Adolescents' online personal information disclosure : roles of privacy concern, narcissism, social anxiety, and parental mediation.

Disclosing personally identifiable information (PII) on social networking sites (SNSs) like Facebook could result in different types of risks for adolescents, including physical and psychological harm. The current study aims to understand the factors that influence adolescents’ PII disclosure on SNSs so as to provide valuable guidelines to parents, schools, and policy makers. The survey-based study was conducted among 780 adolescent participants (between 13 and 18) who were Facebook users. The study can be organized into three themes. The first theme aims to obtain an overarching model about how adolescents’ PII disclosure are influenced by the cognitive factor (i.e., privacy concern), personality factors (i.e., narcissism and social anxiety), and the social factor (i.e., parental mediation). In the second theme, we explored how the model obtained from the first theme differs under different conditions, including age (younger adolescents vs. older adolescents), gender (boys vs. girls), and types of parental mediation (active mediation vs. restrictive mediation). In the third theme, we explored how the personality factors (i.e., narcissism and social anxiety) moderate the effect of parental mediation on PII disclosure. Results of the first theme showed that privacy concern as the cognitive factor reduces adolescents’ PII disclosure and it serves as a potential mediator for the personality and social factors. For the personality factors, narcissism directly increases PII disclosure, and social anxiety indirectly decreases PII disclosure by increasing privacy concern. For the social factor, parental mediation indirectly decreases PII disclosure by increasing privacy concern. In second theme, with reference to age effects, results showed that the effect of personality (i.e., narcissism and social anxiety) factors are greater while the effect of the social factor (i.e., parental mediation) is weaker among older adolescents compared to younger adolescents. With reference to gender effects, results showed that the effect of parental mediation in decreasing PII disclosure is greater on girls compared to boys. Comparison between different types of parental mediation showed that the effect of active mediation is greater than restrictive mediation. In the third theme, results showed that both narcissism and social anxiety moderate the relationship between parental mediation and adolescents’ PII disclosure. Specifically, parental mediation will result in a greater reduction of PII disclosure among adolescents who are high on narcissism compared to those who are low on narcissism. Meanwhile, parental mediation will result in a greater reduction of PII disclosure among adolescents who are low on social anxiety compared to those who are high on social anxiety. The study provides a comprehensive understanding on how the key factors at the cognitive, personality, and social levels influence adolescents’ PII disclosure on SNSs. Meanwhile, how the effects of these factors differ with different age, gender, and types of parental mediation were further explored. It also provides novel insights into how parents’ mediational strategies should be customized to cater to their children’s personality traits. Implications of the findings and advice to parents, educators, and policy makers were also discussed.Doctor of Philosophy (HSS