Social Network Privacy: Trusting Friends

Early social networks were generally open with minimal privacy controls. Some anecdotal evidence suggests that people might want more control over privacy on social networks. As an example of one response to this desire, the network Google+ was introduced as a major change by offering circles or groups to make it easier for users to share specific items with selected individuals. Building on earlier research that focuses primarily on trust in the web provider, this research model uses a social network as a function of privacy concerns and trust in contacts and tests the model using several groups of people. The model examines a personal need or desire for privacy, trust in friends, and attitudes towards social networks, and evaluates the impact of these variables on the usage of social networks. The results show that the demand for privacy and trust in friends does have direct impacts on the attitudes towards social networks. In addition, this network attitude in turn affects the rate of an individual’s usage of the networks. The results are applicable to any organization that includes social interactions on its site.