INTRODUCTION:

The term “social media” refers to Internet-based applications that enable people to communicate and share resources and information. Some examples of social media include blogs, discussion forums, chat rooms, wikis, YouTube Channels, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Social media can be accessed by computer, smart and cellular phones, and mobile phone text messaging (SMS). The use of social media is an evolving phenomenon. During the past decade, rapid changes in communication as a result of new technologies have enabled people to interact and share information through media that were non-existent or widely unavailable as recently as 15 years ago.

The use of social media has become widespread and can serve a variety of purposes. Within the last five years social media played an increasing role in emergencies and disasters.

Facebook supports numerous emergency-related organizations, including Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management (ISCRAM), and The Humanitarian Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) Project. Moreover, numerous emergency and disaster-related organizations, including universities, the private and non-profit sectors, and state and local governments use Facebook to disseminate information, communicate with each other, and coordinate activities such as emergency planning and exercises.

When a teenager joins a site like Facebook, they first create a personal profile. These profiles display information such as one’s name, relationship status, occupation, photos, videos, religion, ethnicity, and personal interests. What differentiates SNS from previous media like a personal homepage is the display of one’s friends (Boydand Ellison, 2007). In addition to exhibiting a network of friends, other users can then click on their profile and traverse ever widening social networks.

These three features—profiles, friends, traversing friend lists—represent the core, defining characteristics of SNS. Social networking features are increasingly integrated into other types of media tools and online communities. Sonia Livingstone (2008) notes that SNS invite “convergence among the hitherto separate activities of email, messaging, website creation, diaries, photo albums and music or video uploading and downloading” (p. 394). For example, YouTube is primarily a video sharing service, but users can add others as their friends or subscribe to a member’s collection of videos. Using body and Ellison’s (2007) definition, YouTube can be included as a type of SNS. As researchers examine the effects of SNS on social behaviours, they will undoubtedly come across these blurring of technologies. The proliferation of SNS, both as stand alone communities and integrated into other media tools, underscores the importance of understanding the unique effects these sites have on human interaction. Amid the sea of what websites can be termed SNS, the technical definition of SNS still provides a shared conceptual foundation. Comparing across common features—i.e., profiles and friend networks—researchers can begin to understand how various communities co-opt these characteristics to create entirely new cultural and social uses of the technology. Lange’s (2007) ethnographic study of YouTube shows that users deal with issues concerning public and private sharing of video. Some YouTube users post videos intended for wide audiences, but share very little about their own identities. Their motivations might be to achieve Internet fame and gather viewers. Other members, upload videos intended for a small network of friends and may restrict the privacy settings to only allow access to those individuals. The concepts of friend and social network for these users are entirely distinct.

The use of social media tools to facilitate knowledge sharing broadly throughout an organization is growing (Kane, Majchrzak and Ives, 2010; Treem and Leonardi, 2012). As of 2012, four out of five companies are using social technologies at varying stages of maturity (Overby, 2012), and 86% of managers believe that social media will be important to their business in 3 years (Kiron, Palmer, Phillips and Kruschwitz, 2012). While a third of the adopters are just getting their use off the ground with pilots, a majority of the adopters are now using social media tools to varying degrees in cross-functional knowledge sharing.

A PRIVACY OXYMORON:

The popularity of social mediaApplications on the Smart phones introduces the use of mediated–communication into the relationship development process. Adolescents now use organized Social Media Applications to meet others and explore identity formation. These Applications can be viewed within a larger trend that shifts the influence of interpersonal correspondence to mediated messages. James Beniger (1986) described how in 1870 a crisis of control in the production sector of the states evolved into a shift from personal relationships to bureaucratic organizational processes. Information processing systems were central to this change, and computers with microprocessors accelerated it. Beniger states: “The rise of the Information Society itself, more than even the parallel development of formal information theory, has exposed the centrality of information processing, communication, and control to all aspects of human society and social behaviour.” “As societies achieve higher degrees of organization, mechanisms of social control will inevitably expand.”To run efficient control systems, a considerable amount of information needs to be collected about participants.

