While detractors of social media often lament the amount of information that is posted online, social networks and other venues for sharing content with friends and family continue to grow and innovate at a rapid pace. As these services evolve, the privacy protections that they offer also evolve -- and according to Pew, 66% of teens use these privacy controls to limit access to their profile. Gone are the days where my friends could see everything I posted on my Facebook page. Now, I am given the opportunity to choose not only what content is public, but who has access to that content. This includes privacy control for photo albums, status updates, and personal information. Truth be told, I am much less comfortable with social sites that do not give me this level of freedom. We have reached the era where digital natives now expect this level of control over their personal information. As they found in the Pew study, many teens and certainly most young adults make thoughtful decisions about what information to share, and in what context.

According to the Pew Internet and American Life project, both teens and adults actively manage their information online -- 60% of adults and 66% of teens restrict access to information in their profile. According to the Pew study, only 6% of teens make their first and last name publicly accessible on social networks- a very telling statistic. We want our cake, and we want to eat it too- we want to share our content online, and we want to control who we share it with.

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