If our general personal perception and the empirical information that being surrounded by other digital nomads daily provide us suggested that our hypothesis was not misled, both our literature review and collected data showed us that the situation is more complex than we put it.
Already with our literature review, even if most people participating in the studies felt either confused or hesitant towards data protection policies and especially towards GDPR, the truth is that the majority of them did present a basic understanding of the topic. The studies analyzed still illustrate a real lack in terms of the depth of this understanding and especially in terms of the trust that the participants allocated to data protection mechanisms such as the GDPR, but a minimum was still there.
Our primary data, and its subsequent analysis, support this reasoning
Putting it simply, our statistics show that the average percentage of right answers by an ordinary EU-resident digital native is of 57.5%, implying that awareness about digital and data rights is not incredibly low but also not incredibly high amongst our youth despite the EU having one of the most comprehensive data regulations in the world.
However, our data allows us to draw many other interesting conclusions. Certainly, more topics are more known than others, and we can see that the level of awareness is hence lower or higher depending on the field.
For example, we can suggest by our data that young people are mostly confused when it comes to the precise terminology that data protection regulations use, thus rendering their overall understanding of the scale of their protection and rights more difficult. In this part of our survey, the average percentage of right answers was only 39.4%, the lowest of all of our survey sections.
In opposition, the section with the highest percentage of right answers by our respondents(73.2%) was the one regarding their awareness of the reach online platforms have regarding our personal information. The diffusion of this kind of information through social media and conventional media outlets has rendered this type of knowledge more trendy and thus more accessible than the knowledge that concerns data protection rights or regulations.
However, even on that note, respondents showed having a higher level of awareness than when it came to terminology. In fact, the average percentage of right answers in the section where we asked about the current European legislation(GDPR) was 60.16%, a number that does not imply extremely hopeful conclusions, but neither upsetting ones.
Interestingly enough, within that section, there was a question that we consider worth highlighting.
To the affirmation that “under this legislation, companies are not compelled to specify the information in an easily readable manner; complex vocabulary relating to technical terms is the norm”, the majority of respondents replied by saying that it was true, when actually companies are compelled to follow those criteria. Only 31% of respondents got it right, demonstrating that the unlawful behavior of companies that still use complex vocabulary to prevent the average person from knowing their rights has become a normalized practice for young people. So much so that the overriding majority would not think at all that they have the right to be properly informed.
This is, to our view, one of our most significant findings, as it exposes that the EU and its GDPR framework are doing something wrong if a big chunk of their youth still interiorizes and considers acceptable what their legal framework so fiercely –allegedly– opposes.
Nonetheless, something that our data also suggests is that, while we have proven that some topics and pieces of legislation are more known than others, the overall feeling of confusion and unawareness is felt amongst all youth with little room for exceptions.
As the following graphs show below, the average percentage of correct answers slightly varies with respect to age, country or type of education(public, private or mixed). It might slightly increase with regards to the level of education, being high school students clearly more unaware. However, even here, the difference is not as great as to point it out as a surprising finding.
In the same line, the difference found between people interested in legal topics and people who are not is not very significant. Although slightly higher, it is hard to establish a solid conclusion from our graphs.
Lastly, and also funnily enough, the difference between people who consider themselves tech-savvy or generally good at technology and people who do not ironically points out at the fact that the first would actually know slightly less about digital rights and data protection. However, the limited size and variety of our sample cannot serve to draw solid conclusions on this, once again.
To summarize, we can say that while our hypothesis was not entirely wrong, this digital study allowed us to realize that
1) the youth, although not as aware as it should be, is not as lost as we thought; and
2) there is a lot more nuance that we need to bring to the table when we talk about these topics.