{"id":95638,"date":"2010-07-09T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-07-09T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/2010\/07\/09\/will-millennials-grow-out-of-sharing\/"},"modified":"2024-04-14T04:13:41","modified_gmt":"2024-04-14T09:13:41","slug":"will-millennials-grow-out-of-sharing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/internet\/2010\/07\/09\/will-millennials-grow-out-of-sharing\/","title":{"rendered":"Will Millennials \u2018grow out\u2019 of sharing?"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 data-is-section=\"true\" data-wp-context=\"{&quot;id&quot;:&quot;respondents-thoughts&quot;}\" data-wp-interactive=\"{&quot;namespace&quot;:&quot;prc-block\\\/table-of-contents&quot;}\" id=\"respondents-thoughts\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Respondents\u2019 thoughts<\/h3>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><figure><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"530\" height=\"649\" alt=\"Overview of responses\" src=\"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/internet\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/media\/9924C4CB72BB480EA532FFD8964D7641.jpg\" class=\"aligncenter\"><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Survey participants were encouraged to: \u201cExplain your choice and share your view about the future of human lifestyles in 2020 \u2013 what is likely to stay the same and what will be different? Will the values and practices that characterize today\u2019s younger Internet users change over time?\u201d The following is a small selection of the hundreds of written elaborations, organized according to some of the major themes that emerged in the answers.<\/p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"> <b>A fundamental shift is occurring in human identity and activity in communities. As often is the case, some of it is driven by social change that is facilitated by technological change, especially the new capabilities offered by mobile devices. The benefits to people of sharing information and disclosing details about themselves are becoming more evident. These perceived benefits will change over time as Millennials\u2019 interests change, but the general pattern for disclosure will remain. The historic pattern is for each generation to change the boundaries of privacy and identity. \u00a0<\/b> <\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cAlthough I am a privacy scholar, and one who has been taken aback by the careless abandon with which the young, and not so young seem to revel in visibility, I have to assume that it is not merely ignorance that leads so many astray. To the best of their knowledge, the benefits outweigh the costs. And besides, there is this industry that continues, and will continue to make it seem almost normal to be so completely accessible. I can&#8217;t imagine the kind of well-publicized catastrophe, or counter-movement that would arise (well, I can, but I wouldn&#8217;t want dwell on those scenarios) that would lead to less, rather than more disclosure.\u201d <b>\u2014Oscar Gandy<\/b>, author, activist, retired emeritus professor of communication, University of Pennsylvania<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><figure><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"530\" height=\"200\" alt=\"Publicy will replace privacy. Privacy will appear quaint, like wearing gloves and veils in church.\" src=\"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/internet\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/media\/4A58D09FDB12455CA6AEECF1A583C3D9.jpg\" class=\"aligncenter\"><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cPublicy will replace privacy. Privacy will appear quaint, like wearing gloves and veils in church.\u201d <b>\u2014Stowe Boyd<\/b>, social networks specialist, analyst, activist, blogger, futurist and researcher; president of Microsyntax.org, a non-profit and director of 301Works.org<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI&#8217;m no digital native but I have taken on a publicness in my life and received great benefit in return.\u00a0I wrote about my diagnosis of, surgery for, and recovery from prostate cancer, even to the point of discussing my incontinence and impotence on my blog under the headline, \u2018The penis post.\u2019 It doesn&#8217;t get much more transparent than that. Yet because of that, I received not only much support but also invaluable information from brave and generous patients who went before me; that was possible only because I revealed myself. I also inspired others to tell their stories and to get screening for the disease. I learned these benefits from the digital culture and I am confident that its so-called natives understand these benefits in their DNA. So I am convinced that publicness will continue.\u00a0Not only that, but I believe that publicness will be seen as a public good and even necessity. When we share our data about our diseases and treatments, we add to a body of knowledge that can help others in our position. I believe that keeping such information to oneself will one day be seen as antisocial.\u201d <b>\u2014Jeff Jarvis<\/b>, author of <i>What Would Google Do?<\/i> and an associate professor and director of the interactive journalism program at the City University of New York\u2019s\u00a0Graduate School of Journalism<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cAs the generation ages, they will inevitably have more to keep them away from the computer (like babies) and will share less instant-to-instant data. But at the same time, they&#8217;ll share more photos, they&#8217;ll keep at least minimal online diaries, and they&#8217;ll use social media, because they are tools in their daily life.\u201d <b>\u2014Charlie Martin<\/b>, correspondent and science and technology editor, Pajamas Media, technical writer, PointSource Communications, correspondent, Edgelings.com<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cMillennials will routinely engage in ubiquitous social networking, having seen that competitive edge it brings them in business and politics. It will be the norm in personal relationships. I wish I could keep up with them.\u201d <b>\u2014Craig Newmark<\/b>, founder and customer service representative, Craigslist, former software engineer and programmer at companies such as JustInTime Solutions, Bank of America and IBM<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cGenY will maintain this spirit of openness and sharing of personal information. Their enthusiasm may wane more from work and family pressures rather than concerns about privacy. Also the focus will likely change from teenage introspection to areas of hobbies, sports, community issues, etc.\u201d <b>\u2014Bill St. Arnaud<\/b>, chief research officer at CANARIE, Inc. and member of the Internet Society board of trustees<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe human maturation process does not change because of a new technology. Starting before we left the savannahs, the young members of Homo sapiens have over-shared in order to make themselves socially interesting to the group and to potential mates, only to discover the enormous risks involved when shared information reaches malicious individuals or a group at large, at which point they have re-learned the discretion of their parents. Thus sharing on the Internet will continue on its present trajectory: more will be shared by the young than the old, and as people mature they will share more <i>banal<\/i> and less <i>intimate<\/i> information.\u201d <b>\u2014Andreas Kluth<\/b>, California correspondent, <em>The Economist<\/em><\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><figure><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"530\" height=\"227\" alt=\"Sharing is not \u2018the new black,\u2019 it is the new normal.\" src=\"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/internet\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/media\/B67BFFE5E80747A9B532C8C41106D602.jpg\" class=\"aligncenter\"><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cSharing is not \u2018the new black,\u2019 it is the new normal. There are too many benefits to living with a certain degree of openness for Digital Natives to \u2018grow out of it.\u2019 Job opportunities, new personal connections, professional collaboration, learning from others&#8217; experiences, etc., are all very powerful benefits to engaging openly with others online, and this is something that Gen Y understands intuitively. When Gen Y gives birth to their first \u2018Gen Z\u2019 child, they will not close themselves off to the world, they will post pictures, videos and anecdotes not only to share their happiness, but to elicit tips from their social grid on how to deal with the challenges of parenthood. The same goes for other aspects of their life: Which car to buy? Which recipe to use? Which book to read or movie to watch?