Look at Me! On Second Thought, Look the Other Way.

The Millennials have been described as the Look-at-Me Generation, a generation that has kept a running documentary of their lives on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Flicker and their own blogs.  A generation that thinks nothing of sexting nude or suggestive images of themselves to a boyfriend or girlfriend who then may share it with 4 or 500 of their closest friends. A generation that, as my colleagues Andrew Mendelson and Zizi Papacharissi found in a study of Facebook photos, seemed to make little effort to hide “bad behavior.”  Underage minors proudly thrust their beer toward the camera and saw little problem with keeping up photos such as one showing “a girl dancing crazily with a drink in her hand, licking a girl’s face and licking the top of a girl friend’s chest.” This is a generation that doesn’t think twice about announcing on their Facebook status that they hate their boss and what parts of their bodies make them sexy.  In short, this appears to be a generation that treats modesty with the seriousness that Lindsay Lohan treats sobriety, a generation that makes “Narcissus look like a self-hating Greek.”

So it may seem paradoxical that, according to a recently released report from Pew Internet, the Millennial generation, the supposedly narcissistic generation that is said to be as demure as the top bead earner at Mardi Gras, is more vigilant about managing their online reputations through controlling who has access to information on their social network sites than other age groups. Specifically the study found the following about the Millennial generation:

• They are much more likely than any other generation to take steps to limit the amount of information available about the  online
• They are more likely to have changed their privacy settings on their profile to limit what they share with others.
• Almost half say they have deleted unwanted comments and 41% said they have untagged themselves from photos posted by others.
• Nearly three in 10  young Internet users say they never trust social network sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Linked-in and nearly 80 percent said they trust social network sites some of the time or never. Surprisingly, about a quarter of those 30-49 said they trust social network sites most of the time or all of the time.  Really, have these people read what  Facebook President Mark Zuckerberg has to say about online privacy?  He seems as concerned about privacy as those horndogs in American Pie and the first Porky’s movie.
• The young are also more than twice as likely to regret something they posted online than other age groups.

Pew Internet doesn’t explain the seeming contradiction of why the group most likely to post regrettable information online is also the group that seems most vigilant about protecting its online image.  However, I believe it come down to the fact that the Millennials were raised on the Internet and are therefore the most tech. This savviness comes into dealing with their online image.  As Mendelson and Papacharissi noted in their study of college students and Facebook, they see the role of Facebook photos as documenting the college experience (and by college experience, students meant partying and other social gatherings with friends, not documenting time spent on things actually related to college such as studying).  However, the young are more likely to have searched for what information is available about them online, are more aware that companies have policies about what employees can post about themselves and are more aware that companies check Facebook to find out about employees and potential employees.  So during college students may not be terribly concerned about posts and photos that document “bad behavior,” but when they hit the job market they are aware that it is best they delete details about a one-night stand or untagged themselves from friends’ photos showing them taking a bong hit.

The tech savvy Millennials not only are more aware of the need to protect their privacy but also are more likely to have the technical know-how to properly manage their online image.  I like to PRETEND I am tech savvy.  I blog, I Twitter, and I belong to about seven social network sites from Facebook to Gowalla.  But compared to my 22-year-son I have the tech savviness of the Amish.  Technologically speaking, I am about as cool as  Tom Jones singing “She’s a Lady.”  It is not easy to completely control your privacy on social network sites. To exert full control over privacy on Facebook the user had to navigate through 50 settings and 170 options. Quadruple bypass surgery isn’t that complex.  Fortunately, I found a video that allows you to change the most important privacy settings in about two minutes

I have posted this blog to more of the Millennial generation than usual and I am curious whether they indeed think the claims that they are indeed the narcissistic, Look at Me Generation that scholars claim are accurate or overblown?.  I offered my opinions on why Millennials, the group that is most likely to regret what they post online is also the one that is more likely to manage their online reputation.  How concerned SHOULD we be about our privacy on social network sites like Facebook.  I am interested in what you think.