The information provided on this website does not, and is not intended to, act as legal, financial or credit advice; instead, it is for general informational purposes only. Information on this website may not be current. This website may contain links to other third-party websites. Such links are only for the convenience of the reader, user or browser; we do not recommend or endorse the contents of any third-party sites. Readers of this website should contact their attorney, accountant or credit counselor to obtain advice with respect to their particular situation. No reader, user, or browser of this site should act or not act on the basis of information on this site. Always seek personal legal, financial or credit advice for your relevant jurisdiction. Only your individual attorney or advisor can provide assurances that the information contained herein – and your interpretation of it – is applicable or appropriate to your particular situation. Use of, and access to, this website or any of the links or resources contained within the site do not create an attorney-client or fiduciary relationship between the reader, user, or browser and website owner, authors, contributors, contributing firms, or their respective employers.
Credit.com receives compensation for the financial products and services advertised on this site if our users apply for and sign up for any of them. Compensation is not a factor in the substantive evaluation of any product.
Kids frequently avoid or uninstall mobile phone apps they feel invade their privacy, and a majority of young women have disabled location tracking features out of privacy concerns, according to a new survey released by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.
The study found that teenage girls are nearly twice as likely as boys (59 percent to 37 percent) to say they’d disabled an app’s location features. It also found that half of all teens have avoided apps due to privacy concerns, and one-quarter had uninstalled an app over such concerns.
“Kids do care about privacy, just not the same way that (adults) do,” said Mary Madden, head researcher for the Pew study. “We see in all kinds of different research we’ve done, this assumption that (only) older adults care and are more careful about privacy is simply not true. It really depends very much on the specific context.”
One context where privacy seems to matter a lot to teenage girls: mobile apps that tell the world where they are.
“That does fall in line with a broader concern that relates to (girls’) sense of protecting their physical safety,” Madden said. “There’s been a lot of messaging around stranger danger on the Net that is very much targeted towards girls.”
But more than one-third of boys also said they’d disabled location broadcasting. In addition to the danger factor, this might also indicate a more general willingness to tinker with settings among the younger crowd, Madden said.
“They aren’t as fearful as older users, who worry, ‘If I touch this, I’m going to mess something up.’ To turn off location tracking, you have to be willing to dig in and see what’s going on,” she said. “Teens are very sophisticated in managing their social privacy. In fact, that’s the work of being a teenager.” In fact, kids often fight with parents over “privacy,” so their willingness to fine-tune apps shouldn’t be a surprise.
Privacy researcher Larry Ponemon of the Ponemon Institute said he was surprised that 51 percent of kids would avoid privacy-invading apps, however. In a similar study his firm conducted earlier this year, 54 percent of respondents 18-24 years old said they would not download any “privacy-diminishing” app onto their phone, but manual inspection showed a true download rate of 81 percent.
“There appears to be a huge discrepancy between what people do versus what they say they do,” Ponemon said.
It’s unclear whether the discrepancy is the result of consumers not understanding how their apps work, or simply acting out the so-called privacy paradox, of saying one thing but doing another on privacy issues.
Madden said Pew’s research took this paradox into account, and many questions in the survey were specific enough to elicit accurate responses. She also said teens seem particularly good at following through on privacy-promoting behavior. Even though teens are not particularly concerned about government or advertising companies invading their privacy, they are extremely concerned about the social cost of oversharing online.
“For teens it’s not top of mind to think about abstract notions of privacy,” she said. “Teens are actually more concerned about, ‘Can I do the things I want to do without having information out there embarrassing me?'”
Image: iStockphoto
October 19, 2023
Identity Theft and Scams
May 17, 2022
Identity Theft and Scams
May 20, 2021
Identity Theft and Scams