Which Generation Shows the Most Prudent Data Sharing Behaviour?

TL;DR

This study compares data sharing attitudes across age groups in Europe, revealing that middle-aged users are more aware of privacy issues, while young users tend to use fake information for privacy, suggesting targeted education could improve awareness.

Contribution

It provides cross-national insights into age-related differences in data sharing behavior and privacy awareness, highlighting the need for tailored privacy education strategies.

Findings

Middle-aged users have higher privacy awareness.

Young users more often use fake information for privacy.

Both younger and older users show lower awareness than middle-aged.

Abstract

We report from a study performed in ten European countries, where we asked about attitudes and behaviour towards data sharing behaviour. We looked into the differences between members of age groups. We find that there are more similarities than differences between the age groups, with the exception of young people more often tending to use fake information for privacy reasons. When analysing whether users change privacy settings as an indicator of awareness, we find that both the younger and the older users have lower awareness than the members of the middle-aged. The use of learning and practising tools seems the right way to increase the privacy and data sharing awareness of citizen.