Mining PEW

Lenhart, A.  (2013).  Teens, social media & privacy:  Reputation management, third
     party access, and exposure to advertising.  Retrieved on July 29, 2014 from http://www.pewinternet.org/2013/06/25/teens-social-media-and-privacy-reputation-management-third-party-access-exposure-to-advertising/


In this research, Amanda Lenhart reports that teens care about their privacy when it comes to social media sites.  Teens are overwhelmingly using Facebook more when compared to Twitter and Instagram.  Lenhart states that teens share a lot of personal information on their social media sites such as pictures, school, and even their email address and phone numbers.  However, only about 60% of them set their privacy settings to "private" or "partially private" on Facebook, for example.  In comparison, 64% of their tweets on Twitter are posted as public.

According to Lenhart, teens also take steps to protect their online reputation.  Some teens do this by deleting or editing their own posts, deleting others' posts, untagging photos, or even deleting their accounts.  They also delete or unfriend or block people from their accounts.  Some teens even post using some type of code words.  For the most part, however, most teens do not care about how third parties may be using their information.  Lenhart  also suggests that teens may not comprehend exactly how their personal information may be used by the different social media sites.

Lastly, as far as advertising is concerned, Lenhart says that teens have mixed feelings about this.  Some kids like it and some don't.  Some teens do understand that they will be getting online ads in their social media accounts and that these may at times be inappropriate.

I enjoyed this report.  It provided information that I wasn't aware of.  For example, I had heard last year that teens were now using Twitter more than they were using Facebook.  I see that this is not the case, however.  Twitter usage by teens has grown, but they are still overwhelmingly using Facebook.  I am glad that teens are taking measures to take care of their online privacy.  It was interesting to note that most teens consider their Facebook account as something more private than their Twitter accounts since their FB accounts are mostly private but their tweets are mostly public.

I opened a FB account for the first time earlier this month because of this class.  So, I am not exactly sure how it works and who has access to it.  I don't know if there is a minimum age limit to open up an account, but I do know that lots of kids at my elementary school say that they're on FB.  I hope that their parents are keeping an eye on their accounts, though.


Report Length:  26 pages
Count to Date:  150/150 pages