony with older Americans regarding concerns about online privacy, norms, and policy suggestions. In several cases, there are no statistically significant differences between young adults and older age categories on these topics.
  • Where there were differences, over half of the young adult-respondents did answer in the direction of older adults. There clearly is social significance in that large numbers of young adults agree with older Americans on issues of information privacy.

Why does it seem then that young adults behave with such license, particularly on social network sites?



Cross-posted at Technology | Academics | Policy


  1. #1 Jane
    June 18, 2010

    I think many Internet users can be put into two groups: those who started using it before their online identities could be traced back to themselves in real life, and those that started using the Internet knowing that what they did would be traced back to themselves in real life.

    I think the way those two groups use the Internet and respond to privacy settings are based on the group they’re in. So perhaps the younger users just use the Internet knowing that what they post will be seen (and like that fact), so they aren’t as concerned with knowing the politics behind “privacy” settings online.

    The older generations may not understand all the portals that exist in the Internet so they try to be more careful because it’s an unknown world to them. Younger users think they know everything so they don’t need to learn anymore.

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