\u201d <b>\u2014Matt Gallivan<\/b>, senior research analyst, audience insight and research, National Public Radio (US)<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cSince it is easier to stay in touch with friends from school, more people will stay in touch. Social networking will play a larger role in education and work, and not be limited to a purely leisure-time activity.\u201d <b>\u2014Hal Varian<\/b>, chief economist of Google and on the faculty at the University of California-Berkeley<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe willingness of digital natives to share information is ingrained into their makeup. Similar to those who lived through the depression in the US have an ingrained thriftiness. While this may erode over time, they will continue to be open and willing to share. However, their children will shift in the other direction being far more closed in terms of information-sharing.\u201d <b>\u2014Michael Nelson<\/b>, visiting professor of Internet studies at Georgetown University, formerly a director of technology policy with IBM Corporation and the Federal Communications Commission<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cToday&#8217;s youths who are sharing far more information more widely than previous generations will no doubt share less than now, but they will not retreat to the low levels of previous generations. In fact, their parents seem to share more than their grandparents did \u2013 when I began working, most people discussed politics and other topics in the workplace far less than I see people doing today, in similar environments.\u201d <b>\u2014Jonathan Grudin<\/b>, principal researcher in human-computer interaction and computer-supported cooperative work at Microsoft Research<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cYou ain&#8217;t seen nothing yet.\u201d <b>\u2014Fred Hapgood<\/b>, technology author and consultant, moderator of the Nanosystems Interest Group at MIT in the 1990s, writes for <em>Wired<\/em>, <em>Discover <\/em>and other tech publications<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe trend to utilize social media to share information will continue to grow through 2020. In fact, these social media are becoming indispensable tools for connecting with other, accomplishing goals, and solving problems. I see the new media becoming more institutionalized and adopted by workplaces, schools, governments, and social organizations as primary channels for communication in the future.\u201d <b>\u2013\u2013<b>Gary Kreps<\/b><\/b>, professor and chair of the department of communication, George Mason University<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWhile we are at a time of adolescent performance of self regardless of our chronological ages, I expect that the benefits of disclosure will continue to outweigh the negative sides.\u201d <b>\u2014Paul Jones<\/b>, conference co-chair, WWW2010, clinical associate professor, School of Information and Library Sciences, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, director, ibiblio<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThis behaviour is now so widespread it has become a way of life. I don&#8217;t see it changing in the future.\u201d <b>\u2014Luc Faubert<\/b>, president of dDocs Information, Inc., consultant in IT governance and change management<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe so-called digital natives have confused views about information sharing. But by and large, they take for granted very broad forms of personal communication.\u00a0 That comfort level will not go away, even as they get older.\u201d <b>\u2014Kevin Werbach<\/b>, founder of Supernova and assistant professor at the Wharton School of Business, former counsel for new technology policy at the FCC<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe habits of our formative years tend to stay in place, even though we may view them in a more mature fashion. So, although there may be a reduction in the trivia currently shared, the principle of sharing will remain ingrained. It will also be better managed, through improved applications.\u201d <b>\u2014Adrian Schofield<\/b>, manager, applied research unit, Johannesburg Centre for Software Engineering, president, Computer Society South Africa<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cToday&#8217;s digital natives have developed habits of mind and behavior that will be very resistant to change. Nevertheless, change there will be, from two sides: life-cycle factors and evolving attitudes to privacy. As Millennials begin to deal with kids and other adult responsibilities, I see them trading in some of their real-time communication (texting, IM, etc) for more store-and-forward options. Instead of spending a lot less time-sharing information, they&#8217;ll share it differently. A more subtle life-cycle factor concerns a deep qualitative difference between today&#8217;s 20-somethings and their parents&#8217; generation. I imagine a great many Millennials are using social software to expedite the process of \u2018finding themselves\u2019 (not by conscious planning of course). While this pursuit isn&#8217;t new, digital media offer powerful ways to experiment with socially constructed identities we weren&#8217;t even dreaming of in the 60s. It seems plausible that becoming an \u2018adult\u2019 will take away some of the playful experimentation behind all that Millennial information-sharing. Then there&#8217;s privacy. The demise of online privacy is already well underway. Financial scams, lousy software, human error and prejudicial EULAs are here to stay. What I see changing is a greater awareness among mainstream onliners of just how extensive the risks are to our privacy, money and identities. I&#8217;m constantly amazed at the extent to which otherwise sane, intelligent people are dismissive of precautions like strong passwords. By 2020, lots more onliners will have learned about the downside of unrestricted information-sharing. Being an adult means having more to protect and more to lose. But this predictable change will be reinforced by a long, slow learning curve for millions of onliners who have very little understanding of what goes on in cyberspace.\u201d <b>\u2014David Ellis<\/b>, director of communication studies at York University, Toronto, and author of the first Canadian book on the roots of the Internet<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cIf we assume the behaviour changes we see in our\u00a0societies\u00a0concerning\u00a0how people wish to consume and create content continue, as well as how the means with which they consume and create continue to evolve, then it seems to me almost inevitable that Gen Y will\u00a0continue\u00a0to embrace those means, reflecting their natures and\u00a0behaviours\u00a0we see now. There will also be pressure from the\u00a0generation\u00a0behind them, so I&#8217;m sure we&#8217;ll see more &#8216;ambient broadcasting&#8217; and connectivity between people especially with\u00a0mobile\u00a0devices, thus driving even more such communication as it can take place anywhere, any time.\u201d <b>\u2014Neville Hobson<\/b>, head of social media in Europe for WCG Group and principal of NevilleHobson.com<\/p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"> <b>It is true that Millennials have what might be considered by some in today\u2019s society to be liberal views about sharing their information, but the privacy paradigm is evolving and people may be more forgiving of others\u2019 indiscretions in the future.<\/b> <\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cMost certainly, I&#8217;m shocked at how much people share online, and their future employers and potential significant others will be as well, I suspect.\u201d <b>\u2014Chris DiBona<\/b>, open source and public sector engineering manager at Google<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe e-world will become more open and less private, but the excess of today&#8217;s college students will diminish with age and responsibility. However, as they age, they will be much more open than their parents have been.\u201d <b>\u2014<b>Don McLagan<\/b><\/b>, member of the board of directors for the Massachusetts Innovation &amp; Technology Exchange, consultant, retired chief executive officer of Compete, Inc.