Doctoral Dissertation Research: Expectations of Privacy: Development, Digital Natives, and Online Information Management

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The Fourth Amendment of the United States protects against unreasonable searches and seizures; the question of whether a search violates the Fourth Amendment hinges on whether the individual searched had a subjective expectation of privacy that society is willing to recognize as reasonable. Expectations of privacy can be impacted by current events (such as the 2013 NSA surveillance scheme leaks), increased use of technology and digital communication, or even individual differences such as age or generation effects. The current research examines how expectations of privacy develop through adolescence and adulthood and whether this development is due to a "generation gap" in use and familiarity with digital communications or due to developmental changes in risk taking. This research uses cross-sectional surveys to examine how reasonable expectations of privacy differ among various age groups. In addition, an in-lab study will test whether Steinberg's (2010) Dual Systems Model of Adolescent Risk-Taking can explain differences between adolescents' and adults' expectations of privacy in on-line communications. The proposed research will integrate three bodies of research (lay adults' reasonable expectations of privacy, adolescent decisionmaking, and privacy- protecting behaviors in on-line communications) to examine how reasonable expectations of privacy differ across the lifespan. The findings of the proposed research can help inform courts and attorneys how expectations of privacy are changing with advances in technologies. The current standard courts use to evaluate whether a search was protected by the Fourth Amendment (examining both subjective and objective expectations of privacy) may prove to be increasingly difficult for courts to administer as technology continues to develop. The current research aims to provide evidence of whether that standard adequately protects Fourth Amendment rights.