Mary Madden, Pew Research Center, on a report that found social media users are becoming more protective of their digital identities:
As social media use has become a mainstream activity, there has been an increasingly polarized public debate about whether or not “privacy” can be dismissed as a relic in the information age.
[…]
“Privacy” has become a powerful keyword, a shorthand tag that gets used to reference a constellation of public attitudes, technical affordances and legal arguments. Yet, the concept is so laden with multiple meanings that any use of the term begs for added specificity and context.
Some interesting findings: women are more likely than men to protect their profiles, college graduates actually report more problems with privacy controls than those with little/no college education, and men are more likely than women to regret posted content.
Also of note, at least 52% of users in each of the study’s four age groups have friends-only privacy settings. I’m willing to wager that the reasons for profile lockdown are significantly different for those aged 18-29 as compared with those aged 65+.