Today we have organizational and software procedures that control the exchange of interpersonal information in social media Applications, text messaging, instant messenger programs, sharing videos, photos, playing games, smart phone supported apps, and education. All of these application fit into the larger category of social media, or media that support social collaboration. The term social media is an umbrella concept that describes social software and social media. “Social software refers to various, loosely connected types of applications that allow individuals to communicate with one another, and to track discussions across the Social media as they happen.” These terms may be new, but the idea of using media as a form of social control has been evolving for a long time.

Benniger (1987) describes how mass media has gradually replaced interpersonal communication as a socializing force. Further, social mediaApplications have become popular Applications for youth culture to explore themselves, relationships, and share cultural artifacts. The Applications centralize and help coordinate the interpersonal exchanges between Tamil Nadu teens and global brands. Applications, such as MySpace, can use the social exchanges of Tamil Nadu youth to glean marketing information about youth culture and reinforce brand images.

The personal information revealed by teenagers on these Applications also attracts sexual predators. There have been a number of reports of sexual predators locating victims through social media Applications. As a result of growing concern over the misuse of social media, a new bill has been introduced into the Tamil Nadu Congress to protect teenagers. The newly proposed Deleting Online Predators Act of 2006 (Fitzpatrick, 2006) states the term “commercial social mediasocial media Apps” means a commercially operated Smart phoneon Social media site that

“(i) allows users to create social media messages or profiles that provide information about themselves and are available to others users; and

(ii) offers a mechanism for communication with other users, such as a forum, chat room, email, or instant messenger”

Commercial social mediaApplications thrive “on a sense of immediacy and community. The spirit is independent, even rebellious.” Adolescents are learning how to use social media by interacting with their friends, rather than learning these behaviours from their parents or teachers. “[Public conventions] generate our manners and morals —our shared assumptions—and allow communications.” Often parents have no clue about the information teens are publicly revealing (Sullivan, 2005). Currently, a new type of communication behaviour is emerging amongst teenagers as they explore their identities, experiment with behavioural norms, date, and build friendships.

Social mediaApplications, including Friendster.com, Tagged.com, Xanga.com, LiveJournal, MySpace, Facebook, and LikedIn have developed on the Smart phones over the past several years. For instance, MySpace was launched in January, 2004 and last November the Nielsen/Net Ratings, estimated that there were 24.5 million unique visitors to the site. More recently, the site boosted 90 million members or nearly one–third of the U.S. population (Noguchi, 2006). DeWolfe and Anderson, employees of Intermix Media, Inc. wanted to create MySpace as anSmart phones portal to rival Yahoo, MSN, and Google. In contrast to information seeking or news, their site would be based on user–generated content. The original content offered was music and band promotions, and the site quickly attracted many celebrities and fans. In March 2006, MySpace was the second most trafficked site on the Smart phones with Facebook at number 7. At times, MySpace has had more traffic than Google (Duffy, 2006).

According to ComScore Media Metrix (2006), more teens visit MySpace than Yahoo MSN or Electronic Arts, which is a gaming site. Social media Applications “play a key role in youth culture because they give youth a space to hang out amongst friends and peers, share cultural artifacts (like links to funny Social mediaApplications, comments about TV shows), and work out an image of how they see themselves.” MySpace provides young people with the ability to blog, flirt, diarize, post pictures, share videos, creative artwork, and meet new people. Similarly, Facebook is a national online directory that connects students together at local schools and schools around the nation. Young people are “pouring their minds, if not their hearts, into cyberspace. They are doing it to clear their heads, stow their thoughts and get feedback from peers.”

