The Members Forum

The story has become a cliché when talk turns to young people and the internet:

A young adult posts pictures of a beer-soaked keg stand on Facebook. (In this modern-day parable, it's always a keg stand -- a means of guzzling beer directly from a keg -- and always Facebook.) Potential employer goes online and finds the photo. Young person doesn't get the job.

Samantha Abernethy, 26, figures this fictional over-sharer probably doesn't deserve the job. But not for the reason you might think.

"I think the employer is more likely to judge you for not understanding the (Facebook) privacy settings than they are for doing the keg stand," said Abernethy, who edits local news sites in Chicago, Illinois. "If you're concerned about what's out there, you make sure nobody can find you by Googling you."

It's a point that highlights one facet of the digital world's complex set of views about privacy.

Often, younger users -- the so-called "digital natives" who have roamed the Web for as long as they can remember -- are less worried than older people about their privacy online.

But it's not because they don't care about protecting their information. In many cases, experts say, it's because they understand how to control it better than older users. To them, it's easy to pick and choose what to share, how to share it and with whom.

"I don't really see the big deal in it," said Adam Britten, 20, a Syracuse University junior currently studying in London. "We know how to operate the system."

CNN has the details HERE!