Selective Agency and Platformized Privacy: Explaining Youth Participation in Datafied Social Media

Abstract

This study reassesses the explanatory scope of Privacy Calculus Theory (PCT) within platformized social media environments shaped by datafication, algorithmic governance, and participation-driven visibility regimes. While prior research has documented inconsistecies between privacy concern and disclosure behaviour, limited empirical work has examined how awareness, disclosure orientation, and behavioural responses interact under such conditions. Drawing on survey data from 386 Instagram and TikTok users in a high social-media-penetration context, the study investigates how experiential awareness of platform data practices, disclosure orientation, privacy-protective behaviour, and high-connectivity participation intersect in digitally mediated interaction. Findings reveal a differentiated configuration of privacy negotiation: experiential awareness significantly predicts localized protective actions but does not constrain disclosure willingness or expansive connectivity practices. Disclosure orientation emerges as the strongest predictor of visibility-enhancing participation. Conceptualized as selective agency, this pattern refines PCT by demonstrating how behavioural responses to privacy concerns are mediated by infrastructural participation logics that normalize connectivity and relational visibility. The study contributes by specifying the behavioural boundary conditions of privacy calculus in contemporary datafied communication environments.