What Teenagers think of Social Networks

„Privacy and social networks do not sit easily together“: this was an opinion expressed in a series of video interviews with young people at the Safer Internet Forum 2010 in Luxembourg. The youngsters questioned, Europeans aged between 14 and 17, reported that they use different social networks for various purposes. They are also aware of possible problems arising from their usage. //blog article on saferinternet.org

An insight into how teenagers use SNS - Monta from Latvia

“Messaging, emails, it takes a pretty long time”, says Monta from Latvia. Using nine different social network sites however, she is rather an exception. Most youngsters name Facebook as their favorite social network, being the platform with the most users worldwide. But also networks with strong national penetration are popular with young people, such as HI5 in Portugal. “Everybody in Portugal has an account there”, reports Francisca.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcKyFQS_8vA&feature=player_embedded

Most of the youths use social networks to keep in touch with their friends. But social networks also serve other purposes – Monta for example uses them for school and education, Konstantinos from Greece for online gaming. When it comes to the topic of privacy, the youngsters close in on a definition: “privacy is something that is only mine, it is something that nobody else can touch”, states Petr from Czech Republic.

But is it possible to have privacy in social networks? When you’re smart, you can use them and still keep your privacy, suggests Petr. Linus from Sweden, however, is more skeptical. “When you really want something to be private, you shouldn’t post it online”, he suggests.