In the past few years, social scientists were talking more and more of an uncontrolled exposure of young people in the virtual environment. The fast development of social networking sites and of instant messaging services had radically changed the way we interact, communicate and socialize. If before you needed time to get to know someone better, to get close to someone, to make new friends, to meet other people who share your interests and beliefs, now everything seems to be just one click away. An environment where there are no socio-cultural and spatial-temporal barriers, like the virtual environment, is an environment that encourages disinhibition and self-disclosure in social relationships. Therefore, we could say that the Internet is offering us an ideal environment for fast self-disclosure. In this context, the present paper proposes to explore the theme of privacy in the virtual environment, its purpose being to identify the type of personal information which young people easily disclose online. Therefore, the present study presents a content analysis of 106 Facebook proﬁles, based upon a classiﬁcation scheme for the information provided online. In the end, the study demonstrates that the focus of social researchers should be on the content of the information and not on the amount of information disclosed online. The study offers an overview of what young people are willing to reveal in the virtual environment and represents a ﬁrst step in the research of this complex phenomenon and its social implications.
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