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Popular media often characterize youths’ use of social media as overwhelmingly negative, reporting that teens engage in reckless, unsafe behaviors with little thought to their online privacy or safety. Typically, these popular media accounts are based on adults’ prescriptive views of youths’ attitudes and behaviors. Using qualitative methods including background questionnaires and focus groups, we gathered older teens’ attitudes about online privacy and safety to provide a more complete narrative from a teen perspective. Findings suggest that older teens are concerned with their online privacy and feel discomfort with unintended audiences seeing their personal information, yet most feel tension to share personal information with friends. They are less concerned about safety, tending to feel safe online and to employ protective measures, but viewing older and younger generations as less knowledgeable about online safety. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of these findings for teaching teens about online privacy and safety.

The issue of how teens choose social networks and information communication technologies (ICT's) for personal communication is complex. This study focused on describing how U.S. teens from a highly technological suburban high school select ICT's for personal communication purposes. Two research questions guided the study: (a) What factors influence high school seniors’ selection of online social networks and other ICT's for everyday communication? (b) How can social network theory (SNT) help to explain how teens select online social networks and other ICT's for everyday communication purposes? Using focus groups, a purposive sample of 45 teens were asked to discuss (a) their preferred methods for communicating with friends and family and why, (b) the reasons why they chose to engage (or not to engage) in online social networking, (c) how they selected ICT's for social networking and other communication purposes, and (d) how they decided whom to accept as online “friends.” Findings indicated that many factors influenced participants’ ICT selection practices including six major categories of selection factors: relationship factors, information/communication factors, social factors, systems factors, self‐protection factors, and recipient factors. SNT was also helpful in explaining how “friendship” was a major determining factor in their communication media and platform choices.

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The study develops an in-depth picture of teens' thoughts and opinions related to social networks and ICT's, particularly preferences towards, and concerns related to, their use. Using a series of six semi-structured focus group interviews, data were gathered from 45 high school seniors attending a highly technological public high school. Focus group questions included 1) preferred methods for communicating with friends and family; 2) reasons for engaging or not engaging in online social networking; 3) how ICT's for social networking and other communication purposes were selected; and 4) decisions related to accepting online "friends."Findings contradicted earlier "digital natives" literature, which suggests that teens are avid users of technology for technology's sake. Instead, the teens viewed ICTs and social networks from a more pragmatic view, using them as tools for quick and easy communication and for relationship building and maintenance.General findings indicated that 1) communication media were selected based on the closeness of the relationship with the message receiver(s) and the number of intended receivers; 2) social networks, such as Facebook, were used for less frequent contact with wider range of friends and relatives; 3) teens used ICTs differently for communication with adults than with peers; and 4) teens preferred to use email for interactions with teachers.An eight-category typology of four ICT capability preferences (Simplicity of interface design/Ease of use, Speed of use, Constant contact/Ubiquitous communication, and Multitasking) and four ICT use concerns (Information privacy, Information security, Communication overload; and Reduced face-to-face communication and interaction) is proposed.

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Organizations and governments continue to advance toward using electronic means to interact with their customers. However, the use of this medium presents an access-toservice issue for people across the digital divide who do not have private Internet access from their homes. Publicly-available computers connected to the Internet are an important and expanding source of Internet access for consumers. Still, we do not know if people are willing to engage in e-commerce transactions in such environments. We expand the Facilitating Conditions construct of Triandis' (1980) modified theory of reasoned action to develop a model of transactional Web site use in public environments that incorporates the physical and virtual computer environments associated with publicly accessible computers, moderated by the individual's need for privacy. The model was tested in public libraries, and the results indicate that the virtual and physical facilitating conditions of a public computer are determinants of e-commerce use in a public environment, and the user's need for privacy moderates these relationships.