Please Don't Tell Anyone

Privacy management: something that everyone seems to want or have in his or her life. It allows us to manage our relationships and what is going on in our lives.

It is something that can be between two people, or just a person against the world. While there is always a secret that is not being shared to someone for some reason, professor Joshua Hammonds of Rollins College takes a step further in studying someone of reasoning as to why some people keep things behind closed doors. He shared his research study called “Please Don’t Tell Anyone” during Rollins’ Communications festival.

            ‘Think about a private matter that you have not yet shared with one or both of your parents,” Hammonds said to a room full of communication and prospective communication students. Of course, the room was silent with students who did not want to share that information. To break the ice, Hammonds shared “some of you may want to throw out stuff like ‘I got a DUI!’ No! We do not need to know that,” and the crowd is filled with laughs. The goal that evening was to have the audience think about the reasons behind withholding and disclosing certain information.

            Communication privacy management takes a step into the realm of that. We all own private information, of course, that is slowly eroding. With social media, instant messaging and anything else in between, private information seems to become something that is not so private anymore. It is kind of along the lines of this: you tell your best friend Becky a secret that you do not want to know, but then she tells her boyfriend because of course, when your best friend is in a relationship, no secret is safe between just you and them. It is a never-ending cycle that seems to constantly circle around. So, when is it safe to share information?

Hammonds asks his audience to list something that they would never be caught dead telling their parents about. Information about sex, alcohol, drugs and sexual orientation are a few of the topics that are thrown out. The follow up question to that was, “why?” Why would you not feel comfortable telling someone else about it? “Well, it’s private information. Also, it’s kind of awkward to tell my mom that I have had sex. It’s kind of an unspoken thing. She knows, but we never talk about it,” said student Ryan Bingham.

“Exactly! It’s private information! And a little bit awkward too,” exclaims Hammonds. During his research study, he found that there are five boundaries that are involved in parent/child relationships. It starts with culture; some people may have a very open relationship with their parents from the time that they are born or, some families may have a strong religious culture that finds sex to be a taboo topic. Next, the gender of the sender and the gender of the recipient. In the study, it was found that children were more than likely to open up to their mother because of her character. Mothers seem to provide more of a nurturing standpoint towards topics.

Third, motivation; what kind of relationship is already established? “You’re more than likely to go to your best friend than your mom if you hooked up with a person, right?” said Hammonds. It is all about the rapport that has been built.

Next, the context of the conversation. This relates to anything in life, but timing, social setting and previous discussion assessment play a huge role.

Lastly, the risk benefit ratio; there is always a risk in everything that we do. The fear or rejection is always there, but not only that; some find that withholding information from another person is protecting them.

Throughout his research, he took a look at 768 participants and found that the parent-child boundaries ranges anywhere from 25.3% of participants withholding information about their sexual activity, to school/grades being at 2.99% to .65% of participants withholding suicide attempts. All of the information collected shows a wide scale of various topics children withhold from their parents.

Of course, parent-child boundaries are important, but what happens when that boundary is fuzzy? “It causes the child to often times be confused and not really know where to turn to,” Hammonds expressed. This is exactly why groups have been formed to help elevate the confusion and make sure that kids are not alone when they need someone to talk to. Children and teens who may be affected by this are often those who belong to step families, are apart of the LGBTQ community or have experienced sexual abuse in their past. 

It is important that relationships are established between parents, friends, and family members so people know that they are not alone in their life’s journeys. “Privacy management is something that is extremely difficult to keep up with now, especially since there are so many different outlooks and platforms in which we can share everything with the world,” explained Hammonds, “however, that does not mean that everything should be kept behind closed doors.” Relationships are a huge part of being a human; it keeps us going and keeps us sane.