Half of French teenagers have published information on someone else without their consent

A recent French study highlights a paradox of web 2.0. While 39% of 15-17y have been victim of someone else publishing information (photos, videos, email) on them without permission, 49% of that same age group say they have once published these information on others without their consent.

It is probably a misleading figure for three reasons:

• Doing it once does not mean you do it all the time and that it is a way of life.
• The people who publish on me are probably not the people I publish on. It would be interesting to separate the statistics by “type” of people, the family, the friends, people I like, people I don’t like. Maybe it is in that last category I will publish information without asking.
• Maybe these teens are publishing information to closed spaces (like when you limit access to a post to close friends only on Facebook, formally a publication, but not to the world), the study does not differentiate between public and private.

Still, this shows that there is a difference in perception and some learning to do. Some will qualify this as unconsciousness (not being aware of the price of exposure), but I find that interpretation unlikely as this generation is very tech-savvy and is in control of their identity. See sociogeek to learn more on how people expose themselves online.

^{Top: Who has seen information on him/her published by another web user?
Bottom: Who has published information on someone else without his/her consent?}