I am not that interesting. Social media, privacy literacy, and the interplay between knowledge and experience

Sharing of personal information on the Internet has become increasingly popular. In social media interactions users face a trade-off between the pleasure and usefulness of sharing and the need to protect their privacy. This study employs recent theory in the research area Human-Computer interaction to investigate users' privacy decisions on the social networking service Facebook from a holistic view, including aspects like emotions, dialectics, and social and temporal context. The purpose is to understand user behavior in the area of privacy and the implications of this for interaction design as well as for education of users. The analysis reveals the interplay between user experiences and rational, fact-based privacy knowledge as important for users' privacy choices. A model for privacy literacy is proposed, and application of this model on empirical data uncovers experiences of privacy divergent from the users' actual privacy situation on Facebook. This situation may explain some lack of rationality observed in privacy decisions by previous research. The presentation further identifies weaknesses in privacy literacy in areas of current importance, as well as differences in ideas and mindsets applied in the privacy process by youths and adults respectively. The observations show that users may be vulnerable to privacy risks despite a desire to behave cautiously and responsibly online and the efforts invested to reach this goal. Conclusions are drawn in the form of recommendations for designers, for educators, for users, as well as for further research