“Privacy” doesn’t mean that no one in the world knows about your business. It means that you get to choose who knows about your business.Anyone who pays attention will see that kids do, in fact, care a whole lot about their privacy. They don’t want their parents to know what they’re saying to their friends. They don’t want their friends to see how they relate to their parents. They don’t want their teachers to know what they think of them. They don’t want their enemies to know about their fears and anxieties.
This isn’t what we hear from people who want to invade kids’ privacy though. Facebook is a company whose business model is based on the idea that if they spy on you enough and trick you into revealing enough about your life, they can sell you stuff through targeted ads. When they get called on this, they explain that because kids end up revealing so much about their personal lives on Facebook, it must be OK, because digital natives know how the Internet is supposed to be used. And when kids get a little older and start to regret their Facebook disclosures, they are told that they, too, just don’t understand what it means to be a digital native, because they’ve grown up and lost touch with the Internet’s true spirit.