As Social Networking Becomes More Popular, More Users Yearn for Privacy

Results of Yahoo-Nielsen Net Index 2011 Study show that as online social networking becomes immensely popular in the Philippines, more Filipino users are starting to feel the need to set up more walls to maintain privacy.

Social Networking At An All Time High!

According to the study, which included 1,500 respondents - males and females, ages 10+ years old - from 22 cities across the Philippines, social networking now dominates online activities of Filipinos;



From only 51% of respondents in 2009 using social networking sites, we now have a staggering 82% of respondents who are active on similar websites. That's 31% increase in just a span of two years!

Other slightly-less-popular online activities by Pinoys include search, instant messaging and chatting.

Ironically (It Seems), Users Now Want to Put Up More Walls in their Social Networks

Interestingly, while more and more people are flocking to social networking sites like Facebook (which is, needless to say, the most popular social networking site in the Philippines), a lot of users are starting to feel the need to keep strict privacy settings and even altogether block other users from accessing their account.



The graph shows that 66% of respondents feel the need to keep strict privacy settings, 56% want to limit personal information available online and 45% want to avoid allowing people from accessing their social networking account.

Why is this so?

To quote Yahoo-Nielsen, "The rapid growth of social networks in Philippines, will result in increased awareness for the need to build 'walls' within existing networks. These walls will be built to control information exchanges and ensure conversations remain rich and engaging (one-to-few)" It's called Selective Socialization.

TP Thoughts:

I think the real reason why we (or a lot of us) feel the need to build walls or create Circles, is because each of us live many 'lives' and keep many relationships, which are often separate from each other.

To make it simple, for my young TP Friends, how you are (that is, how you act and how you speak) with your closest friends is often different from how you are when you're with mere acquaintances. Another example; How you are when you're with relatives could be different from how you are when you're with your basketball buds. So it follows that the things that you share with one group in your social networking site might not be the same things you'd want to share in another group.

If anything, I think achieving effective 'selective socialization' will be the next trend in social networking. Now, will Facebook be the social networking site to do that or will another site do it better? That remains to be seen.

Read the highlights of Yahoo-Nielsen 2011 Net Index Study via the link.