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cBy 2020 it will become increasingly clear that while privacy is the refuge of criminals and politicians, protection of personal data does not increase safety, but merely propagates a false sense of security. Sharing will be widely seen as a defense against the sort of world that existed in the past, where only the rich and multinationals had access to personal data on a widespread scale, and used it exclusively to serve their own interests through marketing media campaigns, cherry-picking of insurance (especially driving and health insurance) clients, employment and wage offers, and more. As access to personal data becomes more widespread (mostly, at first, through the actions of hackers, but also though sharing on personal sites and social networks) it will become clear that security cannot depend on secrecy, but rather, that laws will need to be in force to prevent the misuse of data. Campaigns will propose that the denial (or overcharging) of insurance on the basis of pre-existing illnesses or genetic predisposition, for example, will be outlawed, or that hiring or firing practices based on a person&#8217;s personal lifestyle will be prohibited. It will be clear by 2020 that everybody has, if you will, skeletons (or nude pics or infidelities) in the closet, and it will be seen as absurd to make morality judgments based on these. In an ideal world, denying a person life or livelihood on the basis of these will be seen as a form of extortion, and condemned by society at large.\u201d <b>\u2014Stephen Downes<\/b>, senior research officer, National Research Council of Canada, and specialist in online learning, new media, pedagogy and philosophy<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe younger people will continue their public disclosure of what older people think of private behavior. In many ways this represents a shift to an acceptance of universal human failings \u2013 without the judgment of older people. They watch a Tiger Woods embarrassment and are amused, not shocked. They are just less hypocritical and more accepting of the reality of human behavior. Thus they enjoy reading about each others\u2019 lives, celebrity lives, and see very little damage when someone makes a \u2018human\u2019 mistake.\u201d <b>\u2014Ed Lyell<\/b>, professor at Adams State College, consultant for using telecommunications to improve school effectiveness through the creation of 21st century learning communities<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe hysteria that currently surrounds information-sharing online will fade when such disclosure becomes commonplace. The moral forces in our societies will \u2013 indeed, have to \u2013 become more forgiving of youthful transgressions. After all, human behavior hasn&#8217;t changed. The thing that&#8217;s changed is the ability to record it and share it with potential millions. A great majority of us have had a wild spring break trip as a teenager. Future employers will recognize that such behavior is not an indication of adult professionalism in the workplace.\u201d <b>\u2014Janelle Ward<\/b>, assistant professor, Department of Media and Communication, Erasmus University Rotterdam<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cMy guess is that people will continue to share as much as they do now. After all, once they&#8217;ve put so much about themselves up on their sites, what good would it do to stop? In for a penny; in for a pound. Social norms will evolve to accept more candor. After all, Ronald Reagan got elected president despite having gone through a divorce, and Bill Clinton got elected despite having smoked marijuana. Society&#8217;s expectations evolve.\u201d <b>\u2014<i>Andy Oram<\/i><\/b><i>, editor and blogger, O\u2019Reilly Media<\/i><\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><figure><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"530\" height=\"183\" alt=\"Epiphany\" src=\"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/internet\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/media\/3CFDEFB6B7274BA7A94BB11DFEF37098.jpg\" class=\"aligncenter\"><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cUnless Generation Y has a collective privacy-related epiphany, they will continue to happily trade it for convenience.\u201d <b>\u2013\u2013Gervase Markham<\/b>, a programmer for the Mozilla Foundation since 1999, based in the UK; won a Google\/O\u2019Reilly Open Source Award as the \u201cbest community activist\u201d in 2006<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cIn this case it will depend on still younger generations and their use of new technologies that I think are likely to make today&#8217;s \u2018digital natives\u2019 seem, well, backwards. Just as today&#8217;s parents seem like dinosaurs to their kids, so today&#8217;s kids will seem to their kids when it comes to technology. In other words, every generation of youth will freak out the corresponding generation of adults (or so I hope).\u201d <b>\u2014Steve Jones<\/b>, professor of communication and associate dean of liberal arts and sciences and co-founder of the Association of Internet Researchers, University of Illinois-Chicago<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe social media habits of digital natives are likely set for life, with the exception of some fundamental shift in technology or law that would require them to change those habits. We should not be surprised if the next generation thereafter exhibits different patterns of behavior, perhaps being more selective in how they construct their circle of online contacts. \u2018Mom, I can&#8217;t believe you posted pictures of yourself doing a keg stand for just anyone to see!\u2019\u201d <b>\u2014Nathaniel James<\/b>, now with Mozilla Foundation, formerly executive director for OneWebDay<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cClearer lines between appropriate public and private information will emerge as more people are burned legally, professionally, and socially by what they make available online, and by what remains available even though they grow up and move on.\u201d <b>\u2014Tom Wolzien<\/b>, founder and chairman of Wolzien LLC Media &amp; Communications Strategy and formerly senior analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein &amp; Co.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cMy experience is that the stages of life that follow the young, single years tend to bring a good deal more focus when marriage, career and family become part of the daily routine. I would expect that those responsibilities will pull in time and attention as they have for past generations. However, there is probably no going back on the more open social environment of the Internet that has evolved over the past decade. What \u2018social interactions\u2019 <i>is<\/i> has been redefined with widespread normative behavior. Staying in touch with others by nonstop cell phone and messaging is different than it was decades ago. Actually \u2018openness\u2019 has been evolving all during my lifetime. The message of \u2018drugs, sex, and rock-&#8216;n-roll\u2019 changed openness for baby-boomers. Things like homosexuality, pre-marital sex, non-married pregnancy, even having cancer, have greatly altered our sense of what has to be kept private. Our sense of what&#8217;s shameful has changed steadily since the \u201960s. Gen Y will take different standards into the workplace and relationships and the norms will continue to drift.\u201d <b>\u2014David Collin<\/b>, retired, formerly director of the American Cancer Society<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cDigital data preservation makes it essentially impossible to effectively re-write history. The baby-boomers&#8217; admissions of drug use paved the way for this generation&#8217;s online admissions of just about everything, and having gotten it out there, it&#8217;s never coming back. As with the baby-boomers, this will permanently shift the attitudes of this generation about what&#8217;s acceptable. Of course, their own behavior, which they can&#8217;t change retroactively, will be the new yardstick.\u201d <b>\u2014Bill Woodcock<\/b>, research director, Packet Clearing House, vice president with Netsurfer Publishing, co-founder and technical advisor, Nepal Internet Exchange and Uganda Internet Exchange<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cDid the social activists of the \u201960s grow up? Yes, and then emerged as today&#8217;s politicians. Sure, the Gen Y kids are getting older, and their life course events will change \u2013 having their own children will be an eye opener for the dangers of sharing information online. But they will have grown up sharing information, so what they retrench to may be quite different from where older generations started. But, yes, they will change their habits. They will become more conservative as they become part of conservative culture and organizations. Workplaces will be more dominant in setting trends than college campuses.\u201d <b>\u2014Caroline Haythornthwaite<\/b>, professor, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cCertainly today&#8217;s youth will change as they grow older and take on new responsibilities, but they will not abandon their habits of being in constant contact with friends and family members. Americans born in the 1960s adapted throughout their lives as portable music devices changed from transistor radios to Walkmen to iPods; we were a generation that always carried music with us. Americans born in the 1980s will always have personal devices for connecting to people, and they will continue using these devices throughout their lives.