Posts Tagged: pew

Noticed / Research — No Comments
18
Apr 07

Pew Report on Teen Privacy in Social Networks

The folks at Pew Internet and American Life Project have released the full results of their study examining teen privacy in social networks. I looked at the preliminary results here a few months ago, and was impressed by teen privacy utilization.

I feel the same way now, looking over this analysis. From the study, teens seem to have developed a nuanced, culturally-informed viewpoint on how to engage in social networking sites. They largely share information with their friend groups, and have a good understanding of what information is important to protect (at least according to our society’s norms).

I’ll likely dive into this analysis later in the day when I find some free time, but I wanted to share this right away. With all of the hysteria and fear generated by media reports about social networks, this Pew report is a refreshing sanity check. The kids, in fact, are all right.

Noticed / Research / Thoughts — No Comments
7
Jan 07

Pew on Social Networks: 7 out of 10 teens have non-public profiles

This afternoon, the Pew Internet and American Life Project released data from their recent survey of teen Social Networks use. Needless to say, the data is very interesting, and offers data affirming some of the themes we’re seeing in recent SNS research. danah has blogged her reaction to the data, and I’m sure this report will echo substantially through our corner of the blogosphere.

In my opinion, the key datapoint presented in this study is employment of private (friends-only or otherwise restricted) profiles by teens in social network sites. In the study, it is reported that 77% of teens have a profile available online, but 59% of teens restrict these profiles to their friends. This means that only 3 out of 10 teens have a profile that is “open” to be viewed online[1], affirming a recent report out of UW-Eau Claire that teens are effectively employing privacy strategies online.

Beyond this interesting privacy statistic, a number of other trends emerge. In my social network predictions last week, I was called out a few times for saying that most people can oly effectively maintain one or two profiles. The data from Pew clearly validates this (and no, I hadn’t seen Pew’s data when I wrote my predictions). The Pew report states:

Fully 85% of teens who have created an online profile say the profile they use or update most often is on MySpace, while 7% update a profile on Facebook. Another 1% tend to a primary profile on Xanga. Smaller numbers told us they have profiles at places like Yahoo, Piczo, Gaiaonline and Tagged.com.

Also interesting is how young people use social networks. As reported in much of the qualitative and survey-based SNS research, the grooming of friendships is a key motivator for SNS use. According the the report, the sites are heavily used for low-intensity friendship connections – they present an easy and efficient way to keep in touch with friends new and old, from far and near. Additionally, teens are motivated to update their sites frequently, with the study reporting that “a social network profile is more engaging if it changes frequently.”

The Pew report also reflects how modes of communication and access are changing with social network adoption. Friend-to-friend contact is now occuring via SNS public and private messages (already been said many times before, but young people don’t email). Additionally, students change their behavior based on access context – i.e. school users vs. those who can access SNS at home.

The report includes some valuable summary statistics, including the following I found interesting:

  • 55% of online teens have created a personal profile online, and 55% have used social networking sites like MySpace or Facebook.
  • 37% of 12 and 13 year olds have SNS profiles.
  • Seven out of ten (70%) online girls 15-17 have created a profile, compared with 57% of older boys.
  • Almost half of social network-using teens visit the sites either once a day (26%) or several times a day (22%).

Among many things, this report reinforces the ubiquity of social networks. If I had to come up with a 10,000 foot overview of this report, it would be “young people are using social networks all the time, for everything.” At the same time, there are a number of interesting between-gender effects in the statistics. As it becomes clear that females and males use SNS differently, what does this mean for researchers and those developing commercial applications? All in all, it is a very interesting report, kudos to Amanda Lenhart and Mary Madden for their good work. You can pick it up free at the Pew site.

[1] 77% of teens report having a publicly viewable profile, 40% of which say it is viewable by all persons. This leaves 30.8% of the total with true publicly viewable profiles.

Thoughts — 3 Comments
25
Sep 06

Pew: Will transparency make the world a better place?

The Pew Internet and American Life project released Part II of its Future of the Internet report. Run by Janna Anderson and Lee Rainie, the content aggregated in this report is simply worth its weight in gold. In the study, Pew brought together a number of highly respected experts and asked them to respond to some possible scenarios. While the report as a whole is very useful, I felt that section 4 of the report would be of interest to readers.

Pew posed the following question:

As sensing, storage and communication technologies get cheaper and better, individuals’ public and private lives will become increasingly ‘transparent’ globally. Everything will be more visible to everyone, with good and bad results. Looking at the big picture – at all of the lives affected on the planet in every way possible – this will make the world a better place by the year 2020. The benefits will outweigh the costs.

The respondents split, with 46% agreeing and 49% disagreeing. Personally, I’m blown away that half of Pew’s expert panel seems to accept the underlying assumption of the question – that privacy won’t really be an option in 2020. Pew, explaining the current status of surveillance issues, states:

Your life is being recorded in various ways today. Your cell phone is a tracking device. Your personal life and financial status are recorded in various databases. Anyone in the world can find out the tax-assessed value of your home with a 10-second internet search. And, with the further development of “IP on everything,” the concept that people and goods will be tagged and trackable on the network through the use of sensors, things are becoming more complex and more transparent simultaneously.

Billions of radio frequency ID (RFID) tags are already in use due to their growing adoption by retailers (such as Wal-Mart) and government agencies (such as the U.S. Department of Defense). The fairly inexpensive, nearly invisible devices are used as a means to improve efficiency. They can be used to track inventory, equipment and personnel; they may replace bar codes. One estimate finds that corporations making RFID devices will make more than $24 billion a year by 2016.

In a sense, we’re already living in this world. As I type this note, my computer is attached to an internet connection that records my presence; when I present a credit card at the store, I am further recorded – and who knows how many surveillance cameras record my every move. What we lack – what gives us this notion of privacy, is the fact the mesh network that would bring all of this information together doesn’t yet exist (outside of the NSA). How reminiscent of the Facebook feeds fiasco – yes, all my information is out there – but when it is in one place, I am no longer comfortable with it.

In the report, Cory Doctorow and Hal Varian weigh in on a social contract for privacy.

Boing Boing blogger Cory Doctorow, an EFF Fellow, wrote, “Transparency and privacy aren’t antithetical. We’re perfectly capable of formulating widely honored social contracts that prohibit pointing telescopes through your neighbours’ windows. We can likewise have social contracts about sniffing your neighbours’ network traffic.” And Hal Varian of Google and the UC-Berkeley wrote, “Privacy is a thing of the past. Technologically it is obsolete. However, there will be social norms and legal barriers that will dampen out the worst excesses.”

Barry Wellman explores the nature of power and privacy:

Barry Wellman, a researcher on virtual communities and workplaces and the director of NetLab at the University of Toronto, responded, “The less one is powerful, the more transparent his or her life. The powerful will remain much less transparent.”

A fascinating report. You can download a free copy at the Pew site, and you can view the complete remarks of the experts at this site. Note: Cross-blogged to the claimID blog.

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