Youth and surveillance in the Facebook era: Policy interventions and social implications
Introduction
In 2013, the social media giant Facebook reached a major settlement with a California court (Kravets, 2012). The class-action lawsuit, filed on behalf of several teenagers and their parents, charged that Facebook’s “Sponsored Stories” advertising platform invaded the teen’s privacy by converting their actions regarding brands on the social network—e.g., status updates, check-ins, and “likes”—into paid ads targeted to their friends. The suit alleged that this practice violated California’s Civil Code against “appropriating the names, photographs, likenesses and identities” of underage youth for commercial purposes without parental consent (Fraley et al., 2014). In addition to a multi-million-dollar payout, Facebook announced a proposed change to its “Statement of Rights and Responsibilities” and “Data Use Policy.” Rather than stopping the practice of Sponsored Stories, it incorporated new language that automatically granted Facebook “permission to use your name, profile picture, content, and information in connection with commercial, sponsored or related content (such as a brand you like) served or enhanced by us” (Facebook, 2013a). The announcement sparked a protest from U.S. consumer watchdog and privacy groups, who immediately filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission urging the agency to reject the company’s proposal on the basis that these changes would violate the terms of a 2011 Consent Decree requiring greater privacy protections and oversight (Center for Digital Democracy, 2013). Child advocates were particularly upset over a new clause pertaining to Facebook’s teen users: “If you are under the age of eighteen (18), or under any other applicable age of majority, you represent that at least one of your parents or legal guardians has also agreed to the terms of this section (and the use of your name, profile picture, content, and information) on your behalf” (Rotenberg et al., 2013). In the face of public and government pressures, the company later deleted the controversial clause pertaining to teens, but kept the default approval allowing members’ personal information to be used for commercial purposes (Facebook, 2013a, Goel, 2013, Guynn, 2013).
This incident is only one in a long series of controversies over Facebook’s marketing and data collection practices that have placed it at the center of public policy debates over consumer privacy in the Big Data era (boyd, 2008b, Hull et al., 2011). Facebook’s meteoric rise—from a small Harvard-based website that began in 2004, to a global digital platform with a membership of 1.2 billion people a decade later—has made it one of the most profitable and high-profile corporations in today’s contemporary digital culture (Goel, 2014). In its first decade of operation, the social network has been and continues to be at the forefront of innovation in the e-commerce business, developing and putting into place a series of increasingly sophisticated software applications, marketing tools, and user interfaces—all designed to maximize its ability to generate revenue by mining the interests, profiles, and behaviors of its users. As it has rolled out many of its innovations, the company has raised repeated privacy concerns—triggering consumer boycotts, regulatory actions, Congressional hearings, and lawsuits (Isidore, 2013, Johnson and Hirsch, 2009, Wheaton, 2007). In its ongoing tug-of-war with advocates, policy makers, and users, a familiar pattern has emerged: Facebook pushes the privacy envelope with a new practice or change in policy, sparking a public backlash; to assuage its critics, the company responds by appearing to dial back on the controversial technique, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg directly reaching out to users with explanations, occasional apologies, and promises to safeguard members’ privacy. But often the contentious practice remerges shortly thereafter in a slightly altered form (Electronic Privacy Information Center; Facebook, 2013c, Schwartz, 2012, Zuckerberg, 2006, Zuckerberg, 2011).
Facebook is an influential leader in the rapidly growing social media ecosystem, which now includes dozens of players such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube, and Foursquare, to name only a few (Berthold, 2013, Freid, 2014). Though people of all ages are participating in social media, young people are among the most avid users. Ninety-five percent of U.S. youth ages 12–17 are online, outpacing adults in terms of adopting the technology (Madden, Lenhart, Duggan, Cortesi, & Gasser, 2013). More than 80% of teens use social media, compared to 72% of users overall (Lepi, 2014). Social media have become an essential arena for personal and social development, and may well be altering some of young peoples’ behavior patterns (Ahn, 2011, danah boyd, 2007, danah boyd, 2014, Subrahmanyam and Šmahel, 2012, Watkins, 2009c, Yong Zhao and Xie, 2012). The affordances of online social networks are particularly attuned to the adolescent experience, and the dramatic rise in social media’s popularity has spawned a number of academic studies focused on how key developmental tasks are addressed through engagement with social media (Ahn,, Bennett, 2007, Bennett et al., 2011, danah boyd, 2007, danah boyd, 2014, Greenfield et al., 2006, Patchin and Hinduja, 2010, Subrahmanyam, 2008, Craig Watkins, 2009a, Lance Bennett, 2007).
