Privacy in the Dappled Shade

When thinking about privacy this morning, my thoughts went back to my old house in Florida with my beloved Chickasaw Plum tree in the back yard. Despite being in the city, the back yard always felt like a private nook.

It's funny to start this day thinking about privacy. It doesn't seem like something I should type out, but rather words I should scribble into a journal I keep tucked securely beneath my pillow. I suppose I define privacy as my ability to control what I keep close, and what I choose to show to the sunshine. And its that dappled sunlight, as the sun shines through trees and windows, that makes up different shades of what is shared; the bright spots where the sun is unfiltered is more akin to a Tweet, while the filtered light  coming through a window is a dinner conversation, or possibly a Facebook post.

danah boyd and Alice Marwick talked to more than 100 teens in 20 states over a four-year period to get their thoughts on privacy. Apparently my view on the subject isn't that different than Jeromy and Meixing, ages 14 and 17, respectively, which boyd and Marwick sum up here (from page 4):

"Both of their approaches to privacy highlight how privacy isn’t simply binary – access or no access – but, rather, control over how information flows or, in other words, control over the social situation."

I had to go back a few years, but this article reminded me that the appeal of Facebook and Twitter to teens is nothing new. Teens themselves are worried about privacy, but not in the same way that an older adult might. I found it interesting that one teen, Hunter (page 18), became annoyed when people he wasn't "addressing" would comment on his status updates on Facebook. To him, the content of his status update and the tone in which he wrote it signaled the audience he was targeting -- and if you weren't in that audience, he thought it was rude of you to comment on it. That makes little sense to me, as the post was made publicly on the Internet. I think teens assume there's more privacy on Facebook because of the norms of their real-life social network, and forget that -anyone- (depending on the user settings) can read posts and flip through pictures regardless of if it's apppropriate behavior.

As boyd and Marwick point out, teens have a set of norms and mores within their social circles -- and it seems those norms are constant even if the way in which the teens interact changes over time.  When I was in high school, you wouldn't go up to a group of people who weren't in your "circle" and start a conversation or jump into one on which you were eaves dropping. The same applies now in a digital way. Teens have always sought out places where they can get together in groups, and now social networking sites are rivaling the mall for a place to hang out and socialize.

The trouble now is, you don't just have to worry about that group of catty girls hearing what you're saying, you have to worry about unknown groups reading or "digitally overhearing" everything you've posted or photographed without you ever knowing about it.

For now I will continue to Tweet as I normally would (which, it seems I'm very much like a lot of Twitter users in this article, also by boyd and Marwick, who have definite topics they don't touch) and post to Facebook in my usual fashion. Yes there are differences in how I use the two (and if you clicked on that article in the last sentence, you'll see most people do use them differently), but I'm comfortable with my name being beside what I put out there. And I think that's because I don't put everything in the sunshine. I prefer most of my communication with friends to be of the dappled variety.