A representative survey every two years shows how young people in Switzerland use the media and what they do in their spare time.
Now the so-called James Study 2022 is here – and the following finding makes you sit back and watch: Teens are getting more careless when it comes to protecting their privacy on the Internet. Only 60 percent of 12- to 19-year-olds surveyed have enabled data protection settings on social networks. Ten years ago it was 84 percent.
Free games are not free
This seems a bit misleading if you look at the popularity of free games, for example: 93 percent of boys and 65 percent of girls play at least occasionally, with younger ones playing more often than older ones. Most free games are played.
The problem with this: Users pay in the so-called free video game, for example by disclosing personal data transferred to third parties for advertising purposes. Privacy settings can at least prevent strangers from contacting you in-game.
Sexual harassment is common
The increase in sexual harassment on the Internet can also be seen in the context of neglecting data protection. Nearly half of the nearly 1,000 youth surveyed from across the country had experienced at least one previous online sexual harassment. In 2014 it was just under one-fifth.
“The risk of sexual harassment on the Internet decreases the less you reveal about yourself,” says Lilian Suter, co-author of the James Study 2022, adding that this is an assumption. In other words: the more open you are to information about yourself on social networks, the more likely it is that strangers will ask you to post your erotic photos.
Posts are disappearing again
The study shows that teens on social networks view, like and comment on other people’s posts more often than when they post their own. If they do, for example, a time-limited story on Instagram that disappears after 24 hours, or snapshots that can no longer be called up on Snapchat after the first view.
Is it an indication that young people are sensitive and don’t want to leave too many traces on the internet? “This may play a role,” says media psychologist Suter of the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW), who compiled the study on behalf of Swisscom.
Added value in a short time
However, this is not the only reason for the popularity of time-limited supplements. “There is added value in being temporary,” says the researcher. If you haven’t seen it, you missed it.
Data protection on the Internet has become a more complex issue in recent years. Keywords are cookies, algorithms, or end-to-end encryption. “Eventually it became more complicated to predict who would see a post and how much reach they might have.”
Make privacy a habit
Suter thinks it is understandable that young people, like adults, neglect data protection. The habit can help, says Suter: “When I download an app, I directly optimize the data protection settings so I don’t have to think about it later.”