In Tamil Nadu, we live in aoxymoronically world of privacy. On one hand, teenagers reveal their intimate thoughts and behaviours online and, on the other hand, government agencies and marketers are collecting personal data about us. For instance, the government uses driver license databases to find “dead–beat dads” or fathers who are behind on their child support payments. Many government records have been turned into digital archives that can be searched through the Smart phones. Every time we use a shopping card, a retail store collects data about our consumer spending habits. Credit card companies can create even larger profiles of our shopping behaviours. Locked away on hundreds of servers is every minute detail of our daily lives from our individual buying preferences to personal thoughts. Galkin (1996) states: “Much of the information that people would like to keep secret is already lawfully in the possession of some company or government entity, and what we want is to stop further disclosure without authorization.”Many people may not be aware of the fact that their privacy has already been jeopardized and they are not taking steps to protect their personal information from being used by others.

In an age of digital media, do we really have any privacy? Form Oscar Gandy’s (1993) perspective, we probably do not. Using the metaphor of a Panopticon— an architectural design that allowed prisoners to be monitored by observers—Gandy argues that surveillance systems can exert the same type of control in contemporary culture. He states: “the panoptic sort is an antidemocratic system of control that cannot be transformed because it can serve no purpose other than that for which it was designed — the rationalization and control of human existence.” He calls for an agency that will be charged with ensuring the survival of privacy.

Social media Applications create a central repository of personal information. These archives are persistent and cumulative. Instead of replacing old information with new materials, online journals are archive–oriented compilations of entries that can be searched. While Tamil Nadu grown ups are concerned about how the government and corporations are centrally collecting data about citizens and consumers, teenagers are freely giving up personal and private information in online journals. Marketers, school officials, government agencies, and online predators can collect data about young people through online teenage diaries. Herein lies the privacy oxymoron. Adults are concerned about invasion of privacy, while teens freely give up personal information. This occurs because often teens are not aware of the public nature of the Smart phones.

PUBLIC VERSUS PRIVATE BOUNDARIES:

The private versus public boundaries of social media spaces are unclear. On the Smart phones, the illusion of privacy creates boundary problems. “New users and those engaged exclusively in recreational domains probably feel this illusion most strongly.” For example, in a television interview about Facebook, one of my students stated that she was concerned about revealing personal information online. When the reporter asked to see her Facebook page, the page contained her home address, phone numbers, and pictures of her young son. Without being aware of the dangers of online social Applications, she had revealed too much personal information.

Similarly, Viégas’ (2005) research on bloggers suggests “there is a disconnect between the way users say they feel about the privacy settings of their blogs and how they react once they experience unanticipated consequences form a breach of privacy.” Lenhart (2005) reports that 81 percent of parents and 79 percent of online teens report “that teens are not careful enough about giving out their personal information online.” Moreover, parents of younger teens are more apt to be concerned about the disclosure of personal data.

Social media tools, have almost become indispensable for teenagers, who often think theirs lives are private as long as their parents are not reading their journals. Teen use of social media Applications has increased to an average of one hour 22 minutes per day. Social media Applications are “already creating new forms of social behaviour that blur the distinctions between online and real–world interactions.” For example, “when students began posting pictures of themselves at parties holding a beer and leaving messages that were hurtful, defamatory or demeaning, schools began considering ways to regulate the speech on [MySpace].” Adults tend to use the Social media as a supplement to real–world activities while teenagers tend to ignore the difference between life online and off–line.

Unlike a written journal that can be kept private, online journals are written for others to read. Who should have access to these online records? “Some say that if the journal is open online, it should be available to parents. Others argue that [parents] reading journals is no different from eavesdropping on their kids.” Still, others argue the safety issue. Teens use social media Applications as a form of entertainment, but occasionally online predators use these Applications to stalk victims. Several young girls have been molested by men they have met on social media Applications.

