The Truth About Teenagers, The Internet, and Privacy

While teenagers’ privacy concerns have been closely examined when it comes to how they relate to brands and other people, experts do not fully understand how teens feel about the government’s use of their data. That may be because it is still a fluid situation: today’s adolescents are growing up in the context of a national conversation about the National Security Agency, Edward Snowden, and spying -- issues that are being debated as I type this sentence.

“It’s still unclear exactly how these issues will impact their behavior and choices in the years to come, but I guarantee that it will,” says Miller, of the University of Toronto. “They’re soaking this knowledge in and living it in a way that is very different from older generations.” Adolescents have been migrating away from Facebook and Twitter over the last few years, showing preference for sites like Snapchat, Whisper, Kik, and Secret that provide more anonymity and privacy. Part of this transition can be explained by the fact that the older social media sites stopped being cool when parents joined them, but perhaps another reason could be that teenagers growing up in the post-Snowden era implicitly understand the value of anonymity. For teens, it’s not a matter of which platform to use, but rather which works best in a particular context.