This paper explores how 20-something Facebook users understand and navigate privacy concerns. Based on a year long ethnographic study in Toronto, Canada, this paper looks at how - contrary to many mainstream accounts - younger users do indeed care about protecting and controlling their personal information. However, their concerns revolve around what I call social privacy, rather than the more conventional institutional privacy. This paper also examines the somewhat subversive practices which users engaged in to enhance their own social privacy, and in some cases, violate that of others. Finally, this paper examines some of the reasons that users may continue using the site, despite privacy concerns.

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This paper reports the process and outcomes of the design of a game that educates children about management of privacy online. Using a participatory action research process, children worked with the researchers to develop and play a game which simulates certain aspects of online privacy management and allows for scaffolded experiential learning in a safe environment. The game allows children to develop autonomous skills and understandings, not only for more effective learning but also because it is only through autonomy that children can develop a sense of self which is necessary for understanding what it means to be private. The paper shows that children have quite sophisticated understandings of privacy, compared with some adult perceptions, and that these understandings include awareness of the risks posed by commercial organisations seeking to gather personal data from them. The paper shows how engaging children as research and design participants can lead to more successful approaches in the development of privacy literacy.

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In this paper, we argue that censorware is one of the bogeymen that instills fear in parents whose children have access to the Internet. It is a fear that has the potential to restrict children’s autonomy and opportunities for engagement in social media. Fear regarding children’s online activities is one of the issues surrounding children’s Internet safety that does not appear to be situated in any particular social or cultural context. Among the most popular means of monitoring children online, censorware may prove even more harmful to children’s socioemotional wellbeing and development than any other form of monitoring (Boyd & Jenkins, 2006; Cloke & Jones, 2005; Helwig, 2006; Kamii, 1991; Laufer & Wolfe, 1977; Marx & Steeves, 2010; Pettit & Laird, 2002; Rooney, 2010). Inherent in the design and use of censorware are structures that inhibit children’s online and offline social interactions, their ability to develop fully as social actors, and their experience of being empowered to make informed and critical decisions about their lives, including choices relating to privacy. As well, reliance on surveillance-based approach-es to monitoring online activities of chil-dren (aged 5-14) may actually be leading to a greater danger: a decrease in oppor-tunities for children to have experiences that help them develop autonomy and independence. Our inquiry is located within a growing body of research that addresses the social implications of restricting, surveilling and controlling young children’s online activities versus nurturing individual autonomy through parental mentoring and critically reflec-tive software and social technology use.