Digital natives and mobile phones: A survey of practices and attitudes about privacy and security

The generation of young people who do not remember life before the Internet, who grew up surrounded by computing technology and mobile phones, are often referred to as `digital natives'. This generation has a special affinity to mobile devices - young people often carry their mobile phones with them at all times to keep a constant connection with their friends while also consuming and creating digital media. This paper presents the results of a survey of over 330 young people aged 18 to 25, which attempts to evaluate their use of mobile technology, their attitudes about security and privacy as it relates to mobile phones, as well as their perceptions of different ways how security and privacy could be improved in future mobile devices. Despite a commonly held belief that digital natives are technologically savvy, their self-assessment does not appear to support this statement. Furthermore, despite the respondents' awareness of various threats to security and privacy, very few of them actually take any concrete steps to protect their devices from unauthorized access. This paper discusses these findings and analyzes the views of young people on different authentication technologies.