Gone to Tweet about the mess-that-was Avril Lavigne's Hello Kitty video and then thought better of it? (What else is there to add to that debate?) Or started to upload a pic of your equally-messy night out on Instagram, before realising your boss actually also follows you, so yeah, well, just no? Then, you're down with the digital-savvy teens then.
Teens are apparently now way more obsessed with online privacy than their twenty-something counter-parts. Only 11 per cent of 14 to 18 year olds now share 'a lot of themselves online', down from 18 per cent a year ago, and much lower than the 17 per cent of 19 to 24 year olds, according to a new survey from youth-focused consumer insights company the Creative Artist Agency’s Intelligence Group. So when did everyone get so paranoid?
Some are saying that it's because we're now in a 'post-Snowden effect' following last year’s government surveillance revelations. But around 60 per cent of teens say the reason for their digital silence is because they 'don’t like things that last forever online' - and, even more telling, they don't like the way their parents' posts about them are leaving a digital footprint they can't control. And don't necessarily like.
It kind of makes sense. Facebook is now over a decade old – and pretty much everyone's mum is on it. So there’s a really strong chance that parents of 14 year olds will have embarrassing childhood pics of them lurking in the depths of their profiles. So perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that marketing firm iStrategyLabs have reported that three million teenagers left Facebook during the last three years.
But it's not as easy as saying RIP, Facebook's over – we're all logging off and the internet's dead. Because while we might be adopting a new scroll-don’t-share attitude that shows we're more concerned with what goes out into the public domain, we’ve turned to more secretive social networks like Snapchat, Whatsapp, Whisper, Kik and Secret.
Which is all well and good. Until Dad decides to join up.
Follow Tracy on Twitter @Tracy_Ramsden
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.