Control your Facebook: An analysis of online privacy literacy

Abstract

For an effective and responsible communication on social network sites (SNSs) users must decide between withholding and disclosing personal information. For this so-called privacy regulation, users need to have the respective skills-in other words, they need to have online privacy literacy. In this study, we discuss factors that potentially contribute to and result from online privacy literacy. In an online questionnaire with 630 Facebook users, we found that people who spend more time on Facebook and who have changed their privacy settings more frequently reported to have more online privacy literacy. People with more online privacy literacy, in turn, felt more secure on Facebook and implemented more social privacy settings. A mediation analysis showed that time spend on Facebook and experience with privacy regulation did not per se increase safety and privacy behavior directly, stressing the importance of online privacy literacy as a mediator to a safe and privacy-enhancing online behavior. We conclude that Internet experience leads to more online privacy literacy, which fosters a more cautious privacy behavior on SNSs.

Privacy cynicism: A new approach to the privacy paradox

“…According to this view, many users simply lack understanding and awareness of online privacy risks (Bartsch & Dienlin, 2016;Hoofnagle, King, Li, & Turow, 2010;Trepte et al, 2015). Such a lack of understanding and awareness may be due to users' digital skills, or lack thereof (Dienlin & Trepte, 2015;Park, 2013).…”

“…Thus, general Internet skills and, more specifically, privacy skills or literacy might be a better predictor of privacy behavior than privacy concerns. Yet, a recent study on privacy literacy (Bartsch & Dienlin, 2016) reveals that most users' privacy literacy is low (with little variance in privacy literacy) and that its effect on (social) privacy behavior is weak.…”

Benefits and harms from Internet use: A differentiated analysis of Great Britain

“…However, given the small effect sizes, future studies might want to include measures of users' privacy literacy or privacy awareness (Park, 2013). Previous research has shown that higher levels of privacy literacy (Bartsch and Dienlin, 2016) or privacy awareness (Park, 2013) lead to a more controlled and safer use of social network sites, possibly limiting the harm and increasing the benefits.…”

Age differences in privacy attitudes, literacy and privacy management on Facebook

“…An important reason why we focused on declarative knowledge as a predictor of privacy protective behavior concerns the potential circularity of the relationship between them. Indeed, recent research (Bartsch & Dienlin, 2016) provides reasons to call into question the direction of causality between previous experience in privacy protective behavior and procedural knowledge of how to do so. Still, analysis of the respective influence of declarative and procedural knowledge on privacy protective behavior would be valuable in future research, particularly if studied longitudinally or in controlled experiments that may help test this causal mechanism.…”