Teenage Privacy Perceptions and Configurations on Instagram
Social media has become ingrained in the day-to-day lives of many teens — from sharing important life milestones to mundane updates. As teenage safety on social media platforms comes under public scrutiny and as more of teenagers’ lives are conducted on social media, understanding privacy practices on these platforms is critical. Visual content-sharing platforms (e.g., Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok) are central to young people’s lives, with Instagram being the most popular. To understand how teenagers (ages 13–19) interpret and configure privacy on Instagram, we interviewed 21 teenagers and surveyed more than 140 (N=144).
Key Takeaways:
- Privacy settings are navigated not only within but across platforms. Teens use their different social media accounts to develop different aspects of their digital identity. Privacy attitudes are influenced by platform culture and available privacy features.
- Teens are skilled at using a blend of built-in and self-configured features to manage who has access to the content they post.
- Despite being regular users of Instagram, many participants do not know about the features available to them. One popular way of learning about privacy features is through observing peers’ accounts and usage patterns.
Teens interpret privacy as the ability to control who has access to their content. The core built-in privacy features participants reported using were: private accounts, blocking / restricting followers, and posting to their Close Friends Story.
Privacy is networked across platforms
For most teenagers, Instagram is not the only social media account that they have. Instead, Instagram is one of many platforms teenagers use to establish their online presence online. Other popular platforms include Snapchat, TikTok, and VSCO.
- Teens include links to other accounts in their Instagram bios to create a cohesive digital presence.
- Features on different platforms and the cultural norms of each platform influence how teenagers configure privacy.
- For example, the Close Friends Story and Snapchat private story are functionally the same, but participants share more personal information on Snapchat. This is because Snapchat is seen as being “for friends” while Instagram is for content creation and influencing.
Teens use built-in and self-configured features to manage privacy
Teens use a blend of built-in and self-configured features to manage their privacy.
- Two common methods are using the built-in Close Friends list and self-configured secondary accounts (e.g., “finsta”, “spam account”). Private stories on Snapchat can also be used in addition to or in place of Instagram features.
- Teens create concentric circles of trust on social media. They share the most intimate and personal information with their innermost circle, usually on a secondary account or a private Snapchat story.
- Followers in the innermost circle also have access to the more broadly available content. Teens determine who has access based on trust and how relevant the other person would find their content.
Privacy features spread through word-of-mouth
A popular way for teens to learn about privacy features is by observing what their friends and peers are doing online.
- Even though our teen interviewees were regular users of Instagram, they often confessed to not knowing about many privacy features.
- Even though teen participants may not have used certain features themselves, they mentioned having heard of the feature through their friends or seeing the feature on other people’s accounts.
- Teens also learn what not to do for privacy settings from their peers. For example, one participant chose to remain private on Instagram after hearing about the “inappropriate DMs” her friends who have public accounts receive.
To learn more, check out our full paper “Understanding Teenagers Perceptions and Configurations of Privacy on Instagram” and come chat with us during the “Privacy at Various Life Stages” session.
