Is there a generational divide on privacy?

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Are you old enough to remember privacy?

Teens and even young adults have grown up in an environment where sharing
information about themselves online is not just encouraged but expected.

Yet there's a disconnect between the attitudes young people express about online
privacy and their actual behavior.

A Washington Post-Pew Research Center poll released on Monday showed

Americans ages 18-29 place a higher priority on privacy than any other age group.
Among them, 45 percent say it is more important for the federal government not to
intrude on personal privacy, even if that limits its ability to investigate possible
terrorist threats. That view falls to 35 percent among those ages 30-49 and just 27
percent among those ages 50 and older.

But the poll, taken amid last week's revelations of the government tracking of phone
calls and Internet activity, also found that just 12 percent of people ages 18-29 are
following the story very closely, compared with a majority who aren't paying
attention at all.

No matter what they tell pollsters, young people are used to sharing private
information online. Still, it may not be the case that they're so markedly different
from those who came of age in the 20th century.

They may have grown up as digital natives, but the behavior for which they're
sometimes criticized sharing too much information online is more and more the
practice among older generations, as well.

"We shouldn't assume that young adults are just idiotic about privacy," says Joseph
Turow, a communication professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

Products Of The Times

It's not hard to find people in their 70s and 80s who don't want to do everything
online. Some don't trust online banking, for example, out of fear that carrying out
financial transactions on the Web could make them more vulnerable to identity theft
(or just plain theft).

Teens and college students, meanwhile, seem to think nothing of posting pictures of
themselves clad scantily, if at all, or engaging in inappropriate behavior.

But those types of online behaviors, while receiving plenty of media attention, may be
overblown as a picture of a generation.

Young people have always done stupid things. It's just that now, Turow points out,
they can do them online, for all the world to see.

Old people, he says, may know better than to display pictures of their bodies on the
Internet. But he notes there haven't been studies of those over, say, 55, to examine
what sort of odd things they post.

And there's no telling whether today's older generations would have acted just as
brazenly as kids do today, if Twitter and Snapchat had been around in their youth.

Conversely, young people, "as they mature, both financially and physically, may be
more like their parents over time," Turow says.

Trust, Don't Verify

Turow has conducted surveys since the 1990s that have looked at people's attitudes
about online privacy, including how the young differ from those who are more
mature.

When it comes to questions such as whether they've ever put off an online purchase
owing to privacy or security concerns, or whether their friends should ask permission
before posting a recognizable picture of them on the Internet, the attitudes of young
people are pretty much in line with older folk.
"They may do things they regret, but in the context of asking them about policy,
they're not all that different from older people," Turow says.

That's in part because older people have, for the most part, gotten more with the
times when it comes to living online.

Whether you're young or old, if you're reading this online article it's likely that you've
pushed away concerns about privacy at one time or another, because you wanted or
needed the convenience of conducting transactions that have largely migrated onto
the Internet.

"Privacy is not an on/off switch it's more like a spectrum," says Mary Madden, a
senior researcher at the Pew Internet & American Life Project. "We make various
choices in various situations, depending on perceived risks and benefits."

And much of the growth of the Web, and certainly social media, has coincided with
post-Sept. 11 security concerns.

What Privacy Policy?

Madden was lead author of a recent report about teens and social media. It found
that only 9 percent of teens were "very" concerned about third parties, such as
advertisers, gaining access to their online information, compared with nearly half
their parents.

Because children and adolescents often exercise poor judgment, about half of parents
try to place some kind of controls on their children's Internet use, according to the
Pew study. In 1998, Congress passed a law requiring website operators that collect
data from children under the age of 13 to comply with privacy policies.

But the whole idea of privacy policies is a misnomer, at least in terms of people's
expectations. In survey after survey, Turow says, huge majorities of Americans
mistakenly believe that a website having a privacy policy means they're entitled to
privacy that their information won't be shared or sold. That's just not the case in
most instances, even though some sort of protections may be in place.

"The great majority of Americans, when they see the words 'privacy policy,' are
deluded, they're misled," he says.

Not only are generic terms failing to keep up with the times, but it's in the interest of
social media companies and retailers alike to sound reassuring so that people will
share as much information about themselves as possible.

Don't worry, so many sites seem to say. We'll protect you.

Kathryn Montgomery, a communications professor at American University, suggests

it may be that current news coverage about the government's use of data may foster
greater awareness of the extent of online data collection in general by drug
companies, political campaigns and seemingly everyone else.

"Social networks have given young people an illusion they can control their privacy,"
Montgomery says. "Most young people don't understand the extent of the data
collection that happens on all these sites."

Most people don't take the time to do all they can to protect their information online.
The current stories about the National Security Agency could bring about more
concern about privacy that is, if enough people are paying attention.

But it might foster a general sense that it's already too late to worry much about it.

Even if you're careful about what you share online, after all, your friends might not
practice the same discretion.

"You can be a non-Internet user and you're still all over the Web," says Madden, the
Pew researcher. "It's not quite possible to be completely offline anymore."
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