Privacy Attitudes and Concerns in the Digital Lives of Older Adults: Westin’s Privacy Attitude Typology Revisited

Abstract

There is a growing literature on teenage and young adult users' attitudes toward and concerns about online privacy, yet little is known about older adults and their unique experiences. As older adults join the digital world in growing numbers, we need to gain a better understanding of how they experience and navigate online privacy. This paper fills this research gap by examining 40 in-depth interviews with older adults (65+) living in East York, Toronto. We found Westin's typology to be a useful starting point for understanding privacy attitudes and concerns in this demographic. We expand Westin's typology and distinguish five categories: fundamentalist, intense pragmatist, relaxed pragmatist, marginally concerned, and cynical expert. We find that older adults are not a homogenous group composed of privacy fundamentalists; rather, there is considerable variability in terms of their privacy attitudes, with only 13% being fundamentalists.We also identify a group of cynical experts who believe that online privacy breaches are inevitable. A large majority of older adults are marginally concerned, as they see their online participation as limited and harmless. Older adults were also grouped as either intense or relaxed pragmatists. We find that some privacy concerns are shared by older adults across several categories, the most common being spam, unauthorized access to personal information, and information misuse. We discuss theoretical implications based on the findings for our understanding of privacy in the context of older adults' digital lives and discuss implications for offering training appropriate for enhancing privacy literacy in this age group.

Technology to Support Aging in Place: Older Adults’ Perspectives

“…Between 1979 and 2001, Westin randomly selected U.S. citizens to gauge privacy attitudes across a variety of domains, including health information, consumer and e-commerce [29], and identified three key privacy categories: pragmatists, fundamentalists or unconcerned [24]. Results from Westin’s “Privacy On and Off the Internet” survey revealed that 25% of those surveyed were fundamentalists, 55% were pragmatists, and 20% were unconcerned [24,30].…”

Big Data and the Illusion of Choice: Comparing the Evolution of India’s Aadhaar and China’s Social Credit System as Technosocial Discourses

“…Individual choice is a chimera in a politicoeconomic milieu in which the news media, the most significant data intermediaries shaping public understandings of data and technologies, are institutionally and ideologically bound to the same governments and corporations that profit from data projects and technology services (Sen, 2016; Yu, 2017). Similarly, the construction of human beings as “privacy pragmatists” (Kumaraguru & Cranor, 2005) who weigh their loss of privacy against the benefits of using digital technologies or participating in data projects is simplistic and reductionist (Elueze & Quan-Haase, 2018; Hoofnagle & Urban, 2014). Our study shows that such “pragmatism” isn’t individualistic and doesn’t exist in a political and ethical vacuum: It is produced by a social structure that privileges technology adoption and participation in projects such as Aadhaar and SCS while concealing how they compromise privacy and leave citizens susceptible to surveillance.…”

“…Consequently, it is individuals, instead of governments or corporations, who become the “locus of privacy decision”—a framework which “may not only fail to protect individual privacy, but also bias the privacy calculus of the larger society by reducing the level of privacy available to all” (Baruh & Popescu, 2017, p. 585). Belief in “privacy pragmatists” persists, even though empirical studies have repeatedly showed that many people are often unaware of how technology services compromise their privacy and many citizens want more regulations on the activities of governments and corporations providing such services (Elueze & Quan-Haase, 2018; Hoofnagle & Urban, 2014).…”

“…The legal supposition that consumers make individual choices about using Big Data–enabled technology services—and are therefore responsible for them—is ethically built on the conceptualization of citizens as “privacy pragmatists” who willingly give up their privacy for enjoying the benefits and conveniences that technologies offer (Kumaraguru & Cranor, 2005). This belief persists even though empirical studies have showed it to be unfounded (Elueze & Quan-Haase, 2018; Hoofnagle & Urban, 2014). We argue that the broader sociocultural milieu within which individuals make their “choice”—specifically the role of data intermediaries such as the news media—must also be a part of these conversations.…”

Student Privacy: A Key Piece of the Online Student Satisfaction Puzzle

“…Privacy concerns are important enough to individuals participating in online activities for researchers to study (Downing, 2016;Elueze & Quan-Haase, 2018;Ifenthaler & Schumacher, 2016;Ivanovic, et al, 2013;Martin, Rice, & Martin, 2016;Quinn, 2016). Many prior findings suggest that people hold many different attitudes about privacy (Dennen, 2015;Elueze & Quan-Haase, 2018;Quinn, 2016). Martin, Rice, & Martin (2016) did find some commonly held opinions about privacy among IT professionals.…”