More than two-thirds of Irish people don’t trust social media to protect their personal data, according to a survey carried out by Pure Telecom.

The broadband and telecoms provider commissioned Censuswide to carry out the survey, which is based on replies from around 1,000 Irish adults. Only 31% said that they trust social media to protect their personal data, while just 4% placed complete trust in social media networks to protect personal information.

The study also showed that younger generations are more trusting, with almost 42% of generation Z and millennials trusting social media to some extent, compared with 23% of those over the age of 36.

Due to privacy and data misuse concerns, 26% of people said that they deactivated at least one of their social media accounts. The counties with the most account deactivations were Longford (60%), Westmeath (56%) and Clare (39%).

In other survey findings, 14% of respondents accept privacy updates after reading them in detail, while 31% accept them after quickly reading the information and 25% accepting without reading. The other 13% of people take no notice at all of privacy updates.

In Association with

Paul Connell, CEO of Pure Telecom, said that there has never been as much of a focus on the privacy of social media users and the security of their personal data.

“What these results show is that people have serious doubts about how their information is being handled and have lost confidence in social media networks,” he maintained.

Respondents in counties Carlow, Westmeath and Cavan were the most trusting social media users. Counties with the least trusting users were Meath, Leitrim, Kilkenny and Tipperary.