Facebook says, 'Privacy is theft,' because they're selling your lack of privacy to the advertisers who might show up one day. Jaron Lanier

My facebook profile gets more private by the day. I once had a completely public profile yet now hardly anyone can acess much of my information. Kirkpatrick would possibly justify this by saying “The older you are, the more likely you are to find Facebook’s exposure of personal information intrusive and excessive.” Whilst I agree for the most part, I would like to further this premise and say the more multilayered our relationships, and opinions of self are the more privacy setting are employed. Whilst facebook used to a social gathering for our age-mates it has rapidly grown to having everyone from our professors, family, one-time acquaintances, colleagues etc Whilst before I could upload a photo of a night out and not worry about who would see what, now I cannot given that my conservative aunties or uncles may land on it. I have to think in a multifaceted manner when I update a status because the information goes out to all of my “circles.” I would argue that the emergence of multiple identities has also increased in heightened privacy settings, allowing a select few access to your personal information. This would fall into the Contextual criteria;

boyd and Harggitai suggest that in contrast to Kirkpatricks assumption “younger users are conscious enough of privacy issues to take measures to manage which parts of their profiles are accessible.” I would urge that we think of a missing layer. I believe younger users are more conscious because they have more at stake. This would fall into the Risk-benefit criteria. Because younger users share SO much on their profiles they have more to risk if it is in the wrong hands. Whereas the older users of facebook have basic information that does not really require privacy settings. My argument thus being that it is BECAUSE the older users are more aware of privacy that they undergo self privatizing even without the help of Facebook privacy settings.

In thinking of my own profile which is an excessively private profile it was interesting to see that I fulfill the four findings.

“A student is significantly more likely to have a private profile if (1) the student’s friends, and especially roommates, have private profiles; (2) the student is more active on Facebook; (3) the student is female; and (4) the student generally prefers music that is relatively popular (high mean) and only music that is relatively popular (low SD).” [4]

Like I mentioned before, my boundaries used to be thin and many of the reasons for sharing were in line to Petronio’s findings. I find myself as time goes by limiting my profile more and more each day. I will admit that I am doing this to transition into deactivating my account but I would not be nearly as comfortable with an open profile as I was 5 years ago.