\u201d <b>\u2014Mindy McAdams<\/b>, Knight Chair in journalism, University of Florida, author of <i>Flash Journalism:\u00a0 How to Create Multimedia News Packages<\/i>, journalist<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cPrivacy isn&#8217;t Platonic, it&#8217;s contextual and variable. Gen Y has permanent calluses where the boomers have privacy sensibilities. Remember that Brandeis called for a right to privacy because he was shocked that newspapers could publish his picture without his permission. Flickr users (3 billion photos and counting) may someday embrace Brandeis, but never his definition of privacy.\u201d <b>\u2014Stewart Baker<\/b>, general counsel to the US Internet Service Provider Association, former general counsel for the US National Security Agency<\/p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"> <b>This is not so much a generational story as a story about the impact of technology on overall human behavior. It relates to deep human desires to be social and to be in control of identity. New technologies will continue to make this much easier to do.\u00a0 <\/b> <\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe mistake made in assigning to a particular age group a propensity for technology and media usage is the assumption that its the <i>cohort<\/i> of people in time, rather than the <i>lifestyle of <\/i>those people which matters. Already, we can see that single people without children are much more likely to connect online, publish and broadcast than those who don\u2019t. It just so happens that people in their teens to 30s now are most likely to be in that group. When those people&#8217;s life narrative changes, their life broadcast will change.\u201d <b>\u2014Matthew Allen<\/b>, director of Internet Studies at the School of Media, Culture and Creative Arts, Curtin University of Technology, and critic of social uses and cultural meanings of the Internet<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cSocial networking will be embedded in those parts of everyday life that are mediated by (conducted via) information technology. We&#8217;ll be doing it \u2013 Gen Y and everyone else \u2013 whether we understand it or not.\u201d <b>\u2014<b>Seth Grimes<\/b><\/b>, founder of the data-systems architecture and design company Alta Plana Corporation and a columnist for Intelligent Enterprise magazine<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWidespread information sharing is not a generational issue. It\u2019s a technological one. Our means for controlling access to data, or its use \u2013 or even for asserting our \u2018ownership\u2019 of it \u2013 are very primitive. (Logins and passwords alone are clunky as hell, extremely annoying, and will be seen a decade hence as a form of friction we were glad to eliminate.) It\u2019s still early. The Net and the Web as we know them have only been around for about 15 years. Right now we\u2019re still in the early stages of the Net\u2019s Cambrian explosion. By that metaphor Google is a trilobyte. We have much left to work out. For example, take \u2018terms of use.\u2019 Sellers have them. Users do not \u2013 at least not ones that they control. Wouldn\u2019t it be good if you could tell Facebook or Twitter (or any other company using your data) that <i>these<\/i> are the terms on which they will do business with you, that <i>these<\/i> are the ways you will share data with them, that <i>these<\/i> are the ways this data can be used, and that <i>this<\/i> is what will happen if they break faith with you? Trust me: user-controlled terms of use are coming. (Work is going on right now on this very subject at Harvard\u2019s Berkman Center, both at its Law Lab and Project VRM.) Two current technical developments, \u2018self-tracking\u2019 and \u2018personal informatics,\u2019 are examples of ways that power is shifting from organizations to individuals \u2013 for the simple reason that individuals are the best <i>points of integration<\/i> for their own data, and the best <i>points of origination<\/i> for what gets done with that data. Digital natives will eventually become fully empowered by <i>themselves<\/i>, not by the organizations to which they belong, or the services they use. When that happens, they\u2019ll probably be more careful and responsible than earlier generations, for the simpler reason that they will have the tools.\u201d <b>\u2014Doc Searls<\/b>, fellow, Berkman Center, Harvard, fellow at Center for Information Technology and Society, University of California-Santa Barbara; co-author of <i>The Cluetrain Manifesto<\/i><\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThere are already digital natives who predate Generation Y \u2013 early adopters of the Internet and its predecessor networks. I have seen little waning of enthusiasm for online engagement amongst these Internet pioneers, and can imagine no more reason why younger digital natives should lose enthusiasm for the online medium.&#8221; <b>\u2014Jeremy Malcolm<\/b>, project coordinator, Consumers International, and co-director of the Internet Governance Caucus<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe sharing impulse is a permanent shift, not a cohort effect or an age effect. It is enabled by technology (incredibly cheap communications and storage) but fueled by people taking back the right to create and share things (not that they explicitly knew that right was missing). Our notions of privacy will land elsewhere than they were 10 years ago.\u201d <b>\u2014Jerry Michalski<\/b>, founder, Relationship Economy eXpedition, exploring \u201cthe emerging order for transformation agents,\u201d founder and president of Sociate<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI wouldn&#8217;t class digital natives as Generation Y. In my experience there are a lot of older people today who are digital natives as well. I think that this is more about personal disposition than age. People who have chosen that way, will tend to keep it up, although the form of the disclosure will likely change a lot, and in some cases, become less open to the public. What I mean is that someone might start Twittering a lot, then start a blog and Twitter less, then join an online gaming site and Twitter rarely, and blog less. After that perhaps a genealogy Web forum, and then a new mothers Web forum and after that some kind of kids club site.\u201d <b>\u2014Michael Dillon<\/b>, network consultant at BT and a career professional in IP networking since 1992, member of BT\u2019s IP Number Policy Advisory Forum<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe conversations that occur through social media are the social equivalent of bat sonar. It&#8217;s a human quality to transmit messages and sense the social responses, particularity the emotional responses. That&#8217;s how social networks (i.e. society) are maintained. We won&#8217;t have transcended humanity by 2020.\u201d <b>\u2014Garth Graham<\/b>, board member of Telecommunities Canada, promoting local community network initiatives<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cGeneration X is the one to watch, as they are already passing through these life transitions with all of their network-enhanced lifestyles intact. They are bringing these tools to bear on parenthood, managing health and illness, and managing finances. They are already creating the tools, sites and companies Gen Y and others will use as models.\u201d <b>\u2014Anthony Townsend<\/b>, director of technology development and research director at The Institute for the Future<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI am 52 years old and I have taken to social networking like a duck to water. I know a great many elderly people who are venturing enthusiastically into cyberspace for the first time because of MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and so forth. I have no doubt that, so long as some form of the Internet exists, the vast majority of people will continue to make use of it for social purposes for the foreseeable future. Gen Y&#8217;s usage patterns may evolve over time, but they won&#8217;t diminish significantly over the long term.\u201d <b>\u2014Robert G. Ferrell<\/b>, information systems security professional, US government, former systems security specialist, National Business Center, US Department of the Interior<\/p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"> <b>The notion of privacy was powerful in the industrial era during the rise of \u201cmass society.