What the research found
A 2024 study combining a qualitative interview phase with a survey of 1,597 people found that the more someone engages in self-disclosure on social media, the less risky they perceive their own online activity to be. Higher engagement also came with a stronger sense of control over personal information, which itself predicted lower risk perception. The direction of that loop matters. Sharing itself appears to lower how risky the activity feels afterward, not just the other way around, creating a cycle where each post makes the next one feel a little safer than it is.
A separate 2024 survey of 192 students focused on a narrower, more concrete problem: incidental data, private information that shows up in a post by accident rather than on purpose, a house number visible in a photo background, a reflection in a window, a recognizable landmark that reveals a location no one meant to share. Up to 21.88 percent of participants said they’d publish a posting containing this kind of accidental detail, and two-thirds of them recognized it as privacy-compromising even as they said they’d still post it. A related study by the same lead researcher showed how little effort it takes to exploit this: two hours of manual searching was enough to piece together private personal information a person never meant to make public.
Why awareness alone doesn’t fix this
Both findings point to the same underlying gap. Knowing sharing carries risk and feeling that risk in the moment are different things, and the feeling is what drives behavior. The first study shows why the feeling keeps shrinking over time: each post that doesn’t result in visible harm reinforces the sense that sharing is safe, regardless of what’s happening with that data behind the scenes. The second study shows the risk isn’t limited to what you choose to share on purpose. A caption you write with care can still sit next to a photo that gives away far more than you intended.
The practical takeaway
Before posting a photo, scan the background for things you wouldn’t say out loud: an address, a license plate, a work badge, a school uniform, a recognizable location tied to your routine. This is a different check than deciding whether to share the main content of a post. It’s a second pass looking for what’s riding along with it unnoticed. Given how fast incidental details can be pieced together by anyone motivated to look, treating background details with the same scrutiny as the caption itself is a reasonable habit, not an excessive one.
Neither study suggests people are careless by nature. The pattern described here is a normal psychological response to repeated low-harm experiences, not a personal failing. That’s part of what makes it worth naming instead of relying on people to notice it in themselves.
References
Fejes-Vékássy, L., Ujhelyi, A., Lantos, N. A. “I don’t care, I share! The importance of self-disclosure overwrites the risks of sharing on Social Media.” Current Psychology, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-024-06496-2
Kutschera, S., et al. “Incidental Data: A Survey towards Awareness on Privacy-Compromising Data Incidentally Shared on Social Media.” Journal of Cybersecurity and Privacy, 2024. https://doi.org/10.3390/jcp4010006
