# Creative beyond TikToks: Investigating Adolescents' Social Privacy Management on TikTok

**Authors:** Nico Ebert, Tim Geppert, Joanna Strycharz, Melanie Knieps, Michael Hönig, Elke Brucker-Kley  
**arXiv:** [2301.11600](https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.11600)  
**Date:** 2023-01-27  
**Summary page:** https://www.summarizepaper.com/en/arxiv-id/2301.11600v1/

## Key points

- The study focuses on privacy management practices of adolescent users on TikTok
- 54 adolescents in Switzerland were interviewed and their responses were analyzed using the COM-B model
- Young TikTok users are aware of privacy related to their online social connections and perform conscious privacy management
- The study identified new patterns related to the central role of algorithmic recommendations potentially relevant for other social networks
- Adolescents find creative ways to protect their privacy such as identifying stalkers or maintaining multiple user accounts with different privacy settings
- Anonymized, coded interview transcripts are publicly available for further research purposes
- The study proposes various concrete measures to develop interventions that protect adolescent users' privacy on TikTok based on these findings.

## Summary

This study delves into the privacy management practices of adolescent users on TikTok, a social media platform that has been criticized for its low privacy standards. The research team conducted interviews with 54 adolescents in Switzerland and used the COM-B model to analyze their responses. The findings show that young TikTok users are aware of privacy related to their online social connections and perform conscious privacy management. However, the study also identified new patterns related to the central role of algorithmic recommendations potentially relevant for other social networks. Adolescents are aware that TikTok's special algorithm, combined with the app's high prevalence among their peers, could easily put them in the spotlight. Some adolescents also reduce TikTok to its extensive audio-visual capabilities and share TikToks via more private channels to manage audiences and avoid identification by peers. Young users also find other creative ways to protect their privacy such as identifying stalkers or maintaining multiple user accounts with different privacy settings to establish granular audience management. To analyze the content of the interviews, a two-step procedure was used that first divided each statement into one of the four COM-B components before further subdividing them into privacy-specific content. An inductive thematic analysis was conducted to identify themes within similarly coded statements. Ultimately, researchers reviewed and discussed emerging themes, merged similar ones, and re-labeled others. The study proposes various concrete measures to develop interventions that protect adolescent users' privacy on TikTok based on these findings. The anonymized, coded interview transcripts are publicly available for further research purposes. Overall, this study provides a comprehensive understanding of how young TikTok users manage their social privacy while creating videos on this popular platform.