Week 12: Managing Privacy
The article "Networked Privacy: How Teenager Negotiate Context in Social Media" by Boyd and Marwick, really resonated with me as I have different thoughts of privacy in social media then my most of my peers do and for years I have struggled with maintaining a context of privacy I am comfortable with. When I first joined a social networking site, Facebook, I was 13 and was always told by my parents to be careful what you post and do not post any pictures of yourself. Over the years I have maintained my careful posting habits, as I truly believe that you do not know who will eventually see all your posts, so if I want to post or share something that an employer would find embarrassing I will share it directly and not on my social feed. This has actually worked well for me as I am friends with a former boss on social media.
My problem with privacy was of what others posted of me on their pages, much like the situation described between Ramon and Mathew. Determining context of images on my page vs Facebook friends pages has always been a challenge for me. When I was younger and my friends would post a picture of me, I was of two minds on how to react. On one I felt hurt that they would post without checking if it was ok with me and thus changing my own context and breaching the privacy barriers I created. On the other hand, it was a little rebellious, as I had images out there of myself that went against my parents' rules without myself breaking them. As I have gotten older I have relaxed this rule of mine, and will occasionally post a picture of myself but I have still run into issues with my network breaking my privacy barriers with their posts of me. For me, this is one area of social media that I will always be navigating, what I think is best for me to show the world vs what my network wants to show. There have been times I have gotten into fights with people over differing contexts, I felt something was too revealing but they thought it was not. It is a constant struggle and evolutions every user must navigate in order to thrive in the digital environment.
What area of online privacy has been the hardest to regulate in your experience?















