Remember when, on the internet, nobody knew who you were?

Abstract

Social Networking Services have seen an unprecedented adoption rate in the world of information technologies. This adherence has been so strong that even new psychiatric pathologies have been risen around them. Notwithstanding the numerous benefits of using social networking services, these systems live from information share between their users, and very often this information is private. Although social network services have numerous privacy and security settings, and management features, many users choose - consciously or unintentionally - to make excessive or uncontrolled sharing of personal information with social network services. This supposed controlled sharing of personal information on social media can put people at risk, or even in threatening situations, either to the individual himself or to others, linked to his network or family. An exploratory study was conducted through a focus group involving 12 college students attending the first year of an undergraduate program. This study aims, particularly, to understand how college students perceive their own online exposition, and the importance that this has on their privacy and the security of information shared, in social networking services. The data gathered from the focus group was analyzed with an online content analysis software – using the Leximancer platform. From the content analysis of the focus group several important concepts emerged: social network companies, location information, information sharing and distribution, user awareness changes. Findings suggest students are getting a new approach to privacy concerns over social media. Even though they are aware of the risks inherent in over-sharing private data, when faced with “to share or not to share” very often they tend to overlook the privacy concerns in favour of the social exposition. The obtained items and concepts were also used to develop a questionnaire, to be answered by a population of college students, in a subsequent study.