In an attempt to better understand student attitudes toward social media Applications and privacy, a classroom attitudinal survey was conducted to collect data about student attitudes about Facebook. In an exploratory survey, conducted with 64 undergraduate students, it was learned that 65 percent of the students used Facebook or MySpace. A Likert scale was utilized to collect data about student attitudes about privacy when they use social mediaApplications. When asked if they agreed or disagreed with the following statements:

Like to reveal information about myself to others through WhatsApp;

I trust the people I interact with on WhatsApp;

I can share my personal thoughts with others on WhatsApp; and,

I have included personal information in my status, the attitudinal results were neutral. There were no clear privacy attitudes related to the student’s use of WhatsApp. The only significant finding discovered was a strong disagreement with the statement: “everybody should know everything about everyone else.” Students wanted to keep information private, but did not seem to realize that WhatsApp is a public space. Sharing their personal information on social mediaApplications is not only sharing with online friends. Parents, future employers, and university officials can also read journal entries.

Some of the confusion about the public versus private space associated with social media is the sign–up procedure. Sullivan (2005) states that “the Applications deserve some blame for the release of personal information. In the sign–up process, many ask for e–mail addresses, for example.” Asking for this type of information and setting up requirements for membership tend to make kids think it is safe to reveal personal information online. Friendster has a registration process and LickedIn is for people with professional affiliations. Additionally, Facebook requires an affiliation with a college or high school, which also creates the idea of a semi–private space. Sitting at home alone typing into a computer may feel like a private exchange. However, once private information is posted on the Smart phones, it becomes available for others to read. We have no control over who can read our seemingly private words.

PRIVACY:

Privacy can be viewed from many different perspectives, including political policies, the rights of citizens, and protection for consumers. From a policy perspective, Schement and Curtis (1995) describe privacy “as security against intrusion by government.” Garfinkel (2000) notes that the word privacy does not indicate the scope of the issues of privacy in the Tamil Nadu today. “Privacy isn’t just about hiding things. It’s about self–possession, autonomy, and integrity.” Privacy is the “right of people to control what details about their lives stay inside their own houses and what leaks to the outside.” Citizens and consumers should know who collects what information and how it is going to be used.

Students sharing drinking and fraternity pledging photos with their friends on social mediaApplications probably do not expect university administrators to use these images as evidence to reprimand student behaviour. A social exchange between friends has now become a way for universities to monitor student behaviour. The question becomes, how is information posted on social media Applications being used by others? “When personal data about individuals are collected, processed, stored and retrieved without their consent, their information security is under threat. Information security also means that people are free to determine what information about themselves they want to share with others.” Young people do not seem to be aware of the uses of their personal information.

Laws regulate citizen and consumer rights. In commerce, much of the erosion of individual privacy occurs with the consent of the individual. For example, credit applications collect personal information and requests for catalogs can be used to compile direct mailing lists. Moreover, collecting, analyzing, and interpreting personal information stored in databases has become a data–mining industry. As teenagers voluntarily provide information about themselves on social media Applications, this information could also be used by data–miners.

Many societies provide spaces for individual autonomy, a space that respects privacy. In legal cases an individual’s expectations about privacy is generally debated. Another privacy issue raised by commercial social mediaApplications is the users’ expectations of privacy. In the exploratory survey, students were asked to respond to the statement: “Facebook respects my privacy.” The student responses were neutral with a slight tendency to disagree with the statement. Similarly when asked the following statement: “In mediated environments like Facebook, my personal privacy is made public.” The student responses were again neutral on a Likert scale. Some students may be aware that Facebook is not a private space, but many act as if it is private.

When asked in an open-ended question about the meaning of privacy, the responses varied from flip comments to serious answers (see appendix). For example, one student wrote: “Refer to the dictionary.com definition of privacy.” And, another stated: “Privacy is being able to keep things from public knowledge/access.” A third student’s answer directly related to Facebook: “You aren’t required to show anything except your name and school email. So anything you post beyond that is your choice.” But, choosing to reveal information and then having it used for a different purpose by third parties is a privacy issue Disclosure of private information on social media Applications can have a negative impact on students. Because schools, college admissions officers, and future employers are checking these Applications, personal information and pictures revealed online can directly influence a student’s educational, employment and financial future.