\u201d We live in a time in which the need for privacy and the advantages of privacy have given way to the needs of \u201cnetworked society,\u201d and advantages are found for all in sharing details in social media. When this generation comes to power in government and corporate settings social norms will be more formally adjusted. <\/b> <\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe ideas of privacy that grew up with mass society will continue to give way to new ideas of privacy appropriate to network society. Disclosure is not as influenced by youth as it is by changes to the media environment.&#8221; <b>\u2014Alex Halavais<\/b>, professor and social informatics researcher, Quinnipiac University; explores the ways in which social computing influences society, author of <i>Search Engine Society<\/i><\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThey will not have grown out of being ambient broadcasters, because being ambient broadcasters will have become the norm when they are totally in charge.\u201d <b>\u2014Jeff Branzburg<\/b>, consultant with Teaching Matters, Inc. <\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThis way of being is completely ingrained in their DNA now. The challenge will be for older generations to accept that expectations on sharing have changed, and to modify behavior and employment norms to take this into account.\u201d <b>\u2014<b>Chris Jacobs<\/b><\/b>, chief operating officer, Solutions for Progress, Inc.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe professional and social benefits of information sharing will continue to grow, and Generation Y will continue to play an active role in that sharing. Part of the additional value that will be added to this practice will be the continued adoption of information sharing by Gen Y&#8217;s elders \u2013 thereby improving the social networks by adding more participants, and simultaneously lessening the noteworthiness of participating. Simply put, this won&#8217;t even be a question in 2020. Every generation will participate in social networking and reaping the benefits of digital communities, and no one will remember why we thought it was strange in 2010.\u201d <b>\u2014Steve Rozillis<\/b>, senior digital marketing manager for a major US insurance company <\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWhile I agree that those who are young today will outgrow their penchant for sharing, there will always be a new class of young people who are exploring the world and in so doing will share without concern for future consequences. We need to adapt our privacy and data gathering to accommodate this. We ought to require search engines, such as Google, to purge their dossiers on people when those people hit their 25th birthday.\u201d <b>\u2014Karl Auerbach<\/b>, chief technical officer at InterWorking Labs, Inc.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cProbably these generations will seem to be \u2018growing out\u2019 of much of their digital media use and technology use. However, their use will probably very similar. The reason for this perception to occur is that \u2018newer\u2019 generations will use more technology in comparison to these \u2013 by then \u2013 older counterparts.\u201d <b>\u2014<b>Homero Gil de Zuniga<\/b><\/b>, Internet researcher and professor at the University of Texas-Austin<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cPeople will adjust to and adapt new technologies over time. They learn how to use them and they get over rough spots. Problems with new technologies (remember all of the worries about the need to provide blocking for caller ID) often dissipate as experience grows with technologies. I am confident many of today&#8217;s concerns about privacy online will take care of themselves \u2013 but new ones will emerge to take their place almost certainly.\u201d <b>\u2013\u2013Link Hoewing<\/b>, assistant vice president for Internet and technology issues, Verizon<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe real impact will come when the majority of the leadership in all democratically oriented societies are \u2018digital natives\u2019 as the whole decision process in these societies will change greatly. Right now most of the leadership in companies and legislatures still focuses on face-to-face interactions. We are still going through the educational system and Generation Y is not sufficient yet in mass to have changed much of the societal decision processes. Too many countries are getting away with limiting Internet access, and this is going to be a major roadblock for any worldwide move in this area.\u201d <b>\u2014Murray Turoff<\/b>, professor of computer and information sciences, New Jersey Institute of Technology and co-author of <i>The Network Nation<\/i><\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cJust as Gen Xers and Baby Boomers have changed the way they share information over time, so will Gen Y. Nothing is going to stand still. Social networking is in its infancy and people are certainly learning some lessons about what happens when you share too much information with the world. Over time people may well grow to place more value on privacy. Social networking services will also change a great deal over the next 10 years. Social networking may become more seamlessly integrated into most media and services. But I also think that by 2020 in developed Western countries the online and offline worlds are going to be increasingly blurred and integrated. That means that social norms from the online world will impact offline social norms, and offline social norms, rules and laws, will move more deeply into cyberspace as well. Everything changes everything.\u201d <b>\u2014Rebecca MacKinnon<\/b>, co-founder, Global Voices, visiting fellow, Center for Information Technology Policy, Princeton University<\/p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"> <b>Millennials will eventually calibrate the level of detail they provide various audiences in their lives. The things they disclose will also change as they get older and their interests change. Nuanced behavior about what information to share and whom to share it with will become more prevalent. Disclosures might become more tame. New social strategies \u2013 and a new \u201cnetiquette\u201d \u2013 will also emerge as this generation figures out the social advantages they can gain by selective disclosure. <\/b> <\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cAs one ages, life gets more complicated, one learns the consequences of unbridled openness. One becomes more circumspect. I don&#8217;t think they&#8217;ll necessarily share less. I think they&#8217;ll share more carefully, however.\u201d <b>\u2014<b>Joshua Freeman<\/b><\/b>, director of interactive services, Columbia University Information Technology<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cEveryone is a socialist at 20 and a capitalist at 50. Didn&#8217;t George Bernard Shaw say that? Now, everyone is an information socialist at 20 and an information capitalist at 50. We&#8217;ll have more information to protect, and we will want to do so to protect ourselves and to gain advantage.\u201d <b>\u2014Barry Wellman<\/b>, professor of sociology and Netlab Director, University of Toronto<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe answer really lies somewhere between these two statements. People&#8217;s habits change as they get older, and that will be true of Generation Y, but nevertheless the increased broadcasting of personal information will remain common at all age levels.\u201d <b>\u2014Nicholas Carr<\/b>, writer and consultant whose work centers on information technology, author of <i>The Big Switch<\/i> and <i>Does IT Matter? \u2013<\/i> his next book is <i>What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains<\/i><\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI am seeing that the college students in my classes are increasingly concerned about Facebook privacy, the amount of time they spend online, and the way they share information. In general, I think Gen Y will continue to be more open about a great deal of information sharing, but I can see that at least some of them are growing concerned.\u201d <b>\u2014Howard Rheingold<\/b>, visiting lecturer, Stanford University, lecturer, University of California-Berkeley, author of many books about technology including <i>Tools for Thought<\/i> and <i>Smart Mobs<\/i><\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWhat was novel becomes normative and mainstream. Currently social networks are a new flare with much excitement. While the flare may diminish, as Gen Y grows older, the utility and functionality will not. For example, social networks create easy means of organizing social groups. As Gen Y ages, they may spend lest time bantering and babbling, but will continue to find the utility of social network tools valuable. As they age, they will expect to employ these same skills in finding a car, buying a house, looking for a graduate school, networking in careers.