What is Privacy Cynicism?
How we trick ourselves into the illusion that online privacy is not an option.
From privacy paradox to privacy cynicism
Since internet browsers came up in the 90s, people seem to have a weird relationship with their online privacy.
In 2006, a study on the use of early social media coined the term “privacy paradox”. It describes a strong dissonance between privacy concerns and privacy behaviour [1]. Teenagers were sharing excessive information about themselves online, while at the same time saying they were concerned about giving up their privacy. Sounds familiar?
15 years later, the scale at which we give away our personal data has increased dramatically. Besides social, shopping and search, we started connecting our geo-location, health and home data to the ubiquitous data krakens.
Public awareness about data privacy has grown. Most of us distrust Facebook and Google. We know they build detailed personality profiles of us, including our deepest wishes, fears and secrets. Slowly, people start to grasp the faustian trade they make everyday when consenting to cookie policies and using the Facebook login button.
But the privacy paradox remains. And instead of adjusting our privacy behaviour to the greater threat of privacy loss, most of us have chosen to engage in a new form of self-denial: privacy cynicism [2].
We have all said it at one time or another:
“My data is already out there anyways…”
“…at least Google knows my taste better than my girlfriend”
or my personal favourite:
“I have nothing to hide…”
Privacy cynicism is the way to go when it comes to justifying how we give up our personal privacy multiple times per day. But why do we do this?
Cynicism as a coping mechanism
From a psychological perspective, cynicism is a very natural coping mechanism. In inter-personal contexts, people use it to devalue the aspirations and achievements of others in order to avoid comparison. By categorically neglecting all personal aspirations, we escape from having to compare ourselves with others, but we also doom ourselves to passivity. [3]
We resort to cynicism in order to avoid facing what psychologists call “cognitive dissonance”.[2] Cognitive dissonance basically occurs when our behaviour stands in stark contrast to our values, beliefs or feelings. It usually causes strong psychological stress, so our brain does everything it can to re-align or justify our actions.
How does this relate to our online behaviour?
When engaging in privacy cynicism we implicitly devalue our own right to privacy, by declaring it “absolutely impossible” and “ridiculous” to demand such right. This makes it bearable for us to keep gifting away our private information without turning a hair.
We give in to the notion that we are powerless in the face of almighty Google, Facebook and a dozen third-party data brokers whose names we’ve never heard before. This is the only way we can justify to ourselves that we submit to their regime everyday. Accepting their control over us frees us from the responsibility to protect ourselves.
Privacy cynicism is a handy shortcut to deal with our cognitive dissonance. It is the perfect legitimisation of our passiveness, of our voluntary paralysis. Until we decide to take action, our privacy belongs to those who do.
[2] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3319830
[3] https://blog.usejournal.com/the-price-you-pay-for-cynicism-645b51fbe211