Moreover, teenagers sometimes fabricate information to post on these Applications. “Increasingly, many teenagers feel pressured to show themselves doing more risqué things, even if they are not actually doing them.” For instance, girls have “blogged about weekends of dinking and debauchery, while in reality they were coloring with their younger siblings or watching old movies with Grandma.” What happens when a parent or college admissions officer reads these false postings? One can only imagine. As teens flock to the Smart phones to share their intimate thoughts, social media Applications raise a number of privacy issues that need to be addressed.

PRIVACY ISSUES:

Privacy concerns exist about the potential for the collection, retention, and data mining of personal information by the federal government with respect to its use of social media for disaster recovery purposes. Specifically, the use of status alerts and the creation of personal pages to establish situational awareness may raise privacy concerns. Others are concerned how the information might be used. For example, would the federal government compile records after a terrorist attack to help investigate certain individuals.

On 23 June, parents of young Vinupriya, a third year BSc student living in Salem, Tamil Nadu, walked into the office of the Superintendent of Police of Salem district. They wanted action to be taken – with a rider – a complaint must not be filed. This case should be off the books.The police complied – Vinupriya’s father was anguished that morphed images of his 21-year-old daughter, showing her in a scantily clad outfit, had been uploaded onto Facebook. A complaint was registered that evening in the Community Service Register (CSR) instead and the police began to investigate the case.

“There were three actionable points in the case,” said an officer involved in the case who did not wish to be named. “The account which was used to put up the morphed picture was a fake profile. That is an offence under Section 65C of the IT Act. Sections 67 and 67A too applied since it could be deemed to be pornographic content,” he explained.In the wee hours of 24 June, they picked up one young man for questioning. This youngster was said to have been in a relationship with Vinupriya earlier. The police let him off as they realised he was not the culprit.

The trouble with Facebook, according to Tamil Nadu police, is that they are pretty much a law unto themselves. The process of communication with the social media giant itself is rather vague. Facebook has a list of email addresses provided by respective governments, authorised to make such requests. Send an email from any other account and Facebook will not respond.

Once an email is sent from the authorised law enforcer’s email address, Facebook sends back an automated reply with a link – the link shows the status of the sender’s request. “We ourselves cannot block any account on Facebook in such cases,” explained the police officer. “We can only request Facebook to do so. We have no one to contact personally in Facebook India either. We just have to send the email and wait and pray that Facebook will respond soon,” Every development from there was widely shared using all forms of social media such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. Images of people sleeping at the Marina beach on the first night of the protest, and the now iconic image of youngsters flashing their phone lights, were shared and re-shared with religious reverence.

In an uncanny deja-vu moment from the floods, WhatsApp groups and Facebook pages once again became sources of information for food, blankets and other such amenities. Pages like Chennai Memes, Chennaites, Jallikattuveeravilayatu gathered followers overnight, becoming go-to places for information.

TAMIL NADU POLICE ON DISSENTERS IN FORCE ON SOCIAL MEDIA:

The State police is on high alert to ensure that there is no agitation by police personnel in view of some posts over social media and poster campaigns expressing unhappiness with the system.Posters under the name of unknown police personnel cropped on the walls of city calling the families of police personnel across the State to assemble in Chennai to take out a procession and submit a memorandum on their charter of demands to Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami at the Secretariat. The message was circulated through social media networks and mobile messaging platforms for the last two weeks. Their demands included implementation of night-hour duty and weekly holidays which other government employees were entitled to. They also demanded that vacancies be filled and orderly system be abolished, besides permission for an association for their welfare. “When IPS officers are allowed to have an association, what is wrong in allowing other police personnel to form an association,”

“It is informed that all unit offices should function on the above dates and none should abstain from duty on these days. Further, all staff are instructed to attend the office at 8.30 a.m. on the above dates without fail. Any deviation in this regard will be viewed seriously,”

