Adolescents' Online Privacy: Toward a Developmental Perspective

For many Western adolescents, the use of the Internet for social purposes has become an integral part of their lives. Adolescents are the defining users of the “Social Web,” that is, the part of the World Wide Web that is used for socializing and interacting with others. Teenagers far outnumber adults in the use of Social Web technologies, such as instant messaging and social network sites (see e.g., Lenhart et al. 2007). For example, 53% of US and 91% of Dutch adolescent Internet users communicate online through instant messaging (Rideout et al. 2010; Valkenburg and Peter 2009a), and adolescents increasingly use social network sites (e.g., Facebook), blogs, and photo and video sharing sites (e.g., YouTube). Across 13 European countries, 66% of all Internet users aged 15 or older visited social network sites in 2008 (comScore 2009). Finally, data from 2010 show that 74% of all US adolescents aged 13–18 have created a profile on a social network site (Rideout et al. 2010).

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