Through its growing popularity, social media platforms have become influential in our society. Data tracking allows social media platforms to continue providing free and personalized services. Scholars and professionals have argued that data tracking can be harmful to individual privacy and can be used to change peoples’ behaviour without them being aware of this. This thesis focusses on how millennials deal with data tracking dilemmas in their social media use. As digital natives, millennials have grown up in a digital society, and therefor are often suggested to have a unique perspective on issues such as data tracking. This study is focused on why millennials use social media platforms, what dilemmas they identify regarding data tracking, how millennials act upon these dilemmas and how millennials reflect on their own behaviour compared to that of other generations. Based on 16 semi-structured interviews and 4 focus groups, this thesis relates the behaviour of Dutch millennials regarding data tracking and social media use to theories such as mediatization, platformization, the privacy paradox and media generations. This thesis finds that besides communication, entertainment and social engagement are also deeply shaped by mediatization and platformization. The participants identified three interrelated aspects of the privacy dilemma: the filter bubble, monetization and power. In acting upon these dilemmas, the behaviour of some participants confirms the notion of the privacy paradox. However, another group of participants indicated that they do not experience the dilemmas as such, and therefore do not act upon them. A last group of participants shared that they have found multiple ways in which to act upon the dilemmas they identify. This study thus concludes that the privacy paradox seems more nuanced than its conceptualization, because the participants find ways to deal with the dilemmas they identify.

The collection of personal data has increased and developed side-to-side with the digitalization of society. It has been embedded in digital technologies where the collection and handling of personal data have become a great interest for private and public actors. Previous quantitative studies show a widespread concern with data collection among individuals. Based on 16 semi-structured interviews, this study investigates individuals’ experiences with governmental data collection. The sample of this study consists of individuals who belong to the generation of late millennials. This study investigates how late millennials are experiencing data collection from domestic authorities using David Lyon’s theoretical framework of surveillance imaginaries and surveillance practices. Online privacy literacy is added as a third component to the framework which together with imaginaries and practices form how individuals experience data collection. The results show that the respondents’ imaginaries are built on compliance and trust with data collection from Swedish authorities. The respondents imagine this data collection as an exchange, as public good, as securitization and as harmless. The identified practices displayed how the abstract nature of data collection together with the trust for Swedish authorities created a kind of non-response towards data collection from Swedish authorities. The results also show how the imaginary of trust reduced the need for knowledge. The respondents lack an understanding of how data collection is performed, but it did not influence their imaginaries and practices. This study also concludes how trust for the surveillor leads to compliance with data collection for the surveilled. How perceived trust for the surveillor can reduce an individual’s privacy concerns which influence surveillance imaginaries and practices. This study thus demonstrates the interplay between imaginaries, practices and knowledge in the shaping of individual experience of data collection from domestic authorities.

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