\u201d <b>\u2014Robert Cannon<\/b>, senior counsel for Internet law, Office for Strategic Planning and Policy Analysis, Federal Communications Commission, founder and director, Cybertelecom<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cPeople don&#8217;t &#8216;grow out&#8217; of fundamental practices for which they see no viable alternatives, especially once they have invested so much energy into the networks and spaces within which they operate, and while there are so many social connections and so much social capital pulling them back in. No, I believe this ship has sailed, at the private and interpersonal as much as at the professional and commercial level \u2013 sharing, rather than secrecy, is now the preferred option by far, and what isn&#8217;t shared might as well not exist in the first place. Two points of caution, however. First, there is a need for users from all generations to become much more sophisticated in their understanding of the implications of their choices of what they choose to share or not to share, and I think this more sophisticated understanding will develop over time (the hard way, for some). Second, even by 2020, there may still be a substantial minority of holdouts, of non-participants, who do not engage in those practices. The more dominant sharing as the default practice becomes, though, the harder it will be for these non-participants to continue to abstain.\u201d <b>\u2014Axel Bruns<\/b>, associate professor of media and communication, Queensland University of Technology, and general editor of Media and Culture journal<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe answer is complex, with some of both outcomes mixed together. As people get older, they will become more concerned about what they share and whom they share it with. Participation in social networks, virtual worlds, and the like, will not fade. It is not just the young who are interacting there now; older folks today are moving into that space. Those who grow up familiar with those tools will evolve new ways of using them, but will not turn away from them.\u201d <b>\u2014David D. Clark<\/b>, senior research scientist, MIT, an Internet pioneer who has been active in building its architecture since 1981, now working on the next-generation Internet<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThey&#8217;ll take the skills they&#8217;ve learned as sharers of information \u2013 not \u2018ambient broadcasters\u2019 \u2013 and put those skills toward other kinds of goals.\u201d <b>\u2014Dan Gillmor<\/b>, director of Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship at Arizona State University and author of <i>We the Media<\/i><\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cAs people grow older, they participate in more than one community, each with its own values and language. I expect young people will need to learn to separate their various identities as they mature.\u201d <b>\u2014Irene Wu<\/b>, director of research, International Bureau, Federal Communications Commission, Yahoo fellow in residence, Gergetown\u2019s School of Foreign Service<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI suspect that social networks will remain popular and most users will continue to post at least some personal information there. It&#8217;s become a common and useful channel of personal awareness and discourse. I do think that more people will become more judicious about what they post to social networks, and more aware of how that information gets shared. Humans are fundamentally sharing creatures. That&#8217;s how we work, and how we create society. I think danah boyd is dead-on with her comparison of online social interaction (including sharing personal information) to \u2018social grooming\u2019 in primates.\u201d <b>\u2014Amy Gahran<\/b>, contributing writer at eMeter Corporation, senior editor at Oakland Local, co-creator and community manager at Reynolds Journalism Institute<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe \u2018digital natives\u2019 will mature and find other interests which will likely change the intensity of their online activities, though not their willingness to use online tools. The younger Internet user will likely become more selective in online use over time, but not negative toward its use.\u201d <b>\u2014David Olive<\/b>, vice president of policy development support for ICANN; formerly general manager, Fujitsu America, Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe ambient broadcasting is a passing phenomenon, one that we&#8217;re all likely to outgrow as we understand the implications of leaving behind a perpetual, searchable record. This doesn&#8217;t mean broadcasting will cease \u2013 it means it will be more careful, cautious and controlled, even by GenYers.\u201d <b>\u2014Ethan Zuckerman<\/b>, research fellow, Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, co-founder, Global Voices, researcher, Global Attention Gap <\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cDigital natives will take the lack of privacy and ease of broadcasting personal information as a given. While they will become savvier about not sharing personal information that can lead to victimization from fraud and identity theft, they will continue to live their lives in the open.\u201d <b>\u2014<\/b><b>Mary Joyce<\/b>, co-founder, DigiActive.org<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThere are two processes at stake. 1) The process of aging which will change the values as well as specific needs and desires for the individual use of the Internet, but not the use of the Internet as such. There will be a tremendous development of new genres and communication patterns. This process also implies that the variety of usages (and probably also new values and reasons for using the net) will grow. 2) The process of expanding penetration rates in different countries, which is uneven, will generally effects all countries, but it is not clear whether mobile devices will be more widespread and relevant interface to the Internet than PCs and laptops.\u201d <b>\u2014<b>Niels Ole Finnemann<\/b><\/b>, professor and director of the Center for Internet Research, Aarhus University, Denmark<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThere is a constant evolution in behavior. Among young people, I have observed huge privacy shifts from 2005 to today. So I fully believe that these trends will continue to shift, as we evolve to the technology and the social effects. I also believe that technology will shift; the \u2018social networks\u2019 of today will have different modes of interaction and content sharing. In 2020, the idea of listing one&#8217;s \u2018Favorite Movies\u2019 and other rudimentary forms of identity-production will appear archaic.\u201d <b>\u2014Fred Stutzman<\/b>, Ph.D candidate, researcher and teaching fellow, School of Information and Library Science, UNC-Chapel Hill<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cIt will change to a more measured and self-reflective approach to information-sharing. I am not so sure that today&#8217;s digital natives really embrace widespread information-sharing, as much as they embrace wanting their friends and those they choose to have almost constant access to information exchanges. But, I expect the practices that they are experiencing today to influence their expectations about always on and ubiquitous access, and that they are increasingly expecting that technology and online\/Internet services will be integrated into daily life. Those expectations may portend major and different breakthroughs when they become the paying user, not just the tween and teen consumer.\u201d <b>\u2014Marilyn Cade<\/b>, chief executive officer at ICT Strategies and mCADE LLC, past vice president for Internet and Internet governance at AT&amp;T<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cAs people age, that which they have to share becomes more tame. Thus, while the digital natives may be sharing less embarrassing things about themselves, they\u2019ll be sharing things that are likely to embarrass their kids, who in middle school will discover that every step of their potty training is has been blogged, with photographs, for their friends to see.\u201d <b>\u2014Stuart Schechter<\/b>, researcher, Microsoft Research, formerly on the technical staff at MIT Lincoln Laboratory<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWe will see two (apparently) contradictory evolutions in today\u2019s Generation Y\u2019s behaviour. On the one hand, they might abandon some of their current practices of intensive personal content sharing on the Net and usage of some social networking sites and other \u2018friend-focused\u2019 practices. Nevertheless, we believe this will be more a qualitative than a quantitative evolution: quitting some of these activities will be more related to the evolution of their actual tastes \u2013 and socialization needs \u2013 rather than a matter of \u2018growing out.