What Does Privacy Mean in This Digital Age?
When Everything is Being Recorded…
Digital privacy refers to the protection of an individual’s information that is used or created while using the Internet on a computer or personal device. Studies have found that consumers care about their privacy and is taking actions in order to protect it. They also found out that the majority (58%) of social network site users had restricted access to their profiles, and that in 12 of the world’s largest economies, third of consumers had switched companies or providers over their data sharing practices.
If consumers are unaware of the ways firms collect and use their data, then they cannot respond to the risks that they are unaware of, which further increases the firms’ ability to gather and exploit more information.
Alexander Shatov
Oversharing and Online Behaviour
Using online platforms can be a problem for children and teens. This is because oversharing can lead to higher potential for online shaming, cyberbullying, identity theft, and other security risks. This is especially bad for young children as they might not know what is right or wrong, and how much one picture, message, or video could impact their lives, the society and their mental health. Having their own devices could also lead to over checking responses to posts or shared content on social media, which can lead to addiction, negatively impacting their mental and physical health in the long run.
80% of children in 25 countries report feeling in danger of sexual abuse or exploitation online for example on Facebook, the most used platform to groom and recruit children by sex traffickers. Recording our behaviours and posting them might feel normal now, however, every interaction is being recorded. This makes us question, if children should be exposed to online activity and if governments should put a legislation in setting out an appropriate age.
Digital Information and Policies
Have you ever thought about how much information we are giving to websites/apps?
Information was supposed to strengthen a person’s capacities to make choices but now it has placed people inside a strong filter bubble based on algorithms and corporate policies that may be unknown to the target person. Bounded Rationality makes us lack the processing capacity to make sense of privacy policies, leading to less control to our data, further resulting in more firms writing policies using sophisticated, legalistic terms, making little incentive for people to read them. Consequently, consumers today finds themselves in a grey area, where they struggle between exercising autonomy and being influenced by others.
What Facebook Did to Our Data
One disturbing example of the research conducted by Facebook in 2014 from hundreds of thousands of users showed that the app has the power to induce an emotional state of one user by selectively showing either positive or negative stories in their news feeds without their informed consent. This is then reinforced again in the summer of 2016, when Facebook uses the consumers’ personal data to filter ads with the intension to influence voting in the US presidential elections. Outraged occurred when this scheme was revealed and many did not realised that their data could be shared and exploited. This could mean that there are more misinformation and filtered content than one might have thought, demonstrating that Facebook can certainly keep one party supported or change other parties’ minds.
So, How bad is it? How Powerful are Social Media companies?
It is difficult to measure the extent of influence and misinformation on social media as different platforms have different levels of filter bubble strength. However, now we know that algorithms that are used to curate contents we see and could lead to partial information blindness. Additionally, we can predict that social media companies are very powerful because, why then would China ban Facebook and Youtube? Just like more than two dozen states in the US banning TikTok. With the amount of users of Facebook, China cannot force them to filter content for Chinese users. Likewise, the US governments cannot force TikTok to filter content for American users. This illustrates that the Information we see right now, is filtered through firms to individuals unknowingly and could have the potential to limit our exposure to attitude-challenging information.
Knowing all this, what rights do we have?
According to the Article 17 of the EU General Data Protection Regulation, we have the right to have our personal information erased from the internet. This is also called the ‘right to be forgotten’. This allows digital citizens to contact all the platforms they wish to erase their data from. Not only the data in their account, but all backup data within the server, disabling the access of the data companies hold, and taking consent away from them. If the request is not fulfilled within 30 days, penalties and fines can be charged up to 20 million euros.
The Online Community, Being connected
On the other hand, digital technologies does not need to be bad as it can enable young adults to make friends and stay connected with their peers and helps them feel less alone. It allows adult and teens to share their “stories” on social media and create campaigns like #MeToo, which helps teen survivors of abuse promote healing and spread awareness. Furthermore, having cell phones & apps can facilitate safety as they can call/text the right person at the right time, share live locations, and reduce the likelihood of getting lost.
Children can increase their learning using digital technologies and become more open-minded as they are able to see more examples of other cultures. Therefore, it is up to how well online safety is being taught to children, which is ultimately our responsibility as a digital citizen to help. This also raises the question of how well they are being taught for example, in school.
At the same time, the digital world is presenting us with new opportunities. By exposing our data and putting them out into the internet, labour markets can be improved. Job sites such as LinkedIn and Glassdoor can increase the matching between workers and jobs creating more efficiency, raising working hours, thus raising incomes. Digitalisation provided a $193 billion boost to world economic output and created 6 million jobs in 2011, therefore, the digital world can give is the power to make better choices in life.
Other positive changes from the Digital World:
- Digitalisation can help brands and Individuals build an online presence, building brand image and reputation.
- Help prevent future crimes and accidents by spotting patterns in the behaviour of criminals and congestions on roads.
- Track and analyse human habits and lifestyle to detect certain illnesses and improve health.
My Journey Throughout this Course!
As a second year international business economics student, I decided to take this course because it gave me the opportunity to explore the different ways businesses use their digital platforms to make revenues online. My intention was to also gain more knowledge and insight on how I can become a better digital citizen, as I grew up with internet and consider myself a heavy user, and how I can implement what I have learned into my future career.
This course was challenging as it forced me to think critically, enhance my academic research skills, and improve my online writing. By trying to think critically, Digisoc forced me to develop healthy scepticism, which is a very good thing, however, It is still very difficult for me to think independently, to question authority, and form my own judgments based on my own evidence and reason. Futhermore, Digisoc has helped me take more actions in looking into negative and serious issues that is prevalent today, including the topics I never would have thought of. Structuring my ideas was not simple, but Digisoc has helped me improved my ability to articulate it and express my thoughts clearly. Moreover, Thanks to medium, I can experience writing a blog for the first time in my life, which I found surprisingly exciting and fun once I have found a topic I am interested in.
Overall, this course has made me more well-rounded. It has opened my eyes up to such a broad range of interdisciplinary blog posts and has helped me especially in terms of planning my future career in path of e-commerce. It makes me more excited (and also more wary) of what the digital world could be and how I can further use what I learnt e.g. about ethics into my own online business. I will continue to develop my critical thinking skills, which will certainly be very helpful in my future academic writings.