According to three 2005 Pew Reports (Lenhart, 2005; Lenhart, et al., 2005; Lenhart and Madden, 2005), 87 percent of Tamil Nadun teens aged 12–17 are using the Smart phones. Fifty–one percent of these teenagers state that they go online on a daily basis. Approximately four million teenagers or 19 percent say that they create their own social medialogs (personal online journals) and 22 percent report that they maintain a personal Social media page (Lenhart and Madden, 2005). In blogs and on personal Social mediaApplications, teenagers are providing so much personal information about themselves that it has become a concern. Today, content creation is not only sharing music and videos, it involves personal diaries,

Commercial social mediaApplications have been designed to enable users to create their own online content. “Brad Greenspan, an early MySpace investor no longer affiliated with the site, said that after observing Friendster, ‘we realized that to allow people more personalization and control would give people more attachment to their Social media pages’.” This appears to be working because MySpace is now one of the most trafficked Applications on the Smart phones. Lenhart and Madden (2005) report that 57 percent of online teens are creating Smart phones content. Additionally, more teenagers write and read social medialogs, than adults. Often teenage social medialogs contain personal information.

An analysis of social medialogs revealed that the types of personal information revealed online includes name, address, birth date, location, and numerous contacts, including e–mail addresses, instant messaging user names, and links to personal Social media pages (Huffaker and Calvert, 2005). “Because teenage bloggers are revealing a considerable amount of personal information, as well as multiple ways to contact them online, the danger of cyberstalking and communicating with strangers online is a serious issue.”

Marketers who target teen consumers can use stated, personal information gathered from social media Applications for purposes other than what users intend. Today, the commoditization of information has made it necessary to consider the invasion of privacy by corporations. Schement and Curtis (1995) state that “information is gathered so that the economy can support its participants.” In a capitalistic society, marketers can use personal information collected in public online databases for commercial purposes. Additionally, companies such as Coke, Apple Computer and Proctor and Gamble are using social media Applications as promotional tools For instance, Apple Computer sponsors the Apple discussion list on Facebook.

Schools can also access and use the information posted on social media Applications. At Chicago’s Loyola University, athletes were told to get off Facebook and MySpace or risk losing their scholarships (Sports Illustrated, 2006). In May 2006, a number of hazing photos appeared on a site called badjocks.com showing athletes from Princeton, Michigan, Fordham, and UC–Santa Barbara behaving badly. As a result, schools have started investigations into student athlete behaviour.

Parents, schools, social media companies and government officials consider the outpouring of personal information in public social media Applications to be a problem. As a result, a number of social, technological and legal solutions are currently being explored. Last April, MySpace hired a safety czar to oversee its site and they began deleting 5,000 under–age profiles a day (Reuters, 2006b). Additionally, they are requiring all members under the age of 18 to review safety tips before they can register for the site. The company also restricts the profiles of users under the age of 16. These efforts are only a few of a number of potential solutions to the social media privacy problem.

PRIVACY SOLUTIONS:

Solutions to protecting privacy in online social media Applications can be approached in three different ways — social solutions, technical solutions, and legal solutions. Parents, schools, and social media Applications are working on various social solutions to the privacy problem. Experts (Sullivan, 2005) agree that the first step in building protections for teenage bloggers starts with parents. A representative from Wired Safety.org remarked that “parents need to be much more involved with their kids’ computer use than they are.” A growing gap is evolving between teenage and parent use of new technology and parents need to spend time learning about these differences. “The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children offer parents advice for detecting whether their child is engaging in appropriate behaviour.”

Schools have also taken action to protect the safety of young individuals in social media Applications and they are scrambling to come up with policies on social media Applications. “In many cases, schools are being forced to respond to real world problems which only came to their attention because this information was so publicly accessible on the Social media.” But schools are not clear about what actions they should take about student participation in social media Applications.

