Americans trust social media no more. New PEW Research shows a real distrust in social media communication

Are people finally waking up to the privacy dangers of Facebook? Yes and no. PEW Research explains.

Via Beta Beat…

Across all channels of communication — including texts, emails, cell phone calls, landlines and instant messaging clients — social media came out as the leading champion of distrust, and the only method of communication that a majority of people gave the condemnation of “not at all secure.”

So why are we still using social networks if they’re the least secure way of communicating and they openly collaborate with advertisers we trust less than the federal government?

It turns out, we don’t care about what we’re giving them.

On a later page in their report, Pew asked exactly what kinds of personal information is most sensitive. Ranked at the top of the things people are most protective of was medical history, the content of phone calls and, obviously, social security numbers.

At the bottom half of that chart are things like the music and shows you like, your political and religious views, and who your friends are.

These things that we don’t think of as sensitive are exactly the kinds of data social media sites are interested in for the sake of their advertisers. It turns out, we just don’t think we’re giving Facebook anything valuable.

References:

http://betabeat.com/2014/11/people-trust-social-media-less-than-any-other-form-of-communication