Social media networking literacy and privacy on Facebook: Comparison of pupils and students regarding the public availability of their personal information

Abstract

The paper presents results from the research of the personal information privacy behavior of 200 pupils and 200 university students who are members of Facebook. The content analysis method was used to quantitatively determine and compare the extent to which the various types of personal information about pupils (about 10 to 13 years old) and students (about 18 to 24 years old) are publicly available on their Facebook profiles. The qualitative content analysis was used to determine examples of potentially compromising personal information disclosed by ten pupils and ten students. An important finding was that pupils and students publish a lot of personal information available to anyone with a Facebook account. Some of this information could be harmful for them. Pupils and students mainly do not publish the most private personal information such as their political views. However, some of this information could be assumed indirectly through the other published information.