Published by Anastasia Goodstein, Totally Wired (the blog) is a resource for parents, aunts, uncles, teachers, librarians youth workers or any adult trying to decode what teens are doing online and with technology. 
Private, Public Or Somewhere In Between
Yesterday I posted over at Ypulse about how the students running one of the Facebook memorial groups basically told the media to go away and that they could not use any of the personal photos posted. I've been watching young people grapple with the notion of what it means to be public for the past year and a half and have commented before that I think it's evolving -- a lot has changed since I wrote the book proposal for Totally Wired.
When I first started, I think was this general cluelessness that anyone except the handful of friends who you know read your profile or blog would ever read it. Hypothetically people could, but teens just didn't really allow for that possibility. As they wrote about other friends or people at school, who would later find out, creating major drama, many teens began to get that either they shouldn't gossip on their blogs or MySpace profiles or make them password protected. You can take that same scenario and apply it to a friend's parent finding their page with inappropriate language, photos or videos on YouTube, or even a prospective employer for a summer job. The gist is that, they start with that notion, post and then the fallout teaches them that lesson. Some teens just watch their friends learn that lesson, and decide it's enough for them to be more careful, too.
Next you have the intense media coverage of these sites, especially in newspapers and on the local news. Teens' one cool hangout that adults were clueless about is suddenly outed in a big way -- and the coverage isn't positive. Parents who still don't really understand how the site works are reading about how dangerous it is, listening to law enforcement tell them horror stories at parents' nights. and watching "To Catch A Predator." Many teens get these presentations, too, and girls are now especially nervous about the concept of being hunted down because of what they put online (though many continue to post photos and their school's name). Parents begin searching MySpace and finding their teen's profiles. Cops are now on MySpace and begin to bust a few local parties. Many schools have blocked the site. Many teens increase their privacy settings on MySpace and open Facebook accounts (now that they can), with the notion that Facebook is somehow more private. Facebook takes members' posts and publishes them in a newsfeed only for your friends, yet because it was done without members' consent, young people complain that its an invasion of privacy.
Today, the amazing folks at The Pew Internet & American Life Project, published their latest report on exactly this issue, showing the many shades of grey around young people's sense of public and private. Overall, the report shows a generation beginning to grapple with these issues, using some degree of privacy settings, but still posting more public information than many adults are comfortable with. This paragraph from their report really shows how complex this issue is:
"Our survey suggests that there are a wide range of views among teens about privacy and disclosure of personal information. Whether in an online or offline context, teenagers do not fall neatly into clear-cut groups when it comes to their willingness to disclose information or the ways they restrict access to the information that they do share. For most teens, decisions about privacy and disclosure depend on the nature of the encounter and their own personal circumstances. Do you live in a small town or big city? How did you create your network of online "friends?" How old are you? Are you male or female? Do your parents have lots of rules about internet use? Do your parents view your profile? All these questions and more inform the decisions that teens make about how they present themselves online. Many, but not all, teens are aware of the risks of putting information online in a public and durable environment. Many, but certainly not all, teens make thoughtful choices about what to share in what context."
Newsletter readers visit Totally Wired for the rest of Pew's high level findings.
The general snapshot
- 55% of online have profiles online; 45% of online teens do not have profiles online.
- Among the teens who have profiles, 66% of them say that their profile is not visible to all internet users. They limit access to their profiles in some way.
- Among those whose profiles can be accessed by anyone online, 46% say they give at least a little and often more false information on their profiles. Teens post fake information to protect themselves, but also to be playful or silly.
- Most teens are using the networks to stay in touch with people they already know, either friends that they see a lot (91% of social networking teens have done this) or friends that they rarely see in person. (82%).
- 49% of social network users say they use the networks to make new friends. [from Anastasia: my guess is that this is more boys than girls, since they tend to be more interest driven online, joining groups and discussions with strangers]
- 32% of online teens have been contacted by strangers online -- this could be any kind of online contact, not necessarily contact through social network sites.
- 7% of online teens and 21% of teens who have been contacted by strangers have engaged an online stranger to find out more information about them. [this should make adults feel somewhat better -- it's low, and my guess is that it's either younger or more at risk teens that are engaging wiht adult strangers]
- 7% of online teens and 23% of teens who have been contacted by a stranger online say they felt scared or uncomfortable because of the online contact.
Here's what they're posting when it comes to personal information:
- 82% of profile creators have included their first name in their profiles
- 79% have included photos of themselves.
- 66% have included photos of their friends.
- 61% have included the name of their city or town.
- 49% have included the name of their school.
- 40% have included their instant message screen name.
- 40% have streamed audio to their profile.
- 39% have linked to their blog.
- 29% have included their email address.
- 29% have included their last names.
- 29% have included videos.
- 2% have included their cell phone numbers.
- 6% of online teens post their first and last names on publicly-accessible profiles;
- 3% of online teens disclose their full names, photos of themselves and the town where they live in publicly-viewable profiles
Posting false information:
Boys and younger teens are more likely than girls or older teens to post false information on their online profiles; 64% of boys post fake information compared 50% of girls with profiles who do the same. Younger and older teens exhibit a similar split, with 69% of younger teens posting fake information versus 48% of older teens.
Older teens post more personal information:
Older teens ages 15-17 with online profiles are more likely than younger teens to post photos of themselves or friends to their profile as well as share their school name online. Older girls are more likely than any other group to share photos of friends, while younger girls are more likely than younger boys to have shared information about their blog on their profile.
Parents are beginning to get involved:
- 53% of parents say they have filtering software on the computer their child uses at home.
- Teens are generally aware that there are filters on their home computers. Half (50%) of teens who go online from home say that the computer they use at home has a filter that keeps them from going to certain websites.
- 45% of parents have monitoring software that records what users do online.
- Teens are also relatively aware of monitoring software on their home computers, though less aware than they are of filtering. About a third of teens (35%) with internet access at home believe that there is monitoring software on their home computer.
- 65% of parents report checking up on their teens after they go online.
- Teens are now more aware that their parents are "checking up" on them after they go online; 41% of teens who go online from home believe that their parents monitor them after they have gone online, up from 33% in 2004 and 27% in 2000.
- Home computers are still overwhelmingly located in open family areas of the home; 74% of teens now say the computer they use is in a public place in the home, compared with 73% in 2004 and 70% in 2000.
...and set rules and limits (more than with other media use!)
- More than 8 in ten parents (85%) of online teens say they have rules about internet sites their child can or cannot visit.
- Three in four (75%) parents of online teens say they have rules about the television shows their child can watch.
- Two in three (65%) parents of online teens say they restrict the kinds of video games their child can play.
- 85% say they have established rules about the kinds of personal information their child can share with people they talk to on the internet.
- Slightly fewer parents (69%) say they have household rules for how long a teen can spend online, but just 57% of parents of online teens say they restrict the amount of time their child spends watching TV, and just 58% limit time spent playing video games.
