A report released Sunday by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that growing numbers of Americans are searching for information about themselves and others on the Internet.
According to “Digital Footprints,” nearly 50 percent of Americans have searched for themselves online, more than double the number who reported doing so in 2002. Even more people — 53 percent of those surveyed — said that they searched for information about acquaintances or business contacts.
In general, the Pew report found that younger users are more comfortable searching for information about themselves and others than older Internet users. Pew researchers found little difference in the frequency with which men and women searched for themselves online, but concluded that as education and income rise, so does the tendency of people to monitor their online profiles.
Age Affects Privacy Attitudes
Not surprisingly, the Pew report found that a much higher percentage of teens (55 percent) than adults (20 percent) have created profiles of themselves on one of the social-networking sites such as MySpace or Facebook. But teens, the report also found, are much more likely to post information on their profile pages (particularly photos and videos) that adults would consider private.
“This gap between young people not caring about privacy, and older people caring more about privacy has existed over a long period of time,” said Ari Schwartz, the deputy director of the Center for Democracy and Technology. “Younger people that just don’t have experiences of older people of information coming back to haunt them. And now technology gives them the opportunity to be more careless than they were in the past.”
Somewhat surprisingly, teens were more cautious about who can view their social-networking information. Nearly 60 percent of teens restrict access to their Web 2.0 profiles to “friends.”
The opposite is true for adults: some 60…