Concerned Enough to Act? Privacy Concerns & Perspectives Among Undergraduate Instagram Users

Abstract

A gap, known as the privacy paradox, often exists between peoples' privacy concerns and the actions they take to protect their privacy. This thesis investigates how a small sample of undergraduate students perceive their online privacy, the measures they take to protect their online privacy, and the reasons for their action/inaction. In so doing, it seeks to ascertain whether the findings of Hinds et al.'s (2020) regarding Facebook users' perceptions of online privacy issues are replicable among a sample of undergraduate students who are regular users of Instagram. Interviews with 20 undergraduate students were conducted to gather information about their online privacy concerns, their attitudes toward social media platforms collecting their information, and the privacy protection strategies they employ. The findings suggest that in enacting protection strategies, the participants delineate between both social and institutional conceptions of privacy, and the notion of privacy as a right requiring protecting versus viewing privacy as a negotiable commodity. This, in turn, suggests a possible need to re-consider how privacy-related education is approached as well as privacy policy.