Educating in Privacy in the Use of Social Networks

Many adolescents use social networks extensively to increase their sociability without being aware of the value of their shared information and the potential risks related to their privacy and security in the network. Misuse or unauthorized disclosure of users’ private information may have unexpected consequences on people’s lives. Therefore, prevention and training in data protection is essential to avoid risks on the Internet. Several authors consider that training in the proper use of social networks should be integrated into the formative curriculum of adolescents and focus not only on theoretical training but also on promoting changes in attitudes and behavior. For this reason, we have developed a restricted access social network application (called Pesedia), which allows children and adolescents to be educated about the risks of social networks and also encourages a change of attitude toward a responsible and adequate use of privacy in social networks. Using Pesedia, an experience has been realized with 134 children between 12 and 14 years, within the framework of Escola d’Estiu 2016 (Summer School) of the Universitat Politècnica de València. Through a set of proposed games, children and adolescents interact in Pesedia and learn to detect risky actions that, if carried out in a public social network could compromise their privacy. With such games, children and adolescents are aware of, among other things, the dangers of public exposure of data, the labeling and geo-positioning of photos, the decontextualization of conversations, as well as the future repercussions of our digital fingerprint. In this articlearticle, we present the characteristics of this social network, the developed workshops, and the main results of this experience