Mind the Gap: Are Gen Zers too trusting with their data online?

CURATED READS FOR GEN Z—AND THEIR Z-CURIOUS COLLEAGUES

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Welcome back—this week, we’re talking about data trust. Do you trust who’s using yours?

How many times have you clicked “accept” online without really reading those terms and conditions? Agreements like that are part of our daily lives, and research suggests that only a measly 1 percent of people actually read through what they’re agreeing to when they sign up for a service or site.

Most terms and conditions also define what data a company can scoop up and sell when you use its product. Plenty of services operate only on data monetization: you trade details about yourself and your habits to carry on along your merry buying, posting, and gaming way.

That’s an agreement that doesn’t seem to bother Gen Z: new McKinsey research by Jim Boehm, Liz Grennan, Alex Singla, and Kate Smaje on the value of digital trust found that we’re the most likely to allow apps or sites to collect our data without knowing how that data would be used. And we’ll use these apps and sites even if we do know—over 40 percent of Gen Zers said they had OK’d access to personal info in exchange for something like a discount code or free use of a service.

Both are classified as risky online behaviors, at odds with younger respondents’ high confidence that they’re being safe online and the high premium they put on trust. Overall:

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Gen Z is the most likely to take risks online.

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Gen Z is no stranger to the “save password” or “keep me logged in” checkbox—we’re also the most likely to store sensitive info online, especially personal details.

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However, Gen Z and millennials are the most likely to perform digitally protective behaviors, such as paying for better security or trying to delete user data when they stop using a service.

As the first so-called digital natives who grew up with the internet, Gen Zers are quicker to trust AI-powered services than human ones and are often expected to be the savviest with privacy. But part of having the personalized experience we like means giving up access to data—which might be used in ways we don’t want, and those ways might not be as safe as we think.

For example, nearly 90 percent of execs surveyed believe their companies are at least somewhat effective at mitigating data risks … but 57 percent of them say their organization had suffered at least one major data breach in the past three years. Ouch.

Read the full digital trust report here, and maybe take a look at sites you’ve let autosave your info, or reexamine your digital trust strategy. May the firewalls be with you.

QUOTE US ON IT

“Those who are more digitally savvy or are part of generations that were raised on digital are more likely to consider [data trust] issues on par with typical buying factors such as price when making—or discontinuing— purchases. . . . Those who fail to address trust risk getting ‘canceled’ in consumers’ minds.”

—McKinsey expert associate partner Liz Grennan on consumers and data use