The concept of privacy is, um, really, really different in China. Over there, it seems, everyone has a right to know just about anything they want to know about you. Even the Mandarin word for privacy—yinsi—implies a menacing selfishness among those who want secrecy.
As my personal stories from living in China attest (oh, man, do they), we in the West are usually appalled by such lack of confidentiality. But Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg claims this North American social norm has changed drastically.
At a recent awards assembly in San Francisco, Zuckerberg said, “When I got started in my dorm room at Harvard, the question a lot of people asked was, ‘Why would I want to put any information on the Internet at all? Why would I want to have a website?’ Then in the last 5 or 6 years, blogging has taken off in a huge way, and just all these different services that have people sharing all this information.”
He went on to say that he believes privacy is no longer a social norm. (Out of the mouths of overconfident 25-year-olds ….)
Considering the fact Facebook has more than 350 million users, many of whom post intimate details of their lives daily, Zuckerberg may have a point. But he also can’t deny the fact that countless users complained bitterly when Facebook recently changed its privacy settings.
I wonder if the concept of privacy is different among Millennials and other generations. Or are people of all ages sharing information via an emotionally detached Internet that they would never share in face-to-face conversation—and then get upset when they feel they lose control of it?
I also wonder what privacy will look like in 10 more years. Hopefully I’ll never be told what type of underwear most people are wearing.
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