Bashllari, SilvaVillani, LucaAltınoklu, Müge NedaLevent, Oğulcan2024-07-122024-07-122022Bashllari, S. ve Villani, L. (2022). Social media, data privacy and the youth - case study: Tirana. Altınoklu, N.M. ve Levent, O. (Ed.). Maltepe Üniversitesi İnsan ve Toplum Bilimleri Uluslararası Öğrenci Kongresi içinde (ss. 21). İstanbul: T.C. Maltepe Üniversitesi.978-605-2124-61-1https://www.maltepe.edu.tr/muisc2022/https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12415/8846It is needless to argue that the usage of social media is prevalent in our lives and it has deeply altered the way we socialize; this is readily accepted as an axiom by most people. We, as humans, have always been social beings but in the last decade or so “we’ve doused our kindling fire of human interaction with high-octane gasoline” as Sinan Aral states in his 2020 book “The Hype Machine”. Throughout history, many technologies have disrupted the “normal” course of life, but understanding change is a necessary paradigm to manage it in a sustainable manner and who else is more volatile and exposed to the current changes than young people. The purpose of this paper is to inspect and provide a synopsis of state of the art research regarding social media and particularly its numerous implications in data privacy and ethics. Furthermore, a questionnaire was conducted among 1500 young people, aged 18-30, located in Tirana, Albania during the second half of 2021. The questionnaire attempted to obtain some understanding of their interaction with social media in a variety of activities, particularly with ads. A statistical analysis using machine learning techniques helped in drawing some conclusions and presenting them in this paper. The futurist Ray Kurzweil, in his essay ‘The Law of Accelerating Returns’, wrote: “We won’t experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century — it will be more like 20,000 years of progress (at today’srate)”. Thus, reflection becomes of imperative importance.eninfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccessConference Object2121