Except for a handful of studies, mostly published in marketing journals, the growing body of academic literature on social media and youth has virtually ignored the role of marketplace forces (Khang et al., 2012, Miyazaki et al., 2009, Shrum et al., 2009, Wang et al., 2012, Wartella et al., 2009, Watkins, 2009b). Yet economic imperatives and powerful e-commerce business models are fueling the growth of these new platforms, shaping their structures and operations, and both responding to and influencing user behaviors (van Dijck, 2013). At a surface level, social media appear primarily to serve the interests of users and their networks through information dissemination (posts, news feeds, and the like). But the expanding landscape of social networks is built upon its potential to generate billions in revenue (eMarketer, 2012). The driving force behind the growth of social media—and, indeed, all digital media—is a complex set of data collection, tracking, and targeting systems that monitor and monetize individual users’ behaviors as well as their interactions with friends and acquaintances. With the growing influence of “Big Data,” social media platforms are now part of an evolving integrated, ubiquitous media environment, where content, culture, and commerce are highly interconnected, reaching and engaging users across the Web, on mobile devices, and in the real world (Adobe,, Acxiom,, Merkle,, Turow, 2013).
Youth are at the center of this new social and digital media economy. Their spending power, combined with their intense engagement with social networks, online video, mobile and interactive gaming makes them a particularly lucrative demographic group (Howell, 2013, Nielsen,). Since the beginning of e-commerce in the 1990s, the advertising and new media industries have closely analyzed how young people are interacting with digital media, conducting ongoing market research, developing and refining services, and designing strategies tailored specifically to them (Montgomery, 2012, Montgomery, 2007). Digital marketers routinely amass an ongoing stream of rich and granular data for creating and refining their campaigns to target young people. (According to the 2012 Harris Poll YouthPulse study, the purchasing power of 8–24-year-olds had reached $211 billion) (Harris Interactive,, Montgomery et al., 2012) For Facebook, as with other social media companies, reaching and engaging young people is a core business strategy. When recent youth surveys indicated that Twitter and other newer social media platforms were threatening to steal teens’ attention away from Facebook, investors and industry observers raised alarms that these migrations would result in declining profits for the company (Madden et al., 2014; Van Grove, 2013). But these fears were allayed when subsequent market research revealed that teens were using Facebook in significantly greater numbers than they were a year before (Albergotti, 2014, Chokkattu, 2014, Dockterman, 2014). Industry researchers have predicted that increasing penetration of smartphones will drive even more teens to Facebook (Albergotti). As a consequence, even as young people continue to embrace an ever-expanding array of new digital platforms, Facebook continues to be “the common denominator of teens’ social usage” (eMarketer, 2014, Montgomery,).
In the following pages, I will explain how the imperatives and practices of the Big Data era are shaping social media business operations, creating a powerful and pervasive commercial surveillance system, which is unprecedented in its scope and penetration in young peoples’ lives. I will focus my analysis on Facebook, which is the most high profile social media company in today’s digital media culture, and whose data-driven practices are emblematic of major trends affecting the entire industry. I will present a framework for understanding how the key features of Facebook’s marketing, data collection, tracking, and targeting operations are specially attuned to key aspects of adolescent development, both tapping into young peoples’ needs and taking advantage of their unique vulnerabilities. I will provide an overview of current privacy debates and policy initiatives underway in Washington, identifying those that have significant implications for both children and adolescents. And I will argue for the development of “Fair Information and Marketing Principles for Children and Teens,” designed to ensure that youth continue to be beneficiaries of the digital revolution without being subjected to manipulation and exploitation.1
Section snippets
Facebook, big data, and the “surveillance economy”
The growth of social media platforms during the last decade has coincided with the rise of the so-called Big Data era (danah and Kate,, Mayer-Schönberger and Cukier, 2013, Sicular, 2013). Because of the unique role that social media play in users’ lives, these platforms are able to sweep up enormous amounts of information, including not only what users post about themselves, but also what is collected from them throughout their daily social interactions (Smith, 2014a, Smith, 2014b). Recent
Facebook’s commercial platform and the adolescent experience
Below, I will identify and explain several key features of Facebook’s platform, which are closely intertwined with the social practices facilitated and encouraged on the social network. Each embodies both a social function and a marketing strategy. While these features involve all of Facebook’s members, they resonate particularly strongly with adolescents, who are engaged in a variety of essential “developmental tasks” in their ongoing progression into adulthood. As they begin to turn away from
The expanding Facebook marketing apparatus
The above features are only a part of Facebook’s elaborate and sophisticated marketing system, with new products and software applications being introduced almost daily (Internet Advertising Bureau UK, 2011). As the company’s 2014 Annual Report explains, this system “manages our entire set of ads, the selected audiences, and the marketers’ bids to determine which ads to show each person and how to display them for every page on Facebook” (Facebook, 2014a, Facebook, 2014b, Facebook, 2014c,
Current online privacy policy in the U.S.
At the present time there are few effective governmental policies for protecting the privacy of U.S. consumers in the digital marketplace. In contrast to the European Union, where privacy is a right and robust data protection laws have been enacted, privacy regulation in the U.S. is sectorial, with separate laws for different types of information, users, and situations, such as financial or medical privacy (Solove and Hartzog, 2014, Bennett, 1997).2
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank the following individuals for their help with research and preparation for this article: Jeff Chester, Gary O. Larson, Tatevik Sargsyan, Jamie Schleser, and Isabelle Zuagg. Part of this research was conducted with funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Healthy Eating Research Initiative, Grant # 68238.
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