\u2019 Instead, in quantitative terms, we think that the generations that were born with the Internet and, especially, the ones that grew with the Web 2.0 will have specific practices embedded in their social code. Thus, once in the job market, they might get rid of some practices but translate the essence to their jobs: collaborative working, high exposure of professional portfolios online, working directly on digital and Web platforms, or be present in professional (and also personal, of course) networking sites might become common ground and a driver of exclusion for those not being able to live in this landscape.\u201d <b>\u2014Ismael Pe\u00f1a-L\u00f3pez<\/b>, lecturer, School of Law and Political Science, Open University of Catalonia, researcher, Internet Interdisciplinary Institute<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWhat the public desire, the Market will provide. There cannot sustainably be a bringing together of the most personal life and the public professional life in the online world.\u00a0Either companies will split apart, with some specialising in professional networking and others in the private networking of close friends and family, or sites akin to Facebook will devise user friendly means of demarcating between public and private information. What can be certain is that Internet networking will not be going away!\u201d <b>\u2014Francis J.L. Osborn<\/b>, philosopher, University of Wales-Lampeter<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cBut they will have learnt which things to share, and a new \u2018netiquette\u2019 will have emerged regarding the information shared by others.\u201d <b>\u2014<b>C\u00e9sar C\u00f3rcoles<\/b><\/b>, professor at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain<\/p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"> <b>Privacy is less meaningful to Millennials and their changed norms will stay with them, perhaps in new forms. Social styles get imprinted in people early, though social strategies change. Millennials will not revert to the traditions of their parents and grandparents when it comes to being public actors. The yearning for privacy will seem an artifact of the past. And their lifestyles will influence their elders\u2019 and institutions.<\/b> <\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe social styles learned in the formative teen years tend to carry on through adulthood \u2013 limited mostly by \u2018learning painful lessons\u2019 about the occasional down-sides of openness.\u201d <b>\u2014<b>Jim Warren<\/b><\/b>, founder and chair of the first Computers, Freedom, and Privacy Conference and longtime technology and society activist<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cBy 2020, we will have established new social norms regarding the sharing of information. Having been burned by too much openness, I expect Gen Y and the Millennials to become somewhat more guarded about their online presence. They will have more to lose.\u201d <b>\u2014Dean Thrasher<\/b>, founder, Infovark, a software company that makes Enterprise 2.0 tools<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI reckon people will become a bit more selective, but it may be that people develop other ways to keep \u2018secrets,\u2019 for example about thoughts rather than deeds.\u201d <b>\u2014Dean Bubley<\/b>, founder, Disruptive Analysis, an independent technology analysis and consulting firm<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI would expect Gen Y members to find even more uses for social networking beyond their adolescent wanderings. They will connect with extended families, form consortiums of parents to communicate with educators and even play online multiplayer games with their kids, their cousins, and distant friends.\u201d <b>\u2014Barbara Ferry<\/b>, director of business and editorial research, National Geographic Society Libraries and Information Services<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cAs the digital natives become influential people in our societies, transparency and openness in business and government will increase, leading to a less corrupt and more honest world.\u201d <b>\u2014Hjalmar Gislason<\/b>, founder and chief executive officer for DataMarket; former director of business development at Iceland Telecom<\/p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"> <b>Governments and businesses with an interest in promoting people\u2019s open sharing of personal information will play their own role in encouraging Millennials to broadcast personal information and in adjusting to these new realities.<\/b> <\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe advantages of information sharing will be heavily and successfully marketed so that only those on the fringes will withhold their personal information. This will occur despite occasional scams and misuse of personal data. Security will continue to get better but not good enough to eliminate misuse.\u201d <b>\u2014Charles M. Perrottet<\/b>, founding principal, Futures Strategy Group LLC<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThere will continue to be strong corporate pressures on the consumer to share information, and those incentives will not abate. Today&#8217;s digital natives have formed a habit of sharing information, and habits are almost impossible to break.\u201d <b>\u2014Hal Eisen<\/b>, senior engineering manager at Ask.com<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cIt is clear that all generations are happy to share information, the key is for technology to come to grips with the fine line between public\/private or domestic\/everyday-life concepts that people are using with these technologies. This means that either corporations will have to learn to encode these distinctions through a &#8216;hard-core&#8217; of code with technical protection measures, or else perhaps governments will need to legislate to prevent the harvesting of data. Either way the open-sourcing of public life will not be going away.\u201d <b>\u2014David M. Berry<\/b>, author of <i>Copy, Rip, Burn: Copyleft!<\/i> and a lecturer on sociological and philosophical research into technology<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><figure><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"530\" height=\"292\" alt=\"Advertisers and corporations will want people to provide their personal information and their ability to offer \u2018goodies\u2019 will increase.\" src=\"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/internet\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/media\/0235D6D875984D4895166D05A3D6CCEB.jpg\" class=\"aligncenter\"><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe real question will be people&#8217;s willingness to sacrifice privacy for certain potential benefits. Many people will learn that they have in fact been sacrificing something and endangering themselves by sharing too much information. They will become more judicious in what they share on which networks. And they will desire greater protection of privacy and become advocates for stringent privacy rights. Many others will be seduced by the promises of sharing information and will sacrifice their privacy and will come to value the \u2018goodies\u2019 they can get by providing personal information. Over the next decade there will be increasing discrepancies between countries in terms of privacy laws and the protection of privacy. Advertisers and corporations will want people to provide their personal information and their ability to offer \u2018goodies\u2019 will increase. States will want to collect as much personal information as possible in order to more efficiently control populations. Depending upon the relative strength of democratic forces in various nations, privacy will either expand or erode. In the US, sharing of very personal medical information will become a battleground in this contentious area. On the one hand, sharing complete medical information and personal history will have life-saving potential that many will desire and which the government, insurance corporations, and a health-care system increasingly controlled by financial institutions will exploit. If I were to hazard a guess, in the short-term in the US private information will become increasingly gathered by the government and corporations and will not be adequately protected.\u201d <b>\u2014Benjamin Mordechai Ben-Baruch<\/b>, senior market intelligence consultant and applied sociologist, consultant for General Motors<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe amount of sharing will be dependent upon many external elements to the digital natives. If things such as network neutrality keep the Internet open and an increase of economic opportunity remains with the Internet, we will see an increase and continuation of digital natives being broadcasters, connectors, etc. If opportunities decrease due to restraints put upon the Internet infrastructure, participation will also decrease. Lets hope the current decision and policy makers keep the Internet open and a place that encourages participation.