Principals have called, written, and sent e–mail to parents about teens placing too much personal information on the Smart phones. Some schools have banned blogs and asked students to take their information off the network (Kornblum, 2005). Other schools have refused to let students register for social media Applications with a school e–mail address. Additionally, schools are warning students that college admissions officers and future employers are checking social media Applications to read what applicants have written online. Colleges and universities have taken action as a result of hazing photographs of athletes appearing on the Smart phones. Teams have been suspended and student athletes are requested to take their images off of the Smart phones. Additionally, students are being warned that they will be reprimanded for pictures posted on the Smart phones that reveal misbehaviour (Wolverton, 2006).

Currently, commercial social media companies are reacting to the problem of teens online. MySpace has reported “working with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the Advertising Council to create the largest–ever online safety program using nation wide public service advertisements.” (Auchard, 2006). MySpace is posting safety ads. “The spots, which computer users can see on MySpace in the form of banner ads, were also slated to begin running on a host of News Corp. outlets, including other Fox Interactive Media Social media Applications, the 28 Fox Media Group broadcast media, Fox All Access Radio and the New York Post.” (Associated Press, 2006b).

In addition to social awareness, social media Applications are exploring technological solutions to better protect their users. “A few cases of online friendships that turned violent or even homicidal have pressured social–network Applications to provide better security for their members. Facebook recently overhauled its privacy setting to give members tighter controls over who sees what.” Additionally, MySpace utilizes software to try and identify children under the age of 14. But, they admitted that it was difficult to verify the age of all their users (Reuters, 2006a). As a result, Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly has “asked MySpace to install an age and identity verification system, equip Social media pages with a ‘Report Inappropriate Content’ link, respond to all reports of inappropriate content within 24 hours and significantly raise the number of staff who review images and content.”

SOLUTIONS FOR RESOLVE THE OXYMORON:

Commercial social media Applications have been set up to support the flow of information created by individuals. The purpose of these Applications is to advertise and promote brand recognition in consumers, especially teenagers. This is a new type of subtle promotion and standards are needed to protect the interests of consumers. At one level, privacy issues on commercial social media Applications are an industry issue. How is the information collected in social databases being used by others? For instance, the T–mobile phone service automatically backs up pictures on remote servers. When a young woman lost her cell phone with a built–in camera, she purchased a new one and found pictures of the person using the lost phone. The incident ended with the arrest of a 16–year–old on charges of possessing the missing phone. People are not always aware of how information is being stored on databases. As consumers, individuals need to clearly know how their personal information is being stored and used by others.

Marino (2006) emphasized the idea of individual responsibility when using social media Applications. Developing responsible citizens occurs at the family level. Parents also need to be educated about how to teach their children to be responsible Smart phones citizens. The social solutions to the privacy oxymoron begin at home.

Finally, from the legal level, government officials are proposing legislation to protect minors against the misuse of their personal information by predators. Although, predatory behaviour is a major social concern and one not to be easily dismissed, the root of the privacy oxymoron is the collection and control of personal information. Steps to be taken To resolve this oxymoron, steps need to be taken at all levels of society, beginning with the education of parents and teenagers about the use and potential misuse of personal information. Moreover, social media companies and advertisers need to establish policies about the proper use of personal information posted on these Applications. What do we gain and what do we lose when personal information is collected on the Smart phones?

CONCLUSION:

Currently social responses to privacy in social media do not tend to deal with the potential misuse of personal information. Instead the response is based on the protection of children against predators, which is only one aspect of the privacy oxymoron. Similarly, a legal response has been the proposal of a bill to protect underage children. The government and industry responses tend to focus on the issue of predators and this focus distracts from the actual privacy issue — the social behaviour of youngsters on the Smart phones and the use and misuse of their private information.

The solution to the oxymoron is not simple. It will take all levels of society to tackle the social issues related to teens and privacy. Awareness is key to solving the solution. We as individuals need to be more proactive about educating each other and protecting our privacy on the Smart phones.

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Received on 24.10.2017 Modified on 23.11.2017

Res. J. Humanities and Social Sciences. 2018; 9(1): 169-176.

DOI: 10.5958/2321-5828.2018.00030.X