Privacy

Privacy is far from being dead. Boyd states that every teen wants privacy and parents need to know that just because teens post things online for the masses to see doesn’t mean that they don’t value privacy. When they post things online, teens know who can see their post. Just because a post can be seen by a lot of people doesn't mean a teen doesn't have any privacy. They post the things that they do not care if the world knows and that the things they want to be private are kept private. A white seventeen year old from North Carolina echoed that point to Boyd. She stated that “privacy is more just you choosing what you want to keep to yourself.” (Boyd, 2014, p. 63)  Teens believe they can achieve privacy by choosing what not to share with others on social media. Some teens achieve privacy from others by posting on social media. Taylor, a white fifteen year old from Boston, hates when people nag her with lots of questions. To combat this she started using social media and posting on it. She posts a lot, but the stuff she posts is not very personal and it makes people stop bothering her. People think they know everything about her, but Taylor says that “95% of her life is not blogged about” (Boyd, 2014, p. 75). Sharing things online gives her more privacy than sharing nothing at all. Boyd compares this to telling parents about your school day. Kids tell their parent about their day, but they leave out that they have a crush on a girl or a guy because that is personal to them. They are sharing things in order to be private.

People tend to disagree with Boyd and think privacy is dead. For example, Scholar David Lyon wrote about privacy in a chapter titled “Surveillance, Power, and Everyday Life”.  He states that people claim privacy is dead because “there are fewer 'places to hide' in the sense that some surveillance systems record, monitor, or trace so many of our daily activities and behaviors that, it seems, nothing we do is exempt from observation” (Lyon, 2007, p. 459). Almost everything done on the internet is tracked, but teens do not care and don’t think it reflects how private they are. According to Boyd, Privacy to them is privacy from their parents, teachers, and other people who have control over things in their lives. They don’t really care if the government or companies track them because the government and companies are not involved in their everyday lives and wouldn’t even recognize them if they saw them on the street. Teens are able to maintain their privacy even though almost everything they do being tracked on the internet.