Page 1123 - Wordsmith A Guide to College Writing

remarks last week, here are a few other hypocritical elements of his
life: he hides his credit card numbers in his wallet, he does not post

the passwords to his online accounts, and he closes the door behind

him when he goes to the toilet.”

So is privacy no longer the social norm or not? 13

In a You.Gov poll for The Sunday Times this weekend, 30% of 14

people said they agreed that privacy matters less than it did, and 63%

disagreed. Just over 70% said they were worried about private

information falling into the hands of others on the internet, while 28%

said they were not worried. The differences of opinion may partly be

down to age. The pace of technological change is so fast that
researchers believe even small age gaps produce significantly

different attitudes and behavior.

According to America’s Pew Research Centre, 68% of teenagers 15

send instant messages on the internet compared with 59% of
twentysomethings, and a far lower proportion of older age groups. In

the UK a study of social networking by Ofcom, the communications

watchdog found that 54% of internet users aged 16–24 had set up a

profile on a social networking site, with the numbers falling steadily

with age. The younger these “mini-generations” are, the more they
appear to accept openness, if only through necessity. If everyone is

revealing their lives online, they don’t want to be left out.

“I remember thinking there was something distinctly creepy about 16

Facebook when I went on it for the first time,” said Jack Hancox, 24, of