The prevalence and motivations for password sharing practices and intrusive behaviors among early adolescents’ best friendships – A mixed-methods study

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Highlights

  • This study examines password sharing and intrusive behaviors among early adolescents.

  • Around half of the respondents had shared their pin code or password with their best friend.

  • 9.6% had accessed their best friend’s phone without their consent.

  • Adolescents explain password sharing as a token of trust and friendship.

  • Girls were more likely to share their passwords than boys.

Abstract

When adolescents share their passwords with their friends, they are putting themselves at an increased risk for online abuse victimization. Surprisingly, very little empirical research has tried to understand the context and underlying motivations of adolescent password sharing. Using a mixed-methods approach, this study aims to address this gap in the literature by examining the prevalence and context of two related behaviors: 1) password sharing and 2) accessing a best friend’s phone without permission. We draw on both quantitative data and responses to open-ended questions that were collected among 2582 adolescents (ngirls = 1432, 56.6%) with a mean age of 13.45 years old (SD = 0.90) in the Dutch-speaking area of Belgium. Around half of the respondents in our sample had shared a password of a social media account or the PIN code of their mobile phone with their best friend, and 9.6% had accessed their best friend’s phone without their consent. When investigating the underlying motivations for password sharing, our study revealed that passwords were mainly shared as a token of trust and friendship. Passwords were often exchanged reciprocally. Girls were significantly more likely to share their passwords or to access their best friend’s phone without permission than boys. The respondents justified breaking into a best friend’s phone by passing it off as a ‘joke’, or they claimed that they wanted to surprise their best friend. We discuss implications for industry, practice, and we present a research agenda for future work.

Introduction

With 45 percent of teenagers being “almost constantly online” (Pew Research Center, 2018), digital media have transformed how adolescents experience their social relationships. Digital media provide many opportunities for adolescents to reap the benefits of their social capital, to communicate with a wide network of friends, and to maintain friendships that would otherwise be lost (e.g., because of moving to another city, transferring to another school…) (boyd, 2014). With the rich opportunities that social media offer, there are also some associated challenges, such as the risk of becoming a victim of cyberbullying, or other digital forms of peer harassment (Pabian annd Vandebosch, 2014). One of the primary risk factors for cyberbullying is the sharing of passwords (Bauman, 2010, Meter and Bauman, 2015, Mishna et al., 2012, Walrave and Heirman, 2011). A likely explanation for the association between password sharing and cyberbullying is that knowing the password or PIN code to the mobile phone allows access to private and sensitive content, and provides the ability to hack into private accounts. Sensitive information stored on those accounts (e.g., pictures, private conversations…) can then be exposed and abused for bullying, especially after a friendship goes sour. Perpetrators of cyberbullying often have a prior social relationship, making it particularly risky to share passwords with friends (Vandebosch and Van Cleemput, 2009, Wegge et al., 2014).

Despite its potential negative consequences, password sharing appears to be quite common among adolescents. Some of the first studies on this topic have mainly investigated the prevalence of the practice. A PEW study found that 30% of teenagers reported “sharing one of their passwords with a friend, boyfriend, or girlfriend” (Lenhart et al., 2011, p. 8) and a study by Meter and Bauman (2015) found that between 16% and 20% of youth in their US sample had shared passwords with their friends. When asked with whom they felt comfortable sharing passwords, Turkish teenagers were most likely to report close friends, even before family members (Gogus and Saygın, 2019). Marwick and boyd (2014) also noticed that password sharing was normative among the youth that they had interviewed. They attributed the practice to the fact that many teenagers are required to disclose their passwords to their parents, with some parents framing it as a sign of trust. Marwick and boyd (2014) note that the latter may lead teenagers to perceive password sharing as a normal behavior with individuals whom they trust.