\u201d<b> \u2014Peter Rawsthorne<\/b>, learning systems architect and council member, WikiEducator, IT team lead and solutions architect, Continuing Legal Education Society of British Columbia<\/p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"> <b>Time pressures will eventually assert themselves. It takes a lot of effort to broadcast your thoughts and whereabouts and the demands of busy lives will cut into Millennials\u2019 interest in sharing so much detail about themselves.<\/b> <\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI suspect Gen Y&#8217;s constituents will realize, as they age, that they simply don&#8217;t have the time to devote to broadcasting their activities and keeping tabs on all of their acquaintances. They might also come to the realization that they never really cared all that much about constantly knowing what everyone else is doing.\u201d <b>\u2014Christopher Saunders, <\/b>managing editor, InternetNews.com<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThe area of transparency and disclosure is hard to define and determine in the long term. The Web has grown quickly and changes in focus and function almost following Moore&#8217;s law for processing power of PCs. It is true that age brings wisdom and reservation and it may be very likely that Gen Y\/Millennials will indeed pull back, share less, and focus more on family. Time is always a challenge as we all age, grow a family and take on ever increasing levels of professional responsibility. Priorities as a result change which may impact one&#8217;s ability and desire to share.\u201d <b>\u2014Kevin Novak<\/b>, co-chair of eGov Working Group at the World Wide Web Consortium and vice president of integrated Web strategy at the American Institute of Architects<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The activities won&#8217;t go away, but will slowly lessen as a priority. Less and less discretionary time will likely force Millennials to continually reassess priorities and adjust online behavior.\u201d <b>\u2014Paul DiPerna<\/b>, research director at Foundation for Educational Choice, conducting surveys, polling, Internet\/social media projects<\/p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"> <b>Growing older does have some influence on behavior and will continue to do so.\u00a0 Some privacy practices are too valuable to give up.<\/b> <\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cMy impression has been that sociability declines with age, and that the obsessive other-directedness of youth gradually gives way to self-direction.\u201d <b>\u2014<b>John Pike<\/b><\/b>, director of GlobalSecurity.org, former director of cyberstrategy and other projects for the Federation of American Scientists<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cIt should be blatantly obvious that getting married and having kids reduces both the inclination and opportunities for \u2018widespread information sharing.\u2019 \u2018Not a soul down on the corner. That&#8217;s a pretty certain sign that wedding bells are breakin&#8217; up that old gang of mine\u2019\u201d <b>\u2014Seth Finkelstein<\/b>, anti-censorship activist and programmer, author of the Infothought blog and an Electronic Frontier Foundation Pioneer Award winner<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cAs people age, their attitudes change, and I expect that young people will share less as they get older. I see this as a factor of their life circumstances changing. Parents, for instance, behave differently from non-parents, and one of the things that people often inherit along with parenthood is a bizarre caution that could easily inhibit some of the sharing that took place at earlier times in their lives. I don&#8217;t think young people will \u2018grow out\u2019 of wanting to use social networks, play online games, and do other \u2018time-consuming\u2019 things. Other interests may replace some of those, but in many cases, those tools and games are part of how they relate to the world (they certainly are for me), and even if they share less information while doing those things, the interest will remain.\u201d <b>\u2014Rachel S. Smith<\/b>, vice president, NMC Services, New Media Consortium<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cTheir enthusiasm will persist, but their time to do so will diminish as they age.\u201d <b>\u2014Esther Dyson<\/b>, founder and chief executive officer of EDventure, investor and serial board member, journalist and commentator on emerging digital technology<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThis is perspective and way-of-life trend. People will use their time differently as their lives change, but the fundamental broader sharing of personal information and connecting to various publics seems to me to be a powerful trend.\u201d <b>\u2014<b>Gary Marchionini<\/b><\/b>, professor at the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, US<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThere is no question in my mind that the enthusiasm to share information, especially personal information, will wane. First, there is the novelty effect at the moment. Second, there will be enough cases of bad things happening to people who put too much information about themselves online that there will be greater caution. Third, as Gen Y ages, they will have more information to keep private.\u201d <b>\u2014<b>Peng Hwa Ang<\/b><\/b>, dean of the School of Communication, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, and active leader in the global Internet governance processes of WSIS and\u00a0IGF<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThey will be left to complain about the challenges of their spawn, whom to their possible surprise may seek more restrictive boundaries, in the ever-present cycle of human expansion and contraction.\u201d <b>\u2014Eric James, <\/b>president of the James Preservation Trust and publisher of Stray Leaves, author and lecturer<\/p>\n\n<hr>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"> <b>New digital divides will occur as those who are comfortable with gadgets have reputational and productivity advantages over those who are not as comfortable \u2013 or those who cannot afford the gadgets. <\/b> <\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThis one seems obvious to me: we aren&#8217;t going back to the days of friction in personal information. The flows are flowing and will continue to, and those who aren&#8217;t digitally literate will miss out on crucial educational and economic opportunities. The real problem we face is the divide between the rich gadget hounds and the poorer Millennials. Not everyone can afford the freedom that releasing all that information makes possible.\u201d <b>\u2014Susan Crawford<\/b>, founder of OneWebDay, Internet law professor at the University of Michigan, former special assistant to President Obama for Science, Technology and Innovation Policy<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><figure><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"530\" height=\"289\" alt=\"The flows are flowing and will continue to, and those who aren't digitally literate will miss out on crucial educational and economic opportunities. \" src=\"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/internet\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/media\/6A6FBD60720448D398A690ED08FA2438.jpg\" class=\"aligncenter\"><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cSharing is the natural state of humans, in general. Our Industrial Age culture developed because our education and social systems adapted to that prevailing economy. It is a culture developed around the concept of competition for scarce resources. Primeval culture, the original reason for humans to socialize, is based on abundance by contribution. \u2018Digital natives\u2019 will show the \u2018digital immigrants\u2019 the abundance in the power of contribution. And even then some of us will still remain \u2018digital undocumented workers.\u2019\u201d <b>\u2014Jack Holt<\/b>, senior strategist for emerging media, Department of Defense, Defense Media Activity, chief of new media operations, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Respondents\u2019 thoughts Survey participants were encouraged to: \u201cExplain your choice and share your view about the future of human lifestyles in 2020 \u2013 what is likely to stay the same and what will be different? Will the values and practices that characterize today\u2019s younger Internet users change over time?\u201d The following is a small selection 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