Elyse Smaill and Katie Bonne, school pupils, 17
astounding. In my view, the positive aspects of social media far outweigh the negative aspects, particularly for older people who can be isolated. Elyse: I don’t post heaps on Facebook but use it a lot for connecting with friends overseas, to organise events. I have gmail for both school and personal. I watch a lot of movie trailers on YouTube and upload short videos for friends or school. I use Google Drive quite a bit, and Google classroom.
Katie: I don’t use Facebook much, mainly for admin groups. Socially I don’t use it much to post things. I’m quite conscious of what photos and things I put up there. I use gmail as my main email address – I don’t think too much about privacy for that. On YouTube I mainly listen to music – not things I’d be concerned
What’s in the bag?
Elyse: 1.4GB of Facebook data, including friends’ cellphone numbers, complete Messenger conversations and about 40 companies who have uploaded her contact list, including games like Candy Crush she can’t remember ever playing. Fifteen folders of Google data, each 2GB: Email, YouTube history, contacts.
‘‘I’m probably on Facebook a lot! The ad topics you could probably take from pages I’ve liked. The YouTube history – I don’t see the problem. They use that to recommend other videos and sometimes you want that. In the end I’m not all that worried about it. Generally, it’s computer programmes going through this anyway. And if there was a person looking at my personal page, there’s not that much they are going to find of interest, except for marketing things.
‘‘We do need more clarity about who does use your stuff. It’s probably in the terms and conditions but that’s hard to explain to a 13-year-old. I think it steps over the line with political campaigns, but in the end I’m not that bothered about programmes seeing what I’ve done.’’
Katie: 670MB of Facebook data, including unfamiliar video, two seconds of audio that sounds like breathing and an audio clip she recorded on her phone but never shared to Facebook. It also says Instagram has uploaded her contact list – she doesn’t have an Instagram account.
‘‘It’s interesting how they’ve got every single message you’ve ever sent – I think I’m going to be a lot more careful about what I send. In terms of Google reading your emails – I think it would be great if you were more aware of that and had the option to opt out. I did look at trying to opt out of customised advertising. I think you’ve got so much data – who is going to actually trawl through that and use it against you? I think there’s definitely reason to be cautious about what you share with Google and Facebook, but you have to keep it in perspective.’’