Contextualizing how teens manage personal and interpersonal privacy on social media

Abstract

Many researchers have been studying teens’ privacy management on social media, and how they individually control information. Employing the theoretical framework of communication privacy management (CPM) theory, I argue that individual information control in itself is desirable but insufficient, giving only a limited understanding of teens’ privacy practices. Instead, I argue that research should focus on both personal and interpersonal privacy management to ultimately understand teens’ privacy practices. Using a survey study ( n = 2000), I investigated the predictors of teens’ personal and interpersonal privacy management on social media and compared different types of boundary coordination. The results demonstrate that feelings of fatalism regarding individual control in a networked social environment, which I call networked defeatism, are positively related with interpersonal privacy management. Also, interpersonal privacy management is less important when coordinating boundaries with peers than it is when coordinating sexual materials, and dealing with personal information shared by parents.