Teens are sharing more information about themselves on social media sites than they have in the past but are also more proactively taking steps to better manage their privacy, reveals the latest report from Pew Internet.

In their Teens, Social Media, and Privacy analysis, Pew discovered that while 91 percent of teens have shared a photo of themselves, 53 percent have posted their email address and one in five (20 percent) have shared their cellphone number on a social networking site, 60 percent of Facebook-using teens have their profiles set to display to only friends and family, and almost one-quarter (24 percent) have a protected profile on Twitter.

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Did you know that 47 percent of people who use social media do so on their mobile phones?

With billions of users across platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, this connectivity comes at a cost. While monthly fees are dropping, mobile data usage is expected to grow twenty-fold by 2017 – and somebody has to pick up the check. And for the really addicted, constant use of social media apps and websites on their phone can pose a number of risks to mental and physical health.

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The New Year is a great time to take stock of your Twitter account, making sure your bio is optimized, your avatar is a good reflection of you and the list of who you follow is honed.

One easy first Twitter New Year’s Resolution is to clean up your Twitter permissions – in fact, all your social media permissions – with an all-in-one app called MyPermissions.

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Way, way back when – over three years ago, in fact, which is a lifetime on the internet – I wrote about the dangers of sharing too much about yourself on platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, reminding readers that, with social media, you’re always on camera.

Always being watched.

Always being judged.

And everybody makes mistakes.

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Did you know that the total size of the internet population has almost doubled in the past five years, from 1.319 billion in 2007 to 2.26 billion today?

This staggering rise in usage has had an exponential effect on everything we do online, including Google searches, emails sent, Facebook status updates, daily tweets and mobile data. And, over this same period, our willingness to share so much about ourselves on and in these platforms has also increased the risk of using them – the number of new unique threats per day has risen from 57 in 2008 to an eyebrow-raising 6,300 this year.

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Are you sharing too much online?

Social media has empowered users to connect with friends and family, demand better products and customer service from brands and change the world, but as we become more comfortable with these tools we are exponentially relaxing any initial concerns we might have had with security.

Namely, as platforms such as Twitter and Facebook become an everyday part of our lives, sharing otherwise private information about ourselves to these channels becomes the norm which, in some cases, can be hazardous.

It pays to remember that with social media you’re always on camera, and anything you say or do can – and, unfortunately, often will – be used against you.

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Did you know that in a recent survey 90 percent of adults said that they think people share too much on social media?

It’s certainly true that as social channels such as Twitter and Facebook rapidly integrate themselves into our everyday lives (both personal and professional), we’re becoming increasingly relaxed about what we choose to reveal about ourselves to our friends and followers. Indeed, it’s very easy to forget that, once published, the things you say and the way you behave online is potentially ‘out there’ forever – the camera, as they say, is always on.

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Does the use of social media threaten your privacy?

In and of itself, posting open messages to public networks does appear to fly in the very face of self-protection and personal security. After all, if you don’t want people to know something, why on earth would you write about it on the internet?

So, perhaps a more important question is: if you choose to be active on platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, can you realistically expect, or even demand privacy?

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