New Study Reveals How Teens Shield Personal Information Online
Posted by Greg Writer on April 23, 2007
It turns out that today’s teens are more aware of the need to shield personal information online than previously believed.
According to the Pew Research Center (one of America’s most respected research groups) the majority of teens take steps to protect their identity online, especially on social networking sites. This was one of the major findings of a new study done by Pew Research on how teenagers make decisions to disclose or reveal information when using the internet.
The study found that, although teenagers use their first name and photos online, they rarely put information on public profiles that they think would allow a stranger to actually find them. Teens leave out, for example, their full name, home phone number or cell phone number.
Nevertheless, almost two-thirds of teens with profiles believe that someone with persistence and internet know-how could eventually identify them from the information available on their profiles.
The study also reveals that:
- 66% of teens say their profile is not visible to all internet users
- nearly half (46%) say they give at least some false information to protect themselves and also to be playful or silly
- 40% post their instant message screen name
- 29% post their email address
- 29% post their last name
The increased popularity of social networking sites generates worry among parents because strangers often contact kids on the sites. But the co-author of the Pew Center study said that this was not the fist time parents were worried about the net. “In our first study of teen internet usage in 2000, well before social networking sites emerged, many parents were worried that strangers would contact their children online through email and chat rooms. At the time, parents responded to these worries by taking precautions such as monitoring their child’s internet use and placing the computer in a public area of the home – much as they do today.”
The Pew Center study is entitled “Teens, Privacy, and Online Social Networks.” (If you would like to read the study yourself, simply click on the title and dive in.)
