The digital glass house - Social networking and privacy

Since the explosion of the Internet age, nearly 2 billion people are connected to the World Wide Web, creating seemingly limitless opportunities for communication and collaboration including social networking. Communication is virtually instantaneous and vast amounts of information are available at the touch of a key.In such an open digital environment, we take it for granted that almost any information can be sourced online by anyone with Internet access.The rapid growth of the social networking sites (SNS) such as Facebook, which reaches 500 million users recently, has coincided with an increasing concern over personal privacy.This study examines how Facebook users' perceptions of privacy, frequency of use, and the disclosure of their personal information with other users. This study was guided by two research questions: What are the Facebook users' perceptions of privacy and what is the personal information they disclose to other users? Does the Facebook users' frequency of use affect their disclosure of personal information? 149 respondents from the researcher's own Facebook profile filled up a Web-based questionnaire in August 2010. The data was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics.The research hypothesized that higher levels of privacy perception will result in less disclosure of personal information and the more active a user is on Facebook, the greater will be the user's likelihood of maintaining a private profile. The results of chi-square tests and correlation analysis found significant positive relationships between privacy perception and the disclosure of personal information, and no significant relationships between frequency of use and disclosure of personal information. Recommendations for future researchers were also included