A Multicultural Meditation on Social Media Engagement Habits
Most days I speak to passing strangers who, in the midst of conversation, ask me about my background in cybersecurity. Although it happens so frequently I love to use these personal moments to touch on basic cybersecurity and privacy concepts that I feel should be ubiquitous in our modern, data-driven society. My surprise is that the average person does not know much at all about cybersecurity, yet they are always curious and willing to learn more. Having discussions about privacy with my roommate, for instance, provides an interesting outlook on the topic.
She is Iranian, like me, but she was raised in Dubai. Let’s call her Rose Water, because after all, this is a piece on privacy and Iranians put rose water in everything. I would call Rose a privacy fundamentalist, as she has never posted on her Instagram, she has one Facebook profile picture (which I convinced her to upload because she looked like an internet troll without it), and she rarely posts on her Snapchat story too. As a student born and raised in America, I was initially so shocked by her online conservatism. I asked how it is possible for a 21 year old college student in America to be so rogue on social networks, while I, comparatively, have posted over 500 photos on my Instagram?
After several conversations on the topic, I believe her situation stems from a fundamental difference in cultural values. Firstly, Rose is studying aerospace engineering, and she feels that in order to fulfill her dream of being sent to space without any complications, she needs to portray herself as a squeaky clean whistle. The risk simply isn’t worth the reward. But it isn’t just Rose whose online behavior is worth mentioning.
Going to an international high school in Dubai, she was surrounded by friends from Indian, Russian, Arabic, and British backgrounds. These friends all practiced the same online privacy habits, rarely posting photos or status updates to illustrate their day-to-day lives. However, upon reflection, Rose has noticed that since her friends have migrated to countries like the Netherlands, the UK, and America to study, the two that are in Pennsylvania and Florida have most noticeably transformed their regular interactions with social media, thus becoming much more active now. Somehow, participation in our culture in America has catapulted these two individuals’ long-held privacy habits into an entirely new value-system.
This observation of American engagement with social media is not new for me. When I studied at the University of Amsterdam for a semester, Dutch students always echoed similar sentiments. They felt that the average American is much more willing to share photos of themselves online, and often has a much richer profile than their European counterparts, especially on Facebook and Snapchat.
This concept touches on the idea of privacy as a social construct which we discussed in class. This phenomenon explains how us Americans have been conditioned into prioritizing the social aspect of online communications and services in general, by forfeiting our extremely detailed and accumulated information in exchange. Can Americans ever learn to care about privacy on a mass scale? Is it even in our nature?
Rose and I compared our online habits to those of our families in Iran. For example, in signing up for an application or website that requests personal information in exchange for a service, they would undoubtedly question the benefit and meaning of that exchange, never signing away personal information carelessly. Privacy precautions, again, are inherent to their cultural construct.
I think the online behavioral patterns among varying nationalities and cultures is a particularly interesting area of research within the fields of privacy and cybersecurity. Globally, our societies have learned to value different physical behaviors that have then been extended to our online personas. These learned habits of engagement thus shape our online values regarding self-expression versus privacy, in a way that will no doubt impact how members from various international communities will prevail in the coming decades. I am interested to see where Americans will find ourselves when that time comes.
