A few weeks ago I was asked to speak to a middle school class about my job as a reporter. One of the topics the teacher asked me to speak about was how I use social media: specifically, the methods I use to keep my information safe online.
“These kids have no concept of privacy,” the teacher told me before class. They were raised on technology and social media, she said — they don’t know what the world was like before Internet privacy was a major concern.
In other words, they are typical millennials.
Full disclosure, I am a millennial. I was born in 1992, knew how to use a computer by age five and currently have an account on at least five social media apps.
The kids I spoke to were all around 13 or 14 years old, meaning they were all born in the early 2000s. Technically, we are in the same generation, but I did notice a key difference between us.
Having spent a great deal of my life — and my job — using Facebook and Twitter, I asked these students how many of them had a Twitter or Facebook account and actively used it. The response? Nearly zero.
I was stunned. I asked what kind of social media accounts they use. Responses included Snapchat and Instagram, both of which I use but not as my sole social media diet. For these kids, their social networks were almost exclusively limited to these accounts.
I then asked if they used any sort of privacy settings or actively thought about how their posts influence future employers’ opinion of them. Again, the answer was no.
What this class full of typical students indicated to me was that while millennials like myself are very savvy in terms of technology’s uses and benefits, we are often blind to the risks of putting our trust in the Internet.
I am not alone in this observation: Norton’s cybersecurity insights report for 2016 showed surprising statistics that portrayed baby boomers as displaying safer online behavior than millennials.
Historically, a lot of the worry in cybersecurity has revolved around baby boomers: We worry that our parents or grandparents will buy into scams or give away private information. In some respects, these are valid fears: AARP regularly publishes articles about older people’s susceptibility to scams, including those of the cyber variety.
But Norton’s data showed that 15 percent of baby boomers have disclosed an online password to someone else. For millennials, that figure was a whopping 31 percent.
Another interesting figure emerged from the Norton study. According to this data set, 44 percent of millennials have been victimized by online crime in the past year, while only 16 percent of baby boomers have.
It is difficult to say whether the implications of the Norton statistics are a direct result of online activity, or whether part of the problem with millennials is our mindset that information is not something to be closely guarded, but instead shared.
As more of our social and financial dealings are done over apps and the Internet, millennials appear to be less wary of giving out personal information online. Whether it is paying back a friend with Venmo, ordering food with Seamless or checking bank statements on a banking app, millennials are so accustomed to inputting sensitive information we rarely bat an eye at something that could easily be a scam.
CSO Magazine editor Joan Goodchild told U.S. News and World Report in June that many young people value the convenience of giving out personal information over security fears.
“Millennials, who have grown up around technology and are so used to using it, might not view that device they are bringing to work or that computer they have been given to get their work done on as something … insecure,” Goodchild said. “They really see it as a tool to get things done.”
Along with this admittedly careless attitude, part of the reason for millennials’ high-risk behavior with cybersecurity is because they tend to diversify their information-sharing sources. Unlike their parents and grandparents, who tend to only use one or two social media sources, millennials have a bevy of outlets with which to share private information.
“Millennials use more devices and are connected more, so their exposure is bigger,” Kevin Haley, Symantec’s director of security response, told Buzzfeed. “They’ve taken that feeling of invincibility and they’re out there all the time.”
Additionally, many millennials like the idea of secret-sharing apps like Yik Yak or self-destructing photo apps like Snapchat, both of which have become wildly popular. While anonymity is not their sole purpose, they do provide a feeling of security in a society where it seems everything comes to light eventually.
But not even these disappearing or anonymous sharing apps are completely safeguarded from prying eyes. They can easily be hacked, as in the case of Snapchat, or the messages and photos can be photographed by another phone or screenshotted.
The middle school class I spoke to is quickly outgrowing the social media outlets that have now been overrun by their parents and grandparents. As they explore new media territory, many of which are still working out security kinks, they put themselves at risk for having their information stolen or used without their knowledge.
Technology is constantly evolving and shifting, and so we, too, must evolve and shift. We need to not put our trust in our social media accounts or in the people who run them, but must instead change our mindsets. We must take responsibility for our own Internet safety, or no one else will.
