Awareness about the sharing of personal data on social media: The Instagram example

Social media platforms are places where people frequently use and spend time today. On these platforms, people share a lot, whether it is personal or not. From this point of view, the level of awareness of users while sharing their personal data on social media platforms emerges as an important issue. In this thesis, the awareness levels of social media users about sharing personal data will be investigated. Qualitative method, one of the research methods, was used in the study. Within the scope of the method of the study, there are data obtained from the semi-structured in-depth interviews with people who use Instagram from social media platforms. The sample of the research consists of 24 people living in Istanbul and using the Instagram social media platform. As a result, the majority of the participants in this study use Instagram to spend their free time, they use Instagram for 2-3 hours a day, they mostly share their own videos and photos on Instagram, they rarely share their personal data, they share their special experiences and developments, they feel good and happy to share personal information. It has been determined that they have a superficial knowledge of security limits, they do not research what their digital rights are, they do not have information about this subject, they do not feel safe in this environment, and they do not feel safe in this environment.