Teens and Privacy

By: Marcin Sajda

Adapted from http://cdn.ientry.com

When children are younger and first discovering social media, it’s for parents to monitor there usage and behaviours online. As a child grows into their teen years, the line of parents monitoring can cause a conflict between parents and teens. Teens are at an age where they want to have their own privacy and space from their parents and if this need is not met it can often lead to rebellion. It’s understandable that any parent of a teenager would want to monitor their teenager’s behavior, as teens are still at a vulnerable age to act impulsively, by posting something inappropriate either a picture or a distasteful status update they may have long term consequences. Often teens are still in a developmental phase, where their ability to consider long-term consequences are not as sharp as a fully developed adult. Although many experts say, parents should give there teenagers space.

In the Psychology Today, the article ‘Why Teens need privacy Online’, demonstrates that it is in the best interest of the parents to teach their teenagers about online safety and behavior, and give them the skills to protect themselves. The article compares social media and teens to driving lessons, where for a certain amount of time, the teen must have an adult present in the car, but once this time limit is over, they are on their own. In other words, parents can’t be there all the time, when it comes to social media, they must prepare the child for when they are not there to monitor them, giving the teen accountability for their own online behaviors.

Adapted from http://www.opusfidelis.com

As the next generation of teens seem to grow more and more familiar with social media, they are also more aware of online privacy. In the article ‘Learn The Future of Privacy from Teens’, the author points that we can learn how privacy in the future will be understood and changed, by understanding how teens use social media in context now, and therefore when they are adults in a few years, they will be part of privacy changes. For examples the article points out how for teens the social norms of online media is a result of the context in which things are shared. For example, educators took students online images and used them in a presentation as an example of online privacy. For the teens because these images were taken out of context, it made them angry. In point of this example was to show how for today’s teens privacy online is seen as a way of controlling what is omitted from the public, where adults see it as ‘privacy by default’ meaning privacy in controlling what is made available to the public. The difference is that teens have accepted the profile-raising and availability of information, but for teenagers the social norms are sensitivity stems from the context in which information is shared, which in turn will affect the way in which privacy changes are made in the future.

Resources:
http://blog.zeltser.com/post/5449107495/learn-the-future-of-privacy-from-teens

http://cdn.ientry.com/sites/webpronews/pictures/googlebrother2_320x245.jpg 

http://www.opusfidelis.com/uploads/images/Facebook_Choose_Your_Privacy_Settings.jpg