Digital Identity

Boyd (2007) stressed the importance of being aware that young adults have grown up with this technology and therefore are more comfortable with it. It is not the technology that young adults/teenagers crave but rather the desire to stay connected to friends where getting together in person is not always possible. It also affords young adults a level of privacy and autonomy that is not always possible at home with parents and other siblings listening to conversations.

The struggle that teenagers experience with identity is not something new but the fact that they are now growing up with an online presence makes it quite different (Boyd, 2007). What they post online one minute can be seen and reposted hundreds of times by friends and commented upon in either a negative or positive way. The consequences of just one post can be far reaching for a teenager if the impact is negative it can have damaging consequences in the present and the future.

The discussion of online, social, digital or identity has been discussed in many articles; (Zhang, Jiang & Carroll, 2015) social identity theory is a person’s sense of who they are based on their group membership. It can be seen if examined that when using Facebook most users give their true identity and are actively encouraged to do so by Facebook, but if you examine their ‘Statement of Rights and Responsibilities’ they state that “your privacy is very important to them. They have designed their data policy to make important disclosures about how you can use Facebook to share with others and how they collect and can use your content and information. They encourage you to read the data policy and to use it to help you to make informed decisions” (Facebook, 2015). This statement from Facebook encourages individuals to read their statements with regards to all of their terms and conditions, but it raises the subsequent questions;

1. How many people actually read the terms and conditions?

2. When signing up for a Facebook account are users aware that they are effectively permitted Facebook to use any data they enter on the site for anything Facebook wants to use the information for?

3. Is Facebook accessing your private messages too high a price to pay for using their social network?

The use of mobile technologies allow for access to the internet anytime, anywhere removing the obstacle of time and location allowing for mobile technologies to have become embedded into the routines of our everyday lives (Livingstone, 2008). Within this discussion we have to return to the amount of personal information that is disclosed in order to sustain intimacy by young adults. (Boyd, 2010) “Knowing one’s audience matters when trying to determine what is socially appropriate to say or what will be understood by those viewing this information”. If young adults are so aware of privacy and the issues that it gives rise to, then it must be asked why they post such personal information online.

Users simply do not know to whom they are publishing information without questioning to whom this information will be available to (Mather, 2012). In some cases users are aware that what they post online will be persistent but they disclose the information anyway not considering the consequences; this is especially true of younger adults. The combination of mobile technologies and social media in the hands of young adults, who are struggling with adolescent self-expression as many generations have before, can be a dangerous combination. With this in mind should the right to be able to delete your data from a social networking site be available to users?