While there is only scarce research on the practice of password sharing among adolescents, multiple studies have found evidence that password sharing is a highly prevalent behavior within adolescents’ romantic relationships (Bevan, 2018, Lucero et al., 2014, Van Ouytsel et al., 2019). Romantic partners share passwords as a token of trust and mutual love, and the behavior is therefore often not considered as problematic by those affected (Baker and Carreño, 2016). Sometimes teenagers share their passwords because they are pressured to do so by their romantic partners, but often teenage couples exchange them voluntarily (Lucero et al., 2014, Van Ouytsel et al., 2019). Knowing each other’s passwords may lead to monitoring and controlling behaviors within romantic relationships (Van Ouytsel et al., 2016, Van Ouytsel et al., 2019). For example, in focus group studies, adolescents discussed accessing the romantic partner’s e-mails and text messages without permission, as a result of knowing each other’s passwords (Van Ouytsel et al., 2016, Van Ouytsel et al., 2019). In a survey study, 39.4% of adolescents in a romantic relationship indicated that they had accessed their romantic partner’s e-mail messages, text messages, or social media accounts without permission (Van Ouytsel et al., 2017). It is unclear whether knowing the best friend’s password is associated with similar monitoring and controlling behaviors within adolescents’ friendships.

In sum, adolescents’ password sharing practices appear to be prevalent and are considered a high-risk behavior. They may lead to the perpetration of hacking and monitoring behaviors within their friendships. Very little empirical research has tried to understand the context and underlying motivations for why so many adolescents decide to share their passwords with their friends. Likewise, the potential consequences of this practice are poorly understood. Current examinations of password sharing practices do not go beyond establishing the mere prevalence of the behavior, and it is unclear whether it is associated with subsequent monitoring and controlling behaviors. This study aims to address these crucial gaps in the literature by examining the prevalence and context of password sharing among early adolescents (RQ1). We also examine the prevalence and context of accessing the best friend’s phone without permission, which may be facilitated by password sharing and constitutes another risk factor in cyberbullying victimization (RQ2).

Early adolescents are an especially interesting age group for our study, given that they recently transitioned from primary school to secondary school (i.e., middle school or junior high school) and the fact that friendships begin to play an increasingly important role within their developmental process (Bowker, 2004). Peer relationships become gradually more prevalent and intense during early adolescence (Giordano, 2003). Friendship experiences play an essential role in adolescents’ developmental process. Understanding the sharing and privacy behaviors in adolescents’ friendships is crucial, as adolescents may take relationship practices and norms (e.g., password sharing) that they have developed in their friendships with them to their later friendships and romantic relationships. Thanks to open-ended questions, we can go beyond the quantitative data to generate a deeper insight into the context and motivations in which password sharing and related monitoring behaviors take place. The results of our mixed-method approach are critical for the development of educational initiatives on e-safety and may inform cyberbullying prevention and intervention.

Section snippets

Sample and procedures

The data are drawn from the second cross-sectional wave of the Belgian Early Adolescent Risk Study, a large scale survey on the Internet use of adolescents. In March and April 2019, 2731 students from 13 schools in the Dutch-speaking area of Belgium took part in a completely anonymous paper-and pencil survey in Dutch language. Participants were asked to return their surveys to the researcher in sealed envelopes. The anonymous surveys were administered during class time in the first three years

Measures

A short definition of “best friend” preceded the measures, in order to make sure that the respondents would report on their experiences with the same friend throughout the survey. These instructions were also repeated verbally at the beginning of the survey: “The questions in this section are about your best friend. That is the friend who you like the most and with whom you spend a lot of time. It can be someone from your class but also someone from a youth group or your neighborhood. If you

Quantitative results

As shown in Table 1, the results indicate that 49.5% of the respondents had shared the password of either their social media or their cell phone with their best friend. More specifically, 36.8% of respondents indicated that they had shared the PIN code of the cell phone, 2.5% had shared the password of social media accounts and 10.2% of the respondents had shared the login credentials of their social media and their cellphone. Conversely, 50.0% of the respondents knew their best friends

Discussion

Password sharing is a major Internet risk behavior that is associated with cyberbullying victimization (Bauman, 2010, Meter and Bauman, 2015, Mishna et al., 2012, Walrave and Heirman, 2011). Motivations for why adolescents decide to share their passwords with their best friends are poorly understood. Using a mixed-method approach, our study investigates the prevalence and context of adolescents’ password sharing behaviors and accessing the best friend’s phone accounts without permission.

Funding Source

The data collection was supported by Research Foundation – Flanders (12J8719N) and the Research Fund of the University of Antwerp (BOF Klein Project - FFB180048). The study design, data collection, analysis, interpretation of the data, writing of the report and the decision to submit the article for publication were the sole responsibility of the author and were in no way influenced by the funding institutions.

Financial Disclosure

The author has indicated that he has no financial relationships relevant to this article to disclose.

Declaration of Competing Interest

The author declares that he has no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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