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arxiv: 2604.22025 · v1 · submitted 2026-04-23 · 💻 cs.CY

Taste for Privacy: How Context, Identity, and Lived-Experience Shape Information Sharing Preferences

Juniper Lovato , Laurent H\'ebert-Dufresne , Mohsen Ghasemizade , Jonathan St-Onge , Peter S. Dodds , Laura Bloomfield , Mikaela Irene Fudolig , Matthew Price
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Christopher Danforth
This is my paper

Pith reviewed 2026-05-08 13:44 UTC · model grok-4.3

classification 💻 cs.CY
keywords privacy preferencessocial mediainstitutional trustlived experiencemarginalized groupsadverse childhood experiencesPII sharingcontext-adaptive privacy
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The pith

Privacy preferences depend on institutional context and personal lived experience rather than being fixed traits.

A machine-rendered reading of the paper's core claim, the machinery that carries it, and where it could break.

The study surveys 782 college students across seven periods in 2023 and 2024 to examine how comfort levels with sharing personally identifiable information vary across 17 institutional settings and how those levels relate to actual social media privacy choices. It documents a marked increase in private accounts, rising from roughly one-third in 2007 to two-thirds in 2024, and shows that discomfort with sharing data on social media platforms is a strong predictor of those private settings. Participants from traditionally marginalized groups and those reporting adverse childhood experiences express greater discomfort with powerful institutions. The authors conclude that these patterns support moving away from uniform consent models toward privacy tools that adapt to specific relationships and vulnerabilities.

Core claim

Privacy preferences are not fixed individual traits but depend on context and lived experiences. Analysis of 2,912 survey responses reveals a large shift toward private social media accounts from one-third in 2007 to two-thirds in 2024, with discomfort sharing PII with social media platforms strongly predicting privacy settings. A stable ranking of institutional trust emerges, though institutions such as police show high variability tied to divergent lived experiences. Traditionally marginalized groups and participants with adverse childhood experiences report more discomfort with institutions of power, especially where they face greater vulnerability.

What carries the argument

The survey instrument that measures participants' comfort sharing PII across 17 institutional contexts and correlates those comfort scores with self-reported social media account privacy settings.

If this is right

  • Discomfort with social media platforms directly shapes whether users choose private accounts.
  • Institutional trust rankings remain stable across the sample except for high-variability cases such as police.
  • Marginalized identity and adverse childhood experiences increase discomfort toward institutions of power.
  • Uniform consent frameworks fail to account for these context-specific and demographic differences.

Where Pith is reading between the lines

These are editorial extensions of the paper, not claims the author makes directly.

  • Expanding the same survey to non-student adult populations could test whether the observed institutional ranking and demographic patterns hold outside campus settings.
  • Platform design that surfaces context-specific privacy options based on user-reported institutional comfort might increase actual usage of protective settings.
  • Longitudinal tracking of the same individuals could reveal whether major life events alter PII comfort scores and corresponding account choices over time.

Load-bearing premise

Self-reported survey answers from a college-student sample accurately capture real privacy behaviors and can be generalized beyond that group without major selection or reporting biases.

What would settle it

A field study that directly observes actual social media account settings and data-sharing logs while collecting the same PII-comfort responses from the same individuals and compares them for consistency.

Figures

Figures reproduced from arXiv: 2604.22025 by Christopher Danforth, Jonathan St-Onge, Juniper Lovato, Laura Bloomfield, Laurent H\'ebert-Dufresne, Matthew Price, Mikaela Irene Fudolig, Mohsen Ghasemizade, Peter S. Dodds.

Figure 1
Figure 1. Figure 1: Stacked bar chart showing the proportion of participants using public (green), mixed (blue), or private (red) privacy view at source ↗
Figure 2
Figure 2. Figure 2: Comfort Sharing PII by Institution. Arc length represents the mean discomfort level, ranging from 1 when very view at source ↗
Figure 3
Figure 3. Figure 3: Participant rankings of institutions by discomfort sharing PII. Each violin shows the distribution of individual rankings view at source ↗
Figure 4
Figure 4. Figure 4: Differences in mean discomfort sharing personally identifiable information across demographic groups. Forest plots view at source ↗
Figure 5
Figure 5. Figure 5: Dose-response relationship between ACE count and institutional discomfort. Forest plot showing ordinal logistic view at source ↗
Figure 6
Figure 6. Figure 6: Differences in mean discomfort sharing PII across demographic groups. Forest plots showing bootstrapped mean view at source ↗
Figure 7
Figure 7. Figure 7: Privacy ranking differences across significant demographic comparisons. Each panel shows the difference in institution view at source ↗
Figure 8
Figure 8. Figure 8: Comfort Sharing PII by Institution and Gender. Arc length represents mean discomfort level, ranging from 1 when view at source ↗
Figure 9
Figure 9. Figure 9: Comfort Sharing PII by Institution and Adverse Childhood Experiences. Arc length represents mean discomfort view at source ↗
Figure 10
Figure 10. Figure 10: Comfort Sharing PII by Institution and Demographics First Generation. Arc length represents mean discomfort view at source ↗
Figure 11
Figure 11. Figure 11: Comfort Sharing PII by Institution and Race. Arc length represents mean discomfort level, ranging from 1 when very view at source ↗
Figure 12
Figure 12. Figure 12: Comfort Sharing PII by Institution and Therapy Experience. Arc length represents mean discomfort level, ranging view at source ↗
Figure 13
Figure 13. Figure 13: Comfort Sharing PII by Institution and Sexual Orientation. Arc length represents mean discomfort level, ranging view at source ↗
read the original abstract

Privacy preferences are not fixed individual traits, they depend on context and lived experiences. In this study, we analyze 2,912 survey responses from 782 college students collected over seven survey periods during 2023 and 2024. We ask about their usage of social media, the security settings of their accounts, and measure their comfort in sharing personally identifiable information (PII) across 17 different institutional contexts. Compared to past research, we observe a large shift towards private accounts, going from 1/3rd private in 2007 to 2/3rds in 2024, and find that participants' discomfort sharing PII with social media platforms strongly predicts their privacy settings. Beyond social media, we identify a stable ranking of institutional trust, though some institutions, like the police, show high variability reflecting divergent lived experiences. Traditionally marginalized groups and participants having faced adverse childhood experiences show more discomfort with institutions of power, especially in areas where they face greater vulnerability. We argue for context-adaptive privacy settings that recognize institutional relationships and demographic vulnerabilities, moving beyond one-size-fits-all consent frameworks toward contextually appropriate data governance.

Editorial analysis

A structured set of objections, weighed in public.

Desk editor's note, referee report, simulated authors' rebuttal, and a circularity audit. Tearing a paper down is the easy half of reading it; the pith above is the substance, this is the friction.

Referee Report

1 major / 2 minor

Summary. The manuscript reports findings from a multi-wave survey of 782 college students yielding 2,912 responses across seven periods in 2023–2024. It claims a large increase in private social media accounts relative to prior work (from roughly one-third in 2007 to two-thirds in 2024), that discomfort sharing PII with social media platforms strongly predicts current privacy settings, a stable institutional trust ranking with high variability for police, and greater discomfort among traditionally marginalized groups and those reporting adverse childhood experiences. The authors conclude that privacy preferences are context- and identity-dependent and advocate context-adaptive privacy settings over one-size-fits-all consent models.

Significance. If the descriptive patterns hold, the work supplies timely evidence on evolving privacy norms among young adults and the role of lived experience in shaping institutional trust. The multi-period design and sizable sample strengthen the reliability of the cross-sectional associations reported. The emphasis on demographic vulnerabilities and the call for context-sensitive governance could inform both platform design and regulatory approaches to data sharing.

major comments (1)
  1. [Abstract] Abstract and introduction: The central claim of a shift from 1/3 private accounts in 2007 to 2/3 in 2024 is load-bearing for the temporal-change narrative that frames the rest of the results. The comparison is made to an unspecified 'past research' baseline without any description of that study's population, platform(s), exact definition of 'private' (e.g., friends-only vs. custom lists), or measurement protocol. Because the current sample is restricted to college students, any mismatch in demographics or UI options could explain the apparent doubling without reflecting genuine preference evolution.
minor comments (2)
  1. [Abstract] Abstract: The statement that discomfort 'strongly predicts' privacy settings is presented without any indication of the statistical model, controls, effect size, or robustness checks used to support the claim.
  2. The manuscript should clarify how self-reported privacy settings were elicited and whether any validation against actual account data or behavioral measures was performed.

Simulated Author's Rebuttal

1 responses · 0 unresolved

We thank the referee for their constructive feedback on our manuscript. The single major comment raises a valid concern about the specificity of our temporal comparison, which we address below by committing to revisions that improve transparency and allow readers to evaluate the claim more rigorously.

read point-by-point responses

  1. Referee: [Abstract] Abstract and introduction: The central claim of a shift from 1/3 private accounts in 2007 to 2/3 in 2024 is load-bearing for the temporal-change narrative that frames the rest of the results. The comparison is made to an unspecified 'past research' baseline without any description of that study's population, platform(s), exact definition of 'private' (e.g., friends-only vs. custom lists), or measurement protocol. Because the current sample is restricted to college students, any mismatch in demographics or UI options could explain the apparent doubling without reflecting genuine preference evolution.

    Authors: We agree that the current phrasing in the abstract and introduction is insufficiently detailed and could lead readers to question the validity of the comparison. The manuscript references prior work on social media privacy settings from that era, but we did not include the necessary descriptors of the baseline study. We will revise both the abstract and introduction to explicitly identify the referenced study, summarize its sample characteristics (college students), platform focus, operational definition of private accounts, and data collection approach. We will also add a brief discussion of potential differences in platform defaults and user interface options between 2007 and 2024. This revision will strengthen rather than weaken the temporal narrative by making the basis for the comparison transparent and allowing readers to assess demographic and contextual alignment directly. revision: yes

Circularity Check

0 steps flagged

No circularity: purely observational survey reporting direct data associations

full rationale

The paper is an empirical survey study collecting 2,912 responses from 782 students and reporting descriptive statistics (e.g., proportion of private accounts) plus associations (e.g., discomfort with PII sharing predicting settings). No mathematical derivations, fitted models whose outputs are renamed as predictions, or self-citations that bear the load of any central claim exist. The reference to a 2007 baseline is an external comparison and does not reduce any result to the paper's own inputs by construction. All findings remain independent observations from the collected data.

Axiom & Free-Parameter Ledger

0 free parameters · 1 axioms · 0 invented entities

The study rests on standard survey methodology assumptions rather than new parameters or entities.

axioms (1)
  • domain assumption Self-reported survey responses accurately capture participants' privacy preferences, institutional trust, and the influence of lived experiences.
    This assumption underpins the interpretation of all reported patterns and predictive relationships.

pith-pipeline@v0.9.0 · 5540 in / 1155 out tokens · 70811 ms · 2026-05-08T13:44:04.857356+00:00 · methodology

discussion (